Reedy 1

Jacey Reedy

Professor Barnes

ENG 1201

25 October 2020

Why is suicide an option to people going through hard times?

Suicide is a touchy subject to talk about. You may never know when someone is in need

of help when it comes to struggling with things. There are people out there that deal with it on

their own so most people may never see it coming, so why do people do it? You may never

think about it too much until it happens to someone you care about. People have hard days but to

most people those hard days are the worst days of their lives, but they still could wake up the

next morning with something better. Why do they do it?

People struggle on the daily with things that could make them feel the type of way where

they do not want to be here anymore. But there is a difference of suicide and suicidal behavior.

Suicide is the act of taking one’s own life. Suicidal behavior refers to talking or taking actions

related to ending one’s own life. It is harder to figure out if someone is having suicidal thoughts

because they don’t show it more unlike people who are committing suicide (Kahn.)

Suicide happens a lot during the year with up to 800,000 deaths a year. That is a major

public health concern. Those ages can range anywhere from 15-29 (‘Hot temperatures and

Suicide Risk; New Insight into a Complex Topic.”) Where there is also a big concern in the ages

45-54 for suicide, which these numbers are the highest suicidal numbers (Kahn.) These ages

change over times with how stress changes in different generations at different times.

Suicide is one of the most leading deaths in younger people. Suicide has been around for

many, many years as it is a way to end your life when people feel the need to. So many people
Reedy 2

die from suicide one person dies from suicide every 40 seconds. Just think about that for a

second, while you’re out having fun someone is ending their life. In some countries suicide is

illegal. Suicide rates are increasing with how much this world is adding more stress every day.

Suicide rates in men are just over twice as high as for women (Ritchie.)

When bad things happen in the world it causes stress to the world and into peoples lives

so it makes them feel that way ( Barna.) That right there shows the things going on in this world

can affect so many people’s lives good and bad. Most of that stress is not needed in peoples

lives. Many people all over the world struggle with the feeling of committing suicide. Out of

800,000 that committed suicide 58,000 of them were in Europe (Hegerl.) Many things happen to

people on the daily basis throughout the whole world. Everyone is human so everyone has

feelings and some just break more than others.

People could possibly just feel the need that their life is so horrible it has to end. Some

people could just be stressed about homework or work and feel the need to say bye to the world.

Lots of others just feel upset and feel like they simply cannot fight any longer and put their

families through the hardest time of their lives by saying bye to someone that was killed by their

own self. There could be many ways on why people feel the need to do it but those are just the

couple ones I got out of from the resources I have read.

Reedy 3

Bibliography

Barna, Mark. "Experts fear suicide, deaths of despair will rise in wake of COVID-19." The

Nation's Health, vol. 50, no. 5, July 2020, p. 1+. Gale In Context: Opposing

Viewpoints, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A633046814/OVIC?

u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid= 9ef4e22b. Accessed 18 Oct. 2020.

Hegerl, Ulrich, et al. “Prevention of Suicidal Behaviour: Results of a Controlled Community-

Based Intervention Study in Four European Countries.” PLOS ONE, Public Library of

Science, 11 Nov. 2019, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?

id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0224602.

"Hot Temperatures and Suicide Risk: New Insight into a Complex Topic." Environmental

Health Perspectives, vol. 128, no. 7, 2020, p. 74005. Gale In Context: Opposing

Viewpoints, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A634373793/OVIC?

u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid= ee3a048c. Accessed 18 Oct. 2020.

Kahn, April. “What You Should Know About Suicide.” Healthline, Healthline Media, 21 Dec.

2019, www.healthline.com/health/suicide-and-suicidal-behavior.

Ritchie, Hannah. “Suicide” Our World In data, 2015,

https://ourworldindata.org/suicide#citation