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T
he grisly headlines greet us
daily: "Superstar Over–
doses," "Executive Blows
Brains Out," "Jilted Lover Leaps
from Fifteenth Floor." Every year
millions of people around the world
decide life is no longer worth living
and act accordingly.
But suicide- one of the world's
biggest health hazards- can be pre–
vented. If each of us were more
aware of certain deadly danger sig–
nals in ourselves and others, many if
not most suicide attempts would
never take place.
Following are sorne q uestions
about suicide that you may not have
wanted to ask. They are questions
about a subject which makes a lot of
people queasy or embarrassed, but
the answers are important- they
could mean the difference between
life and death for you or someone
you know and love.
Why do people commit suicide?
Nobody in his right mind really
wants to die, but many of us would
desperately like to change the way
we live. As long as we believe such
change is possible, we can usually
endure whatever curves life throws
us. Most suicidal people, on the
other hand, have come to the point
where they believe nothing will
ever improve. They have developed
a feeling of hopelessness- a belief
tbat they aren't able to control their
lives or their environments in order
to improve their painful lot in life.
In fact, one study of suicide at–
tempters revealed that fully 96 per–
cent felt their problems were
incapable of being resolved.
Does depression cause suicide?
Deep depression does precede
nearly all suicide attempts. But
many who suffer from depression
never commit suicide. As stated
above, a feeling of hopelessness is
the missing link between depression
and suicide.
This feeling is also a common de–
nominator in other self-destructive
activities like alcoholism, drug ad–
diction, and reckless or accident–
prone behavior. Experiments with
rats have demonstrated that those
animals conditioned to believe
struggle against pain (a repeated
electric shock) is futile won't swim
when placed in a container ofwater.
They, like sorne people, have been
taught to give up on life-to lose all
hope of controlling their environ–
ment. Rats are not people, and this
is not exactly suicide, but it illus–
trates the point.
What causes hopelessness?
1
ust
like the rats mentioned above,
people can refuse to rise to life's
challenges because they've been
taught to believe their efforts wi ll be
futile. This can happen severa!
ways. As children, maybe they suf–
fered from a handicap which under–
mined al! their efforts to cope.
Maybe as adults they had a run of
"bad luck" and it caused them to
give up the struggle. Or perhaps
they consciously or unconsciously
believe in fate or predestination.
People also feel a sense of hope–
lessness due to a lack of strong faith
or belief in any absolute answers to
life's quandaries. Today sometimes
even those who profess a certain
amount of religious faith are pro–
foundly infl.uenced by the atmo–
sphere of unbelief that pervades
most of our society.
Once a person tacitly accepts an
antisupernaturalistic philosophy
and doubts a higher purpose, all he
has left are secondary goals such as
work and pleasure. And once those
goals .are seriously thwarted, he has
no compelling reason to hang on.
But there
is
great meaning and
purpose in what we go through day
by day, and it is all part of a plan
mapped out by a great Personality
who set the universe in motion and
placed us in this imperfect environ–
ment in order to help us learn sorne
otherwise unlearnable lessons. For
more on this subject, write for the
free booklets
Does God Exist?
and
Why Were You Born?
Does bellef in an aHerlife encourage
suicide?
It's true that sorne Moslems
would like to die fighting a holy war so
their place in paradise will be secure,
and mystics of one stripe or another
might waste away in search of Nir–
vana. The Japanese culture especially
has accepted suicide and ritualized it
to a high degree.
But in most cases a strong reli–
gious belief has just the opposite ef–
fect. In Western societies the
rel igiously based social and legal
sanctions against suicide have pro–
vided a powerful suppressing effect.
And Western religion has tradition–
ally put a high premium on the
value of the present life in preparing
for the hereafter.
But more importantly, belief in
an afterlife provides hope, and hope
SUICIDE: THE DEADLY SIGNALS
by
Carole Ritter
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