We all bring out own perspectives to whatever we read in the news. In a BBC article about an orthodox Jewish lad I read about a suicide and see a pattern. The pattern can be:
A person obviously depressed, symptoms including saying they are depressed, comfort eating, or suicide attempts. (Or being in a depressing situation, losing a limb, losing sight or hearing or mobility, being bereaved, classic situations of stress: exams, leaving home, moving house, relatives leave home, divorce, ridicule.
Yet others manage to survive using their entire family, being isolated from family. The classic survival stories I think of are first in time Dreyfus, kept alone in a cell on a remote island and not even allowed to speak to the guards. I have his book - compiled using his accounts written later in his life.
Second in time is the man who survived a concentration camp and focused on the face of his wife to give himself the energy to walk on.
Many relatives, close friends, even strangers, start asking questions and seeking answers. I feel it's better to know the facts straight away than be left wondering for the rest of your life. Health and safety devices enable us to reach the age of seventy and stay fit when our grandparents died in their fifties or were bedridden helped by then members of the extended family. All health and safety devices were devised by somebody. Either a family member who experienced a problem and looked for an answer, or a stranger reading about an incident, or a company compiling statistics on causes of death. I'll write this up on my blog.
A person commits suicide because they are tired, physically low, on drugs, have access to an open window in a high building, can jump over a ledge.
What prevents or stops suicide? I previously read the sites of the Samaritans and found that many people had once or twice felt like committing suicide and were saved (in one or two cases by people who prevented them from jumping off bridges or ledges or the rescuer dived into water and saved them). The saved person went on to live long (so far) happy and productive lives.
Let's look at prevention. Factors include being in a supportive community.
The decision not to commit suicide because
1 God forbids it.
The book of Job deals with loss.
2 However bad I feel, I would feel worse if my parents or children committed suicide so I cannot add to their problems by doing this to them.
3 Life has ups and downs. Just wait and it will pass. (After sleepless nights with a newborn baby, and pain from cutting and stitches and infections, I kept telling myself, just wait a year and a day and today's problems will pass away.
4 Reading back my own diaries and lists of to do, it's amazing how problems and tasks which were major at the time have come and gone. I passed the 11+, O level, A level, University degree, bought a house, sold a flat, took train and bus journeys, reached destinations, published books, grew an apple tree (although other plants died), fixed central heating, replaced a lost passport, replaced a lost phone, got rid of mould, shortened curtains, sold cars which were letting me down, bought a car in the colour I was seeking, got dressed for the day quickly.
The Samaritans in the UK, other organisations in the USA and Israel.
Angela Lansbury
A person obviously depressed, symptoms including saying they are depressed, comfort eating, or suicide attempts. (Or being in a depressing situation, losing a limb, losing sight or hearing or mobility, being bereaved, classic situations of stress: exams, leaving home, moving house, relatives leave home, divorce, ridicule.
Yet others manage to survive using their entire family, being isolated from family. The classic survival stories I think of are first in time Dreyfus, kept alone in a cell on a remote island and not even allowed to speak to the guards. I have his book - compiled using his accounts written later in his life.
Second in time is the man who survived a concentration camp and focused on the face of his wife to give himself the energy to walk on.
Many relatives, close friends, even strangers, start asking questions and seeking answers. I feel it's better to know the facts straight away than be left wondering for the rest of your life. Health and safety devices enable us to reach the age of seventy and stay fit when our grandparents died in their fifties or were bedridden helped by then members of the extended family. All health and safety devices were devised by somebody. Either a family member who experienced a problem and looked for an answer, or a stranger reading about an incident, or a company compiling statistics on causes of death. I'll write this up on my blog.
A person commits suicide because they are tired, physically low, on drugs, have access to an open window in a high building, can jump over a ledge.
What prevents or stops suicide? I previously read the sites of the Samaritans and found that many people had once or twice felt like committing suicide and were saved (in one or two cases by people who prevented them from jumping off bridges or ledges or the rescuer dived into water and saved them). The saved person went on to live long (so far) happy and productive lives.
Let's look at prevention. Factors include being in a supportive community.
The decision not to commit suicide because
1 God forbids it.
The book of Job deals with loss.
2 However bad I feel, I would feel worse if my parents or children committed suicide so I cannot add to their problems by doing this to them.
3 Life has ups and downs. Just wait and it will pass. (After sleepless nights with a newborn baby, and pain from cutting and stitches and infections, I kept telling myself, just wait a year and a day and today's problems will pass away.
4 Reading back my own diaries and lists of to do, it's amazing how problems and tasks which were major at the time have come and gone. I passed the 11+, O level, A level, University degree, bought a house, sold a flat, took train and bus journeys, reached destinations, published books, grew an apple tree (although other plants died), fixed central heating, replaced a lost passport, replaced a lost phone, got rid of mould, shortened curtains, sold cars which were letting me down, bought a car in the colour I was seeking, got dressed for the day quickly.
The Samaritans in the UK, other organisations in the USA and Israel.
Angela Lansbury
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