Suicide the Truth of it all

According to (Webster, 1961) Suicide is defined as the act or instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally. The Center of Disease Control leading cause of death reports reported that suicide was ranked the tenth leading cause of death overall in the United States in the year 2016. It claimed the lives of nearly 45,000 people.(""NIMH ?» Suicide"", 2018) And it was the second leading cause of death among people between the ages of 10 and 34, and the fourth leading cause of death among people between the ages of 35 and 54.(""NIMH ?» Suicide"", 2018) And it was reported there were more suicides than homicides that year. When the amount of voluntary death surpasses the amount of involuntary deaths then we have a major issue on our hands that must be discussed so a solution can be presented.

Keywords: Suicide, CDC (Center of Disease Control), Death, Suicide the Truth Behind It All

Suicide is such a trying word that has so much attached to it especially negativity. As Christians we are taught that suicide is a sin and it is frowned upon. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church (Ephesians, 5:29) However, people tend to forget why such a traumatic even has occurred. Suicide the most preventable cause of death is among the top 20 leading causes of mortality globally for all ages. (Ram, Darshan, Rao & Honagudo, 2012) People go through so much and sometimes you will never really know why someone has decided to take their own life. But it still does not take away the pain a loved one feels when they get word from law enforcement or medical personnel from the hospital that their loved one is gone. Or the pain that comes from reading suicide notes, exerts from the persons diary or words from a close friend as to why they have decided to give up on life. There have been so many movies and tv shows that have lightly discussed this issue, but only recently have I seen a show to really start to dig deep into it. 13 Reasons Why on Netflix has gone deep into the life a young deceased woman who committed suicide trying to piece together why she decided to end her life. Often the reasons have ranged from bullying, illness, inability to cope with death or financial situation or not getting depression treated.

Why should clinicians and others take seriously even a low-lethality type of suicide attempt? Or are such attempts really just gestures?

Low-lethality by defining both separately would mean minimal potential for cause of death. In my opinion clinicians and others should take them seriously because even the smallest attempt is still an attempt. Adolescents who are judged to be at low risk of suicide should still receive close follow-up, referral for a timely mental health evaluation, or both if they should have any significant degree of dysfunction or distress from emotional or behavioral symptoms. (Shain, 2009) Emerging evidence suggests that it is indeed useful to distinguish between those with intent to die and those without such intent. For instance, those with intent to die have been shown to engage in more lethal self-injury. (Nock & Kessler, 2006) There continues to be definitional confusion and debate about the role of intent in the definition of suicide attempts, and intent to die is rarely explicitly assessed in studies of suicide attempts. This issue requires resolution, as ignoring the intent of self-injury can lead to an overestimation of the prevalence of suicide attempts and can hinder the identification of risk factors specific to suicide attempts. (Nock & Kessler, 2006)

Suicide gesture can be defined as self-injury in which there is no intent to die, but instead an intent to give the appearance of a suicide attempt in order to communicate with others. (Heilbron, Compton, Daniel & Goldston, 2010) Most suicide attempters report attempting suicide ''To stop bad feelings'' and most suicide gesturers reported making a suicide gesture was ''To communicate with someone and or get his or her attention.'' (Garc?­a-Nieto, Blasco-Fontecilla, de Le?n-Martinez & Baca-Garca, 2014)

Identify a situation in which a danger of suicide was suspected. What was done or not done in response, and what were the reason why. As usual, we do not want you discussing anyone or any facility by name or even in a potentially identifiable fashion.

There was a young man who always stayed to himself. He had poor hygiene, lack of communication and was never visited by his parents. One day he was approached by staff and they asked him if he could please practice better hygiene for his overall health and he stated he won't be around long so that would not be necessary. Approximately one week later the young man stated he wanted to kill himself after he was bullied by other individuals housed with him. He was evaluated and placed on mental health observation for 48 hours. After being assessed by clinical staff the young man was deemed fine. Staff was told that he was attention seeking and still report his gestures but tread lightly. Two days later staff noticed the young man had markings on his wrist that were not there before and reported what they saw. The juvenile was placed on suicide watch and monitored closely. The juvenile always had to have one on one with staff. That one week he was on full watch he not once suggested he was still suicidal. The juvenile was taken off watch and then staff noticed he began giving away his belongings. But unfortunately, they did not report it. The young man got into a fight with an individual and was separated from others. While doing a check staff noticed a pool of blood in the corner of the young man room. Staff immediately opened the door to see the young man had slit his wrist and had been bleeding out. He wrote on the walls in his blood that no one would miss him anyway. Life is not a dream and goodbye cruel world. The young man was transferred to the hospital for evaluation and transferred to be housed some place else.

With that being said as you can see there were steps taken to assist the young man, but certain staff felt like he was attention seeking. However, a lot of his gestures were signs that his suicidal ideation was becoming stronger. But I guess you can compare it to the boy who cried wolf. People of the town was so tired of him crying wolf when the wolf finally did come, they did not pay attention. Just like the young man who stated he wanted to kill himself but did not do any serious self-injury. He was treated like the boy who cried wolf and once he finally decided he had enough of being in the world he did the major self-injury. That is when the serious help he needed was given to him.

In sociocultural perspective, identify factors that may contribute to youth suicides in wealthy societies like the United States and Canada.

Most people would believe that only people who live in poverty and minorities would commit suicide the most. Since they don't have much and would probably seem more depressed per society. However, how many times have we heard that many cannot buy happiness. Suicide is a multidimensional phenomenon which has different meanings among adolescents in different cultures and places. (Sharif, Bazrafshan, Molazem & Mani, 2016) In recent studies, individual, family, psychosocial, and cultural factors contribute to adolescents attempting suicide. (Sharif, Bazrafshan, Molazem & Mani, 2016) Firearms have traditionally been the leading suicide method among U.S. youth, followed by hanging/suffocation, and self-poisoning. (Cash & Bridge, 2009) Family factors, including parental psychopathology, family history of suicidal behavior, family discord, loss of a parent to death or divorce, poor quality of the parent-child relationship, and maltreatment, are associated with an increased risk of adolescent suicide and suicidal behavior. (Cash & Bridge, 2009) A lot of children who come from wealth unfortunately deal with being lonely and they usually do not have close relationship with their parents. So, they go through phases of depression and sometimes begins reckless behavior to seek attention from their families.

Conclusion

Suicidal behavior is a major health concern in many countries, developed and developing alike. At least a million people are estimated to die annually from suicide worldwide. (Wasserman, Cheng & Jiang, 2005) The reliability of suicide statistics is often questioned. Suicides are underreported for cultural and religious reasons, as well as owing to different classification and ascertainment procedures. Suicide can be masked by many other diagnostic categories of causes of death. Unfortunately, in cases of young people, death due to suicide is often misclassified or masked by other mortality diagnoses. This makes the global picture of death by suicide even graver. (Wasserman, Cheng & Jiang, 2005) Which means we need to find better solutions to decrease the amount of suicides in not only young people and adults.

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