GOR ROCKS! haha. LOOK AT HIS GP PRESENTATION.
No plagarism here.

SUICIDE ANYONE?

Often when people are nearing death, may it be due to illness or other reasons, only then do they truly treasure their gift of life and hope to have a chance to live again or longer, even if it’s just one day.

However, when life becomes too difficult for some people, instead of having the strength to make a comeback after suffering from setbacks, they seek the easiest way out – death. This phenomenon is not one to be ignored, as the number of suicidal cases in today’s society, including Singapore has seen a significant increase.

As such, we must try to understand what goes through the minds of such people. Why do they see death as the only solution to escape from their laborious life, one which they see no meaning to continue with.

Death as a final solution may appeal to people of any age group, but surveys have shown that people from the age group of 13-18 is the most vulnerable to such thoughts, since that has been frequently viewed as the growing years of a person’s life. During this period, it is when teenagers experience much hormonal changes, which is believed to render a person emotionally unstable and oversensitive. The impact of close friends and family can either make or break a person, leading to the contemplation of suicide as the only solution possible.

Suicide may be due to psychological or social impacts.

For example, when a child feels that he is ignored by people around him, a sense of loneliness fills him. When parents call him useless or reprimand him to a level which he takes it to be true, he will feel hopeless. This is supported by American psychiatrist Karl Menninger’s hypothesis, that all suicides have three interrelated and unconscious dimensions: revenge/hate (a wish to kill), depression/hopelessness (a wish to die), and guilt (a wish to be killed).

The social aspect may be summarised in 2 words – social integration, or plainly, the extent to which a person feels committed and part of a larger group or organisation. French sociologist Émile Durkheim found suicide was more likely when a person lacked social bonds or had relationships disrupted through a sudden change in status, such as unemployment. As one example of the significance of social bonds, suicide rates among adults are lower for married people than for divorced, widowed, or single people. People who live alone or lack close friends may not receive emotional support that would otherwise protect them from despair and irrational thinking during difficult periods of life. In addition, they are more likely than others to have had family loss and turmoil, such as the death of a family member, separation or divorce of their parents, or child abuse or neglect.

Occasionally, people commit suicide as a form of protest against the policies of a particular government. Mass suicides, in which large numbers of people kill themselves at the same time, are extremely rare. The most famous mass suicides occurred in AD 73 at Masada in what is now southern Israel, when 960 Jews killed themselves rather than face enslavement by Roman captors

Certain aspects of a person’s life increase the likelihood that the person will attempt or complete suicide. Studies have shown that one of the best predictors of suicidal intent is hopelessness. People with a sense of hopelessness may come to perceive suicide as the only alternative to a pained existence. People with mental illnesses, substance-abuse disorders such as alcoholism or drug dependence, and behavioural disorders also have a higher risk of suicide. In fact, people suffering from diagnosable mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia constitute to about 90 percent of all suicides. Physical illness also increases a person’s risk of suicide, especially when the illness is accompanied by depression. About one-third of adult suicide victims suffered from a physical illness at the time of their death.


An American psychologist, Edwin Schneidman, has described several common characteristics of suicides. These include a sense of unbearable psychological pain, a sense of isolation from others, and the perception that death is the only solution to problems about which one feels hopeless and helpless. Cognitive theorists (who study how people process information) emphasize the role of inflexible thinking or tunnel vision (“life is awful, death is the only alternative”) and an inability to generate solutions to problems. According to psychologists, many suicide attempts are a symbolic cry for help, an effort to reach out and receive attention.

However, such appeals or warning signs are generally not obvious. These usually take the form of talking about suicide or a wish to die; statements about hopelessness, helplessness, or worthlessness; preoccupation with death; and references to suicide in drawings, school essays, poems, or notes. Other danger signs include sudden, dramatic, and unexplained changes in behavior and what are called “termination behaviors.” These behaviors include an interest in putting personal affairs in order and giving away prized possessions, often accompanied by statements of sadness or despair.

As such, in order to prevent such suicides, one should bring that person to seek professional help, and more often than none, this would prevent a suicide. This is due to suicide being a temporary thought by the person, so once he is able to talk about it or think of other issues, he would abandon thoughts of suicide.


P.S. I bolded a few words. There were changes made to the original.