Is suicide an option?

 IS SUICIDE AN OPTION?

When the topic of suicide comes up, one of the first question that comes to mind is “Why would anyone want to take its life?” I know right? It sounds kind of weird that a person would even think of attempting suicide in the first place, but according to the World Health Organization (WHO) about  seven hundred thousand people commit suicide each year. What is more surprising is that for every one person that succeeds, there are twenty five others who think of and even proceed to attempt but fail. After reading the statistics, I became curious as to the reason  behind their decision. Going through the internet, several triggers, negative energy as I would like to call them, have been identified, but depression seems to be the major factor. 

 According to WHO, majority of the suicide cases occurs at high earning countries. These people to an average Nigerian like myself are considered to live beautiful lives. To us, life is beautiful when you basically have almost everything you could need to survive provided to you by the government and not having to make it a prayer point. Is it not? Maybe not from their perspective.  I have come to realize that beauty often at times lie in the eyes of the beholder. People see thing differently depending on their perspective. In other words, life which seems beautiful to someone might be far from beautiful to another. Let me not go too far, as a student, it is no new thing that fellow students choose suicide when faced with bad results after an academic year rather than face the sadness, stigma, and shame, which are the effects of negative energy that accompanies an extra year in the university. When such arises, people lament saying words like “It is not the end of the world, when there is life there is hope.” These words are true but to an extent. It is important to note that different people react to  the same situation differently. Academics might have meant the world to the victims, failing brought an end to that world. They, no longer seeing hope in life anymore saw suicide as an option and chose it.

According to today.com, after interviews with several suicide attempt survivors, it was observed that the majority saw suicide as the only way out of the effects of the negative energy. Some had the idea that their loved ones would be even better off without them.  Nancy Nettels, a survivor of multiple attempted suicide said, in her own words, “I remember thinking that my kids would be better off if I wasn’t here.” But as the law of conservation of energy states, energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can be transformed or transferred. Psychologist have observed, according to today.com, that the loved ones of those who commit suicide tend to fall into depression too. In other words, rather than ending it, the effect of the negative energy was transferred to the loved ones to deal with. If their loved ones do not see a better option, they could pick suicide too, setting of a chain reaction where one suicide act leads to another which leads to another. 

A lot of people have considered suicide to be the way out of their problems, many of them have chosen suicide, making it the tenth leading cause of death in the according to WHO. I can’t help but wonder, if suicide is an option, is it the right one?

Written by Alade