Table of contents
- CAUSES
- EFFECTS
- MANAGEMENT
CAUSES
Suicidal thoughts can come about for many reasons, some of them internal and others external. One of the reason a person results to 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 more weary about their relationships and Intense amounts of pressure placed on a person has 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 fulfil 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 of 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 has led to the rates of suicide in males to go up in the last few years.
Another reason why people go down this path is because of the lack of support systems. Nowdays, 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.
EFFECTS
The death of a loved one is obviously very painful to people, but when it comes by 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 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.
Feeling angry at the person who had passed on. This anger can be directed in two ways, one, people do become angry at the person that has taken their life. At one point, they may feel as though the person gave up on them and therefore gets angry at that idea. The second way involves being angry at themselves. They feel as though they failed the person by not knowing or noticing or helping the person through what they were going through.
There is usually guilt that the family members go through, which can come from within the family but also from the society. It is never easy to accept that a person that you were close to has taken their life. Death on its own is already painful, especially when it occurs suddenly but when it comes to suicide, it can even take years for it to finally sink in. Most people will not want to associate that persons.
MANAGEMENT
Some of the most effective ways of managing suicide is allowing people to be open and to talk about their feelings. We also need to be there for each other.
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 has 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.