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 must pinpoint the cause. What has changed? Is life more stressful and
threatening? Or is it our inability to cope with our problems?
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. If 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 psychotherapists trying to inculcate hope in their clients? Of
course, but perhaps this is the problem.
The hope of today
is 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 with 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 feel 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)
To know the love of
Christ is to be filled with God. This includes hope that this God who had loved
us, even when we were His enemies (Romans 5:8-10), and is working all things
for our good (Romans 8:28), even in the midst of suffering. To know this is to know
that, whatever our pain might be, He is lovingly with us. It is like committing
ourselves to a trusted surgeon to remove a tumor. It might entail a painful convalescence
but believing in the doctor enables us to endure. How much more is this true
with our all-powerful and loving God!
In Spirituality
& Health Research: Methods, Measurement, Statistics, and Resources,
Harold G. Koenig, MD has done more to survey the available research regarding
the question of what is associated with positive mental and physical outcomes
than perhaps anyone else. He has identified religion/spirituality (R/S) as the
key element. Ironically, it is this very element that has been banned from the
various forms of psychological intervention. Here is only a small sampling of what
Koenig has found:
·
DEPRESSION: “At least 444 studies have now
quantitatively examined relationships between R/ S and depression, and 272 (61
percent) of those found less depression, faster remission from depression, or a
reduction in depression severity in response to an R/S intervention (ten
studies at a trend level). In contrast, only 6 percent reported greater
depression in those who were more R/ S. Of the 178 methodologically most
rigorous studies, 119 (67 percent) found inverse relationships between R/S and
depression.”
·
SUICIDE: “We identified 141 studies that had
examined relationships between R/S and some aspect of suicide (completed
suicide, attempted suicide, or attitudes toward suicide), and 106 (75 percent)
reported significant inverse relationships; 80 percent of the best designed
studies reported this finding.”
These same
phenomena are paralleled by a plethora of anecdotal findings. The late
psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, wrote, 15
years later, in Further along the Road Less Traveled about his journey
from Zen Buddhism to Christianity. He had repeatedly observed that his
Christian clients would improve, no matter how serious their psychiatric
condition. Peck concluded:
·
The quickest way to change your attitude toward
pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed
for our spiritual growth…We cannot lose once we realize that everything that
happens to us has been designed to teach us holiness…We are guaranteed
winners!"
Daily, I 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.
2 comments:
Thank you for the steady flow of incite full information and encouragement. These truly are trying times.
Definitely, trying times!
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