Prevent Suicide Now

A website called Prevent Suicide NowCom recently came to my attention by chance I almost sent it back into cyber obscurity with a mouse click as it seemed unlikely to be of any interest or use to me in my carefree home business programme

My first thought was that a website dedicated to suicide must be macabre However, a tour of the website revealed that a great deal of loving work had gone into its creation The site’s purpose is to prevent suicide and raise public awareness of the subject In America alone over 31,000 lives ended in 2002 as a result of suicide That is one suicide every sixteen and a half minutes Trends show the suicide rate to be increasing

There is a touching remembrance section on the site The first memorial on the “wall of angels” is to a little girl aged 13 who was driven to suicide by school bullies I could hardly bear to look at the photographs of the other beautiful, bright children who became “angels” in their teenage years In the year 2002 in America a total of 4,010 people below the age of 24 committed suicide That equates to 11 young lives destroyed each day Suicide is the third leading cause of death in the 15-24 age group

Suicide is a subject which most of us would wish to avoid We would rather not think about it, let alone discuss it We are uncomfortable when dealing with people who have been bereaved through suicide and feel helpless when somebody we know is tormented by suicidal thoughts

Our reluctance to contemplate the issue of suicide is understandable It is painful and we don’t want to be reminded of our own mortality, but we would be better equipped to deal with the issue if we were brave enough to face suicide and become familiar with its features The ability to recognise the enemy would give us a better chance of knowing when help should be sought

Seeing the photographs of the young suicide victims reminded me of two young women I used to know but had not thought of for some time I was friends with both these women but they never met each other Their lives, however, strangely paralleled each other for a while when they reached the age of 25

My friend Janet had been engaged for two years and was looking forward to a traditional white wedding The wedding dress and cake had been made and the big day was only two weeks in the future when her fiancé abruptly broke off the engagement She was quietly devastated Janet was a warm person with a wonderful sense of humour but she was not a pretty girl – not ugly – just not a head turner and she was rather shy Being jilted shattered her self-confidence and she suffered through several lonely years before finding another boyfriend He treated her abysmally but she felt that it was better to put up with his behaviour than to face the loneliness of being single By then Janet was approaching the dreaded 30th birthday and felt like everybody else in the world was married I was relieved when she finally found the courage to end that relationship

My other friend was Cathy Like Janet, she was jilted only a couple of weeks before her wedding was due to take place; with impeccable timing her fiancé chose to dump her on the very day her wedding dress was delivered Cathy was a charming, sweet girl but, unlike Janet, she was also extremely pretty and outgoing Cathy had many friends and, with her good looks and bubbly character, was very attractive to men She bounced back from the rejection and had a new suitor within a matter of months I thought her new boyfriend was much nicer in every way than the former fiancé and that the jilting had been a blessing in disguise

The last time I spoke to Janet she was blissfully happy She had met and married a lovely man and was living by the coast with him and their two gorgeous children Cathy never married; she hanged herself at the age of 26 We were all utterly shocked: we had not realised that Cathy was hiding deep depression behind her pretty smile

Could I or any of Cathy’s friends have saved her if they had known the symptoms of depression? We will never know but 80% of people who seek treatment for depression are treated successfully Could you help to save a life? Could you comfort someone who has been bereaved through suicide? Advice and details of resources are available free from: http://wwwpreventsuicidenowcom If you have a website of your own, please offer a link exchange to this not-for-profit site and help to raise its profile It will cost you nothing but a little of your time

This is one of a series of articles
published by the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons)
at http://wwwHuntingVenuscom
The author’s monthly newsletter is available free
from mailto:networkerhvm@ReportsNetworkcom

Tags | awareness, group, obscurity, public, reluctance, result, section, teenage, victims