Basic HTML Version
WHY
PEOPLE
COMMIT
The most lutile
cause
ol death is
suicide.
A
veritable
curse,
it takes
thousands ol lives yearly. Yet,
suicide never
need, nor
should, happen.
by
Richard Gipe
f,,,,..,,, ••
'll~lllllll~
''''~"''''
Wide
World Photo
J
OHN WAS
23 years old, a bright
college student at a Jeading univer–
sity.
AH
he had worked for and
dreamed of - gcaduation and a pcom–
ising career - was now within reach.
But John never reached his goals. He
slashed bis wrists - a suicide victim -
one week shy of graduation.
Mary was a 35-year-old London
housewife. She Jived in a comfortable
upper-class borne and seemingly pos–
sessed everything necessary for a happy
life. She enjoyed status, a fine home,
two children and a successful husband.
Mary jettisoned all this by swallowing
a bottle of pills.
A Problem of First Magnitude
No one knows how many people
around the world, like John or Mary,
end their lives by committing suicide.
As a conservative estímate, experts feel
at least 1000 people daily take their
own lives. That amounts to severa! hun–
dred thousand suicide deaths a yeac.
Wbat makes ti fe so detestable? What
causes hundreds of thousands every year
to override the greatest drive known to
mankind - the desire for self-pres–
ervation - and snuff out their own
lives in a tragic suicide?
Suicide tragedy is causing sorne con–
cero. Over 200 suicide prevention
centers have sprung up across the
United States in the past few years! An
entirely new profession, that of "sui–
cidology," has been added to the wocld
as a result of this alacming trend.
In A.merica the problem of suicide
has reached staggering proportions.
Recorded suicides average somewhere
between twenty-two and twenty-five
thousand annually - or one suicide
every 26 minutes!
Many authocities, one of the leading
of which is
De.
E. S. Shneidman, be–
lieves these figures, if added to the
rm–
reported
and
misreported
suicides, could
be doubled or even tripled. Dr. Michael
Peck, Ph.D. on the staff of the Los
Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, in
an interview with the author said it is
generally believed at least 15,000 sui–
cides faJI into this category. This would
raise the total to sorne 40,000 suicides
in the United States yearly.
The suicide roll is not limited to the
United States. In England and Wales,
40,000 attempt suicide and 5000 suc–
ceed in taking their own lives yearly.
Australians in the same span of time are
killing themselves to the tune of sorne
1500, while in Canada another 1800
annually end their lives prematurely.
In America suicide is a major killer
-
now among the
TEN LEADING
CAUSES OF ADULT DEATH.
Among college or university students,
it ranks
number three,
and in sorne
areas
n11mber two,
following only au–
tomobile accidents.
But, no matter how it ranks as cause
of death,
it
is, was and wi/1 remain
-
the NUMBER ONE cause of futile
death.
The World Health Organization