Education about suicide.

[Losvedir]

Schools should teach students about the benefits of suicide. A person should have a right to die, if they see fit. Why press on through emotional turmoil when it is so easy (and cheap for parents, etc.) to just end your life and experience nothingness? Or perhaps for minors, parental consent should be required. But then the parents should be taught against the selfish desire to keep their children alive when they wish otherwise. They should be taught to overcome their natural evolved tendencies, since they are outdated and unnecessary nowadays.

[BeHereNow]

Are you being serious, Losvedir? The benefits of suicide?

I'm currently reading a book written by Kay Redfield Jamison, associate professor of psychiatry and author of the standard text-book on manic depression. She would agree that for someone with severe manic depression or bi-polar disorder, suicide is sometimes the only escape. From the book Night Falls Fast:

This sense of the unmanageable, of hopelessness, of invasive negativity about the future is, in fact, one of the most consistent warning signs of suicide .... People seem to be able to bear or tolerate depression as long as there is the belief that things will improve. If that belief cracks or disappears, suicide becomes the option of choice.

As someone has lived through manic depression and survived a self-poisoning, I'll verify the words above. Eventually, after repeated leaps of mania and valleys of depression, suicide really is your best perceived option.

But that is a problem.

Depression is a seething epedimic across the globe. Look at some of these numbers (from the same book):

... from 1952 to 1981 ... the risk of a twenty-year-old man committing suicide before the age of twenty-five had increased by 260 percent. In the US, between 1980 and 1992, the rate of suicide in children aged ten to fourteen increased by 120 percent.

(...)

... between 5 and 15 percent of the general adult population [in the US] acknowledge having had suicidal thoughts at some point in their lives. [note here that a study in Australia showed 40% of adults who admitted having thoughts of suicide denied it when asked again 4 years later - BHN]

(...)

The most comprehensive study of university and college students ... [reports that] ten percent of the students said they had seriously considered attempting suicide during the twelve months preceding the survey, and 7 percent had actually drawn up a suicide plan. Other research, conducted in Europe and Africa as well as in the US, has shown that mild to severe thoughts of suicide are common, occurring in 20 to 65 percent of college students.

(...)

[In a study of 16,000 high school students in the US,] fully 20 percent, or one in five, said they had "seriously considered" attempting suicide in the preceding twelve months; 16 percent said they had drawn up a plan.

Suicide is a problem. The mental anguish that a person goes through before taking their own life can not be fully described with words. After a suicide, the family and friends are devastated, left to spend their lives miserably wondering where they failed and blaming themselves. From a sane perspective, suicide is almost never a good answer, and only when a person has extreme, unbearable BPD or MD could I see it as a viable option.

But yes, I do agree that young people need to be educated on suicide. It's spreading out of control, and we need to reign it in somehow. Education is the answer.

(Please PM or email me if you are going through suicidal bouts and want to talk to someone who has been there. I won't preach to you, but I can empathize.)

[Queen]

People who commit suicide want peace......rest and peace. I know.....I understand those feelings.......I've been there and I have chosen life. But is not just an easy way out or even egotistical.......It is about ending the pain and suffering. Sometimes it feels like the only way out.

We can not look in the heart of people. We can not see what they feel.......

One day there will be no pain anymore......

I understand what you mean losvedir, but if you feel this go to this site: http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/ It wil help you.....It will help everybody with these feelings. It helped me many times these past few months!

Take care and be well,
Queen

[spl_cadet]

He's mocking pro-choice arguments if you hadn't noticed.

And I believe Denmark is already like that.

[Queen]

I don't know if Denmark is already like that. I have to look that up on the net...

I missed the mocking......but go to that link I gave....it is pro-choice yet it also saves lives!

Every individual has the right to choose about their own lives. Like I said, we can not look in the heart of people and see what is really going on.....Only your God can do that....and He isn't going to send suicide victims to hell. He knows what they have been through...

Lots of love and sunshine,
Queen

[AtheistArchon]

- Meh. If you really want to tkae your own life, nobody in the world is going to stop you. Unless maybe you're in prison or something. So in that respect, it's just a given that we have the right to end our own lives. I mean, what are they going to do, send your corpse to prison for the crime of suicide?

- I've known two people who committed suicide. Both were severely depressed, both were severe alcoholics, and both left behind families. And both were relatively young and in good health (if they stopped drinking, that is). So both of these people, IMHO, took a pretty cowardly option. Everyone has trials in their lives... everyone has depression sometimes. It takes courage and character to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and conquer it (especially when you're not opiated!).

- Umm, but no, I don't think schools should teach suicide education. At least, not any more than "abortion education". It's not the time or the place.

[Bill the Cat]

Very well said AA!

[themuzicman]

We should tell them HOW they can commit suicide, too, and the benefits and drawbacks of each:

Hanging: Take a rope, tie a slip knot, hang it somewhere sturdy (a rafter in the garage is good. Make sure it's not just drywall or a light fixture, but something that will support many times your weight.) Leave the length long enough that you can get your head through it, but short enough that you can't reach the floor when swinging by your neck. ... We will demonstrate proper knot and placement technique in the lab later on.

After all, we want kids to engage in safe suicide, right?

[AtheistArchon]

After all, we want kids to engage in safe suicide, right?

- Riiiight. "Safe suicide" is a lot like "military intelligence".

- MM, I do believe the idea behind safe sex is NOT to die.

- Leave it to the fundies to equate sex with suicide.

[Pilgrim]

hmmm, well, everybody who has ever had sex has died eventually...hmmmm

[themuzicman]

Today @ 11:59 AM post located here
AtheistArchon:

- Riiiight. "Safe suicide" is a lot like "military intelligence".

- MM, I do believe the idea behind safe sex is NOT to die.

However, the reality of "safe sex" is that it is not safe.

- Leave it to the fundies to equate sex with suicide.

Leave it to AA to totally miss the irony.

AA, we know some kids are going to commit suicide ANYWAY, right? Why not make sure it's done right, so they don't suffer needlessly? After all, educating kids about how to commit suicide safely won't increase the number of suicides, would it?

Michael

[Bob Jenkins]

If the schools teach it - would Final Exit be the text?

[Rahab]

People take their own lives for various reasons... some as BHN pointed, do it out of a need to escape mental illness. Others, cannot face their circumstances and are so emotionaly overwhelmed that they loose the ability to "see the light at the end of the tunnel". Then there are those who choose to avoid irremediable physical pain in the course of a terminal illness.

IMO, only the third cases are those where a person did use reason to determinate the course of his or her life.

If any emphasis were to be placed in educating kids on suicide, it would be to have them meet family members of a loved one who commited suicide. Let the parents speak of their sense of emptiness and failure as their child took his life. Let the daughter express how she felt abandonned as her parent took her life. Let the spouse speak of her lingering pain and guilt.... so many who not only grieve over the terminality of the death of the one they love but also grieve over "what should I have done differently"?

It is so important to emphasize that each human being needs to be validated. That with validation and the self understanding that each of us will always have multiple opportunities to make a difference in someone else's life, there is always a "light at the end of the tunnel". That is what kids need to know.... " you are precious, you have your own mission, one based on altruism, one where you will contribute no matter how unsignificant you think you may be...... do not take your life for you are taking a multitude of others with you......."

[themuzicman]

Gee, shouldn't sex ed kids be taken to a local diner where they can talk to a single mom who is working 2 jobs to pay for herself and her child that she had out of wedlock, too, then?

Oh, that would make too much sense. My bad.

Michael

[Queen]

It is not cowardly.......it is the only way out, at least it feels like that. They don't want to die, but life is too hard, too painful. Never judge untill you are capable to look in someone's heart.

Talking about suicide in schools and give them pointers or tell them it is one way to stop pain....even the benefits of suicide (what are they anyway?)....or whatever are two different things.......

Eductation is not driving young people to commit suicide. Believe me trying to do it is no fun ride!

Peace,
Queen