THE EPIDEMIC OF SUICIDE

 

 

Suicide has become more than an epidemic, argues Matthew Sleeth. Sleeth cites one university that had to close its doors because of suicides:

 

·       Classes were canceled in an effort to prevent a suicide outbreak — or “suicide cluster.” This year, 10 million Americans will wrestle with whether or not to end their lives. One and a half million will be seen in emergency departments for suicide attempts and ideation. Every 11 seconds someone attempts suicide. America’s suicide rate now ties the all-time high experienced in the Great Depression of the 1930s: 14.5 per 100,000 per year. https://www.christianpost.com/voice/the-next-epidemic-is-worse-than-the-first.html

 

Sleeth regards this epidemic as far worse than these stats reveal:

 

·       In the 1930s, they did not have the medical technology to reverse overdoses, dialyze off poisons, and mechanically ventilate those who temporarily lost their respiratory drive. They did not have in-school depression screening, a national suicide prevention hotline, or a 911 emergency system. No effective medical treatment for depression existed. Today, one out of every eight adults takes an antidepressant. In short, without the invention and intervention of modern medicine and trauma systems, our suicide rate would be 200 to 300 times higher than has ever been experienced at any time in recorded history.

 

What is the remedy? First, we have to pinpoint the cause. What has changed? Is life more stressful and threatening? Or is it our inability to cope the problem?

 

While the extensive interventions of the mental health community have failed to stem the problem, I think that they have even inflamed it. They have failed to provide a real hope.

 

Why do people commit suicide? It is not just a matter of pain but a lack of hope that the pain will subside. As long as one has hope, one can endure. The late psychiatrist Victor Frankl observed, during his internment in a National Socialist death camp, that: “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future…was doomed.”

 

I think that this our problem. We too have lost faith. Why hasn’t psychotherapy been able to fill the gap? Aren’t the psychotherapists trying to inculcate hope in their clients? Of course, but perhaps this is the problem.

 

The hope of today is a self-hope. However, when our hope is in ourselves, this is where we turn for hope to face our anxiety, depression, and stress. However, we are turning to ourselves, the source of our problems, in a vain attempt to find hope. It is like hiring a burglar to protect your home.

 

This spike in suicide is also associated a decline of the influence of Christianity, especially among young adults. God used to be our hope when we found that we couldn’t cope with the pressures of life. When we felt that we are inadequate failures, His Word would reassure us:

 

·       I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

 

When we felt unlovable, He would remind us:

 

·       to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.(Ephesians 3:19)

 

Daily, I must remind myself of His overflowing love for me that I might enjoy the “fullness of God,” lest I slip into despair. I can no longer survive without the certainty of His love. I cannot understand how anyone else can. Ironically, it is the hope in our Savior Jesus that is disdained and banished from the public sphere.