Suicide should never be an option for someone nor should it ever be encouraged no matter what the case may be, it is more of something that we should rather help fight or better understand. Life, it is truly a beautiful thing, for some of us it is something that we cherish and adore so much that the thought of suicide would never be involved in our mind. For others in this world it is just something that they can not handle or neither want. Their life does not satisfy them. it may not satisfy them for a number of reasons either that they feel horrible for the actions and chapters that they have created in their life or that they feel like they will never be able to succeed in their long aimed goals. The majority of these people have gone through large amounts of time contemplating if suicide would really be the key to help put an end to all of their pain and suffering. The real problem with these types of scenarios is that some people in this world actually believe that suicide may be an overall benefit for both the people thinking of it and for those who are only spending their time looking after the people who make an attempt at it. It is one of the worst types of proposals that has been brought forth to create a better world. Instead of encouraging people to make the wrong decisions we should better help those that need it in these troubling times.
Tauriq Moosa a tutor in ethics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa is the publisher of “Should we help prisoners kill themselves”. In his article Moosa discusses about a man that wants to be put to death rather than to live the rest of his life incarcerated. Although Moosa believes that the man should be denied his proposal for him to be put to death or to commit suicide. He does believe that there should be prisoners that do deserve the right for them to either be killed by the death penalty or either to let them commit suicide for it may only provide a benefit towards the persons needs and the society for not having to spend money on a person that is only wasting space. Moosa describes that the only way that we should aid a person to kill themselves is that when we have a criminal that committed a crime that is so severe or when we have enough evidence that can confirm that it will cost more to take care of the person that needs intensive care then it will be to simply let them take their own life. During times like these Moosa believes that it is when we know for sure that the person actually committed the crime when they are willing to give up their life because they know that they have done something completely wrong. Even with all this being said it still does not provide good enough evidence for us to let someone take their own life. Whether it being someone that is being cooperative and pleading guilty we should not let that be a reason for them to commit suicide. I can agree with how Moosa believes that life in prison is in a way worse than the death penalty but it is still not right that he believes that if the crime is that severe the person should be able to commit suicide or be killed capitally.
While aiding a criminal that is trying to commit suicide may help society save money and time, it does not mean that it will fully give a positive reflection to the community. In turn it actually has a more opposite effect to it. The reasons why it could have a negative effect is that by letting criminals commit suicide you are letting society believe that it is right for someone to commit suicide if they have good enough reason to do so. It is times like these where a person that is thinking about suicide may take it in the wrong way. Suicide can be no more than just an extremely difficult checkpoint in their life where they are stuck on that is truly the best way to resolve their problems.
In the year 2010 alone there was a total of 38,364 deaths that were caused by suicide, leaving it to be ranked the 10th main cause of death in the United States. Although the total number of deaths caused by heart disease was 597,689 in that same year. People must still put into consideration that the amount of attempts of suicide were 959,100. That is almost double the causes of death by heart disease . No one chooses to have heart problems they either are genetically more prone to getting them or either get them by a lack of diet or exercise. Suicide on the other hand is considered to be more of a choice rather than being something that was already placed into your genetics. It may be true that the majority of people that attempt suicide do not usually go through it, but for the ones that do end up going through with it leave a much bigger scar in the lives of their loved ones.
In the article “Struggling to understand Suicide” by Ron Rolheiser president of Oblate School of Theology he talks about a friend that he knew that attended a funeral of a man that committed suicide. He mentions that in the funeral the brother of the man that committed suicide gave his speech about how his brothers death was such a more harder one, than one that is caused by a much more natural cause. But he compared his brothers suicide to a similarity of a cause of cancer. Although cancer and suicide are different he mentioned that suicide was more like an emotional cancer. Suicide a.k.a “emotional cancer” is similar to cancer because it can be dealt with almost in the same ways. Saying that people could actually be treated to take it away and possibly cure it, they could also be treated for it just so they could live the rest of their remaining life or that they could not be able to do much with it and eventually end up only dying from it because it is something that is either too strong to overcome. Describing that suicide gives a much darker hole to the feeling that comes from the person’s loved ones. The families can no longer think of the person the same way anymore that they are usually more less talked about in conversations in order to not create a more depressing feeling. He closed his speech by saying that no one really knows why he choose to end his life but the only way to better find out would, be to better understand suicide.
I could not agree more with the description of the mans speech. I as well had a friend of mine commit suicide and my feelings and my reactions were almost the same as the description of that same family from Ron Rolheiser’s article. It’s a feeling that ‘s much more different from someone that passes away by a natural death. Everyone was in shock as to why he would have actually done it . People were aware that he was having relationship problems but this still made people question if there would have been a way to actually stop him from doing it. It is not as simple to just stop a person from hurting themselves. Just because you may stop them from hurting themselves that one time doesn’t mean you will always be there to protect them. The fact of the matter was that my friend desperately needed help and it could have easily been prevented if his family would have payed more attention to the signs that he was showing to them. None of my other friends had the slightest idea that he had mentioned he would kill himself if his girlfriend left him, but his family did and they only had mentioned it after he had gone through with it. With the help of positive reinforcement by the use of love from family could make the biggest impacts on whether or not someone will commit suicide.
In the journal “Collective Efficacy, Family Attachment, and Urban Adolescent Suicide Attempts”written by David Maimon,Christopher R. Browning, and Jean Brooks-Gunn has provided numerous amounts of information stating how efficacy and family attachment plays a major role in suicide for the youth. As I described earlier that suicide was the tenth main cause of death in the United states overall but while looking at the statistics from the causes of adolescent deaths suicide actually places in third for the leading cause of death for kids in the age group of 14-25. Some of the reasons for such a high suicide rate in this age group is based upon how the family is attached to one another the majority of the time suicide is at a much higher risk for those adolescents that do not have that much family attachment. Generally a typical family that stays close to one another will tend to have a much smaller amount of depression growth than that of a family that is apart and does not communicate. My friend had fit almost of these types of characteristics ranging from his mother and father being divorced and him rarely having much communication with his family he was also 18 years old right in between the age group for the causes of teen suicide. Maybe this all could have been prevented by his family showing more support. But it is not as simple as that sometimes showing too much family attachment can actually be more of a downfall to a child rather than a good benefit. All of these scenarios matter in terms of what type of position the person may be in.
Brooke Donatone a psychotherapists from New York City wrote “Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up” for the reason to explain to people that making too many decisions for your children can lead to be a terrible thing. It is also called helicopter parenting where the parent is always hovering around their child in order to always make decisions for them. In the article Donatone describes one of her patients story and how the girl named Amy is too scared to grow up on her own. She is 30 years old now and still does not know what she wants to do in her life and she is completely overwhelmed with the decisions she is faced to pick without the help of her parents. This types of scenarios can be extremely difficult for people to face alone. The majority of these types of situations will have an ending result of severe cases of depression which may lead to suicide. Although suicide may not seem to be an option for the average person when they are unable to make a decision it will actually play a major role into a person that is unable to make decisions for themselves. But this is where we are able to help prevent attempts of suicide where we are able to notice a change in the persons personality. There are many different ways on how depression can be controlled and by being able to control depression it can play one of the main important steps in committing suicide.
Controlling depression has been handled in many types of forms but there is no real exact cure. Some ways people have been controlling their depression is by simply going out and taking walk, having a nice venting conversation with friends or even just going out and meeting more people rather than being home and away from society. These are some of the ways people may be able to help control depression without the help of any type of medicine. When a person is at a point that he or she is unable to control their depression they may need to be prescribed medicine in order for them to not reach an uncontrollable melting point. There have been numerous amounts of antidepressant drugs that have been created in order to help control severe types of depression. Abilify, Adaphin, Zoloft and Prozac are just just a few of many antidepressants that are most commonly used for helping control depression for all types of people. A large chunk of these types of antidepressants have been used to help prevent prison inmates commit suicide. People like Tauriq Moosa believe that it is sometimes more expensive to help treat suicide in jails and prisons for they do not provide a good benefit to our society. It is only then when Moosa believes it is right for prisoners to be allowed to commit suicide for it will only create a greater good for this world. It may sound like it would be a benefit to people when the average person hears it but in reality that is not all to true.
In “Preventing Suicide In Jails And Prisons” written by the World Health Organization discuses the negatives that occur when suicide occurs in a prison or jail. Many people may not even think of these small things when a suicide occurs in a prison or jail to some people they think it will only create a benefit but in turn that is actually the opposite in most cases. When a suicide occurs in a prison it can escalate to a huge political scandal that also begins to worsen when it is fueled by the media covering it. One way it creates a negative cause is that it will affect the police officers that help look after the inmates that try to commit suicide. Although they are not being hurt physically it can actually still leave long term emotional scars from seeing the sheer scene of a person that has committed suicide. When suicides like these occur and are displayed by the media it will also cause negative encouragement to those who currently undergo thoughts of suicide it will give them more of a reason to do it. It is said that their is one suicide attempt approximately every three seconds and that their will be one successful attempt every one minute. Although people still may not care if people in jails and prisons commit suicide it does not mean that we should let them go with without trying to stop them.
When being faced with these situations we should not merely look past them but we should look into how we can help solve them. Everyone has made mistakes in their lives, some more than others but it shouldn't be a reason why we should let some of the worst people commit suicide. Life is such a beautiful thing and should never be wasted sometimes people that make the worst mistakes in life can end up turning everything around and using their flaws to better encourage those who have felt like they once did before.
