Mental health awareness: Every Life is Valuable

Life is one beautiful thing happened to us and most of us feel fortunate that the life is perfectly going well. Most of us feel life is joyful, happy, loved and motivated. But there are few people around us feel exactly opposite to it, they feel hopeless about life and feel there is no meaning to their lives and feel suicidal due to various reasons.

Suicide is a painful state where someone takes their own life by injuring themselves. According to WHO recent statistics it is estimated that there are 703000 deaths every year due to suicide globally. You might be devastated to know one in every 20 suicide attempts is fatal and results in death. So imagine the no. of suicidal attempts happening globally every year. These are only reported figures and the actual numbers are definitely much bigger. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among 15-29 year olds.

There are many risk factors which make an individual vulnerable for suicide:

• Financial Problems

• Unemployment

• Occupational Stress

• Relationship Failure

• Separation / Divorce

• Marital Discord

• Loss of loved ones and prolonged grief

• Abuse and Trauma

• Bullying

• Social isolation

• Chronic Depression

• Severe mental illnesses

When someone dies of suicide, there is a general mindset in the people that they know few people in their lives who have these kinds of problems, but they are not dying. Why he or she has attempted suicide?

Yes, most of the individual have gone at least through one or two above mentioned problems in their lifetime. If anyone of you has dealt with these problems in your past and leading a happy life today, it means that you are very fortunate to have adequate resources and support system which helped you to cope with such difficult situations.

If an individual have exhausted all his resources or lacks understanding and supportive environment feel totally helpless, feel like a failure and no hope that situations can get any better. The longer the individual remains in that state, higher the risk of suicide as the suffering continues and the problem seems no ending. In such vulnerable state an individual reaches to a point to take a forced choice between suffering and death. And death appears to be the only full stop to the misery and suffering one is going through.

Suicidal people give few warning signs much before they attempt suicide

• Talking about wanting to die.

• Expressing being a burden to others.

• Feeling empty, trapped and no reason t live.

• Researching on ways to die.

• Withdrawing from friends and saying goodbye.

• Giving away important items.

• Making a will.

• Engaging in high-risk behaviours such as driving fast.

When you know that someone is at risk of suicide take out some time from your daily busy life and please do the following thing:

• Be kind and empathetic towards their suffering.

• Listen actively about their problems and attending their emotions.

• Make them feel that you genuinely care for them.

• Show them their strengths, how they have coped up in difficult situations in their past.

• Don’t argue against suicide, or don’t confront them “why are you thinking non-sense?”.

• Support them to deal with their problems and inspire hope.

• Give confidence to them that you are always there with them during any kind of difficulties.

• Spend some quality time with them on daily basis.

• Take to professionals who can counsel them to deal with their negative thoughts.