Suicide

Suicide is a very serious problem, and it happens too often for us to ignore. I have always been interested in the different things involved in suicide and what would cause a person to kill themselves, but have never had the time to find out, until now.

I used to think it was something that was a spur of the moment decision, but it's not always. I thought it only happened to kids whose parents abused them, but that's not always true. I found that out when one of my friends that I had known since I was born had given serious thought about it. She is a wonderful poet with poems in hundreds of magazines, and she is also an extraordinary artist with paintings in museums that are selling for a thousand dollars. This girl is only 17. The one thing that seemed to be the slightest bit disturbing about her life was that her parents had a divorce when she was about seven, but other then that she seemed to have the perfect life.

Detail of The Death of Socrates. A disciple is han...

English: United States Army Suicide Prevention Pos...

English: Chart showing he circumstances for suicid...

She had been giving this serious thought for about a year, and then one day she actually attempted to kill herself. I thought if someone wanted to kill themselves it would be hard to fail. That's when I figured she didn't really want to die. It was a cry for help, and she didn't know of any other way to ask for it. I stayed a week with her through this trying period in her life, and found out it was partly because of her French exchange student boyfriend. They weren't broken up, but he had to go back to France, and she couldn't see him as much as she would have liked to. Her mother started taking her to a psychiatrist to help...