A WORLDWIDE PROBLEM-WHY PEOPLE GIVE UP ON LIFE

Triggering Events

It is not uncommon for young ones who give in to despair and commit suicide to do so even over matters that may seem trivial to others. When they feel hurt and cannot do anything about it, youths may view their own death as a means of getting back at those who have hurt them.  Hiroshi Inamura, a specialist in handling suicidal people in Japan wrote: "Through their own death, children cherish an inner urge to punish the person who has tormented them." 

A recent survey in Britain indicated that when children are subjected to severe bullying,  they are nearly seven times as likely to attempt suicide. The emotional pain that these children suffer is real. A 13-year-old boy who hanged himself left behind a note naming five people who tormented him and had even extorted money from him.  "Please save other children," he wrote. 

Others may try to take their life when they get into trouble at school or with the law, suffer the end of a romance, get a bad report card, experience stress over exams, or become weighed down b y worries about the future-be it actual or imaginary-may bring on a suicide attempt.  

For adults, financial or work-related problems are common triggering events. In Japan after years of economic downturn, suicides recently topped 30,000 a year. According to the Mainichi Daily News,  almost three quarters of the middle-age men who killed themselves did so  "because of problems stemming from debts, business failures, poverty and unemployment." Family problems too may lead to suicide. A Finnish newspaper reported:  "Recently divorced middle-aged men" make up one of the high-risk groups. A study in Hungary found that the majority of girls who contemplate suicide were reared in broken homes. 

Retirement and physical illness are also major triggering factors, especially among the elderly. Often suicide is chosen as a way out, not necessarily when an illness is terminal, but when the patient views the suffering as intolerable. 

However, not everybody reacts to these triggering events by committing suicide. On the contrary, when faced with  such stressful situations, the  majority do not take their life. Why, then, do some view suicide as the answer, while most do not?  

(Note: My opinion may not be much or matter to most people, but I did come from a broken home.   Before I brought God into my life, I had thoughts just for a minute of committing suicide, but just for a minute.  It take a person with inner strength to  come out of these events alive, you may have much sanity left, but you are alive.  I found you have to have God in your life to help you get through the worse; but also you have to already have some inner strength within you to survive.  It isn't always the wanting to survive, it is the needing to survive for some strange reason or other. As I said in the last blog.  It is a person with no inner strength to need to take your life. Plus, it takes more courage to stay in this world, than it does to go out of it, in this way.  This is what I have learned and have observed  throughout my 69 years of living in this wicked system of things. This is why we really do need God-to help us strenght to deal with the worst of situations and problems. 

Next time: A WORLDWIDE PROBLEM - WHY PEOPLE GIVE UP ON LIFE/Underlying Factors

From the Awake! magazine