"Math class was awful today, I was about to kill myself."
If you listen closely to the conversations in the halls of Milton High, you are bound to hear students saying, “I wanted to kill myself". Sure we say this jokingly, but every day, 14 young people (ages 15 to 24) commit suicide, or 1 every 100 minutes. And for every death by suicide, there are 25 attempts. What do these numbers mean? It means that suicide is the second most common way for teens to die in the United States. As long as people use the term "I want to kill myself" loosely, awareness for suicide will remain the same.
We've all sat through assemblies that raise awareness for bullying and it so happens that the victim committed suicide. Students usually associate suicide with extreme bullying, and why wouldn’t we if it’s all we’re exposed to. But suicide is a result of many things: depression, anorexia, the death of a loved one, PTSD, physical suffering from a disease, rape, abuse from a parent and the list goes on.
So why does suicide get overlooked if more than 39,000 people in the United States die from it each year? What makes it any less important that heart disease or cancer? Is it because most suicides are related to mental illnesses and people don’t want to face the reality that we are not perfect and deal with problems every day?
Suicide might not even be a problem if society didn't set its expectations so high. For example, body image is a problem that many teens struggle with because their body shape is too big, too small or not good enough. Sometimes its the only way out for people who can’t bare to live up to these expectations.
Maybe if this problem wasn’t overlooked, victims could receive care before they feel like suicide is the only way out. I think if people understood why others commit suicide they would want to help.Unfortunately, Americans tend to brush the dirty details of our country under the rug.
We have bullying awareness day, breast cancer awareness day and world diabetes day. World Suicide Prevention day is on September 10th. Why don’t we raise this awareness in our school? Perhaps it’s a touchy subject to some people, but if we are permanently scared to talk about suicide, no progress will be made.
Colette, thanks. This post is good. Your introduction is particularly strong. I was definitely hooked - albeit a bit sickened - by the opening sentence. Your transition in your second paragraph immediately grounded my attention in the serious issue about suicide. Your introduction is substantive and professional. Nicely done. The content of the subsequent two paragraphs is also compelling, although the writing gets a little looser. Because I work in a school, I understand the connection you're making between anti-bullying assemblies and suicide. However, I think the way you write it would come across as a bit confusing to a different audience. Who is the "victim" and what exactly is it that we are constantly "exposed to"? I get it, but I'm not sure others would. In the second half of this post, your argument definitely gets looser. You superficially mention several ideas without really elaborating upon them or drawing substantive connections to suicide.
ReplyDeleteOnce the musical is over, and you have more time, stop by. If this is a topic you are interested in, there might be a way to use "The Crucible" as a fictional text that allows you to explore this in your research paper.