Suicide The Final Solution Essays - Suicide, Suicide Prevention

Suicide: The Final Solution? Suicide: The Final Solution? Suicide, the act of intentionally killing oneself, has become an increasingly more common and serious issue among those who tend to experience problems psychologically dealing with hardships in life. ?Too often, as the daily news tells us, the search for answers to these challenges is complicated by problems outside teens' control, such as divorce, family alcoholism, domestic violence or even sexual abuse? (APA Online 1). For all of these reasons, suicide has become the ninth leading cause of death in the United States, with 31,204 casualties recorded in 1995. In the past suicide has been guarded as a black secret that was to be hidden from public knowledge by the families of those who lost a loved one to it. However, society's view on suicide is currently changing, with much more attention being paid to the problem and those it is likely to affect. Frequently, suicide is the result of a failed attempt at regaining control of one's life, to escape unbearable pain and suffering, or be cause they see themselves as the family scapegoat. For whatever reasons it is done, this act of self-destruction is quickly becoming a common alternative to coping with the hardships faced in everyday life. Suicide surfaces at an even more alarming rate among people aged 15-24, with over 13 of every 100,000 of the population in this age group killing themselves in 1990. It is estimated by the experts that nearly 5,000 teenagers commit suicide every year, and males account for 4 times as many successful attempts than females although young women attempt to kill themselves four times as often as young men do. It is also believed by many experts that the actual number of suicides is two to three times higher than indicated by statistics. According to Ovetta Sampson, as teens become older, family relations grow strained and the children feel isolated. Even worse, due to the tendency of teens to be more impulsive than adults, many end their suffering with suicide. (Sampson 1). The reasons for this are incredibly varied, ranging from those that are provoked by parents and peers to those that are caused by mental and psychological disorders. In a family environment suffering from abusive or divorced parents, even common problems can prove to be insuperable. Many teens in a situation similar to this feel that they have nowhere to turn and will frequently ?medicate' their pain with drugs and alcohol, or express themselves with acts of violence or self-destruction. The combination of a dysfunctional family life and the everyday issues that teens are forced to face everyday can often result in a chronic depression. ?The feelings of helplessness and worthlessness that can accompany it, along with disturbances in sleep or apetite [sic], can fuel a downward spiral of health and grades, further clouding perspective, making even thought seem intolerably difficult? (APA Online 1). Although everyone suffers from mood swings in which he or she occasionally feels sad, th ose who suffer from depression often experience these moods for over two weeks at a time. If this condition goes unnoticed or untreated, the victim could begin to take part in dangerous behavior, all to frequently culminating with an attempt of suicide, effectively ending all suffering. Bipolar disorder is another malady that causes individuals to choose the path leading to suicide. In this disease, the victim suffers from a chemical imbalance in his or her brain that causes him or her to oscillate between extreme moods of elation and severe depression. An even more horrifying aspect of teen-suicide is the triggering of ?clusters' within a community. In this type of occurrence, one suicide has the tendency to bring about multiple others that have the capability to decimate the school environment or commonwealth in which the initial act took place. The symptoms of a person in danger of committing suicide are just as varied as the reasons they might possess for doing so. Recognizing the warning signs soon enough can make it possible to treat and prevent a potential catastrophe from occurring. Perhaps the most obvious hints towards problems such as these can be found in the phrases that the victim may use that he or she had not