Suicide is the act of taking one's owns life deliberately. In most countries, it has been ranked as the number 10 cause of death. In recent times, the rates of suicide have increased due to a lot of reasons. There are gender differences in the way males and females carry out their suicide attempts, across the world, suicide rates are significantly higher for men compared to women. Another difference in gender is that men’s attempts being more violent and they choose more lethal methods are more impulsive are less likely to seek help for emotional problems, and express depression differently. Women often prefer methods such as the use of drugs, while men will go for methods like hanging or the use of firearms.
One of the reasons a person results in taking their own life would be feelings of worthlessness. This is one of the most common ones, as it comes from within and takes a lot of effort to stop feeling this way. Many people feel as though the world would be a better place without them and therefore result in taking their own lives. Other times, the environment a person is around can also fuel these feelings, for example, abusive environments can really lead a person down this path.
Another reason would be feelings of being unloved and unwanted. Again, these can be internal or external. The external just adds fuel to the fire and makes the person become warier about their relationships and often withdraw from the society and the people around them. Isolation can lead to the escalation of these thoughts and ideas and a person can end their life because of beliefs that they had that were not true.
Intense amounts of pressure placed on a person have also been seen to lead to suicide. A lot of people have ended up taking their lives because they were put under so much pressure and at some point knew that they could not fulfill what they were supposed to do and therefore ended everything. They often feel like they do not want to disappoint people and do not want to look for help and carry the burden until it is too much for them to handle.
Bottling up emotions has also led to people taking the option of suicide as a way out. A person holds up so much emotion that they become overwhelmed by them. This is especially prevalent when it comes to feelings of sadness, hate, depression, despair, and sometimes even fear. There has always been a notion, where men have to be strong and men cannot cry and all these unfortunately have led to the rates of suicide in males going up in the last few years.
Another reason why people go down this path is because of the lack of support systems. Nowadays, people have become so individualistic that we sometimes find ourselves more worried about ourselves than we are for others. This then pans out to everyone and therefore if a person has a problem, they do not have anyone to go to, especially the people closest to them. Most people often go to their close friends and family before resulting to go for therapy and therefore if these people are not present, they feel neglected.
The rate of male suicides has increased significantly over the years because men are more impulsive, are less likely to seek help for emotional problems, and express depression differently. This of course leads to them bottling p emotions and because of their impulsive nature, they tend to become more daring and end up taking extreme measures.
The death of a loved one is obviously very painful to people, but when it comes to suicide, the way these people react becomes very different. Some of these are related to the stages of grief, which include, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
The first effect comes as a denial that the person has ended their life. They start to claim that they knew their son/daughter/friend very well and believe that something must have happened so that the deceased was led down this path. They claim that this person was not the type to go do this to themselves and that they were better than the actions that they took.
One of the most effective ways of managing suicide is allowing people to be open and to talk about their feelings. Many of the cases reported have been because the person was not able to get help or did not reach out. The notion of “men need to be strong” and “real men do not cry” needs to be abolished as these are some of the reasons why many men are taking their own lives. This happens because people may not be available to be there for people but now, we have to
We also need to be there for each other. Providing support for our friends and families is one of the most effective ways of preventing suicidal thoughts, which are the starting point. Before people seek professional help from therapists, they are more likely to go and seek advice from someone they are close and therefore we have to be able to help our friends or family members before it is too late.
Another way of preventing suicide is encouraging people, especially males, that it is okay to be emotional. The rates of male suicides in the past few years have risen drastically and this has been caused by the age-old notion that to be a man is to be strong and to not show emotion and to be brave.
One other way is to educate people on the signs of depression, which a lot of the time is the main sign associated with suicidal thoughts. For example, if a person has changed from being jovial to gloomy over a long period of time, try and engage them and do not let them wallow in their sadness.
One of the ways to out for signs of change in our friends or even talking about it, in a joking manner especially. Many people use humor as a way of covering up their true intent and feelings until it is too late for anything to be done. We need to be able to pick up talk about intention, or even just the ideation so that we are able to help them get out of the dark place that they are in.
In conclusion, as much as the rates of suicide have risen significantly in the last few years, it is possible to help people not opt for that route. To be able to help them, we need to be able to know and understand the causes of suicide, the effects it has on the person themselves and the people around them, and the ways in which we can manage these causes and symptoms. This can also enable us to come up with appropriate methods of helping the people through the process.