Suicide is the one of the leading cause of death right now around the world specially amongst teenagers and young adults. So on World suicide prevention day, lets get into an indepth analysis on why one decides to take one’s life and how we as a society can take steps to prevent it.
Taking your life isnt a short term decision. It takes a lot of trauma, despair, toxic environment, insecurities to lead oneself to take such a drastic step.In our society boys, girls, non-binary folks everyone has to go through a lot of negative experiences. But when the pain outweighs the fight, there is no option left for them other than killing oneself. People commonly call them cowards to people who commit suicide, but the truth is the amount of pain faced by the victims is tremendous. They dont want to quit because life is tough, they want to quit because the emotional pain is unbearable.
Suicide has a lot of common causes across all genders, religion, sexualities. Some of them are-
Academic pressure- A common burden on all of us, to excel in our lives. But for some it is a reason to end their lives. Being labelled as a looser by family and peers for not be able to get that marks or rank, inculcates a permanent scar on many of us. Being compared to people who are better than us in studies just triggers our inferiority complex and makes us feel worthless and have nothing left to contribute to the society. Parents, peers, relatives, neighbours each and everyone plays a role in some form into pushing us to commit suicide. Trust me all have being compared, criticised, made of fun of because of our results. Trust me we all do well in life in some form or the other. Marks and rank dont matter in long run.
Body shaming- Social media and our family plays a big role in making us feel inferior and extra consciouss about our body. Models and actors have set fake beauty standard. We as common people hardly have the time and resource, to get as toned and muscular as the models we see on magazines or on the internet. We should realise that, its their livelihood to be upto certain body size and dimensions or less they wont get paid. Their main focus remains on maintaing a perfect body. We common people dont have that much time and resource to workout professionally, diet in their standards plus get a plastic surgery. Dont get me wrong I am all for healthy eatimg and fitness, but our aim should be to be increase our productivity not be aesthetically beautiful. Many a times I have seen people call a healthy guy or a girl fatty. They think its because of their unhealthy eating habits and can be rectified by diet and exercise. They fail to realise that weight gain or loss depends on a lot of factors and not just eating habits. Our inborn metabolism, our hormones our ethnicity plays a very vital role in our weight gain or loss. Conditions like PCOS( in woman), certain hormonal disorders affects our body shape badly on which we have no control. Body positivity doesnt mean have a 6pack or toned body but it means to eat healthy, exercise and love the body shape you have. Trust me beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.
Racism, sexism, castesism or any form of discrimination- Making fun and boycotting someone because of their colour, heritage, caste, sexuality etc has a tremendous potential for driving someone to end their lives. Behaving differently with someone just because they belong to different group or community, just makes the other person feel inferior, outcast, burden. We all have been responsible for using homophobic, racist, casteist slurs deliberately or casually. It might be a joke to us but for someone it can be a huge triggering factor which can lead to heinious consequences.
In our imperfect society, we all are expected to be perfect or else we are not accepted. Girls are expected to be fair, well mannered, virgin until married, soft spoken. They are even not allowed to dress according to their will. If we continue to pass stupid remarks on their dress, character, casually harrase and pass sexist remark, the situation wont improve. Even today in top schools and colleges girls are demeaned cause even today, even many well educated people think they belong only to kitchen.
For boys, growing up we always have been told to hide our emotions. The stupid phrase ‘Men dont cry’ is still taught to us. Bottling up our emotions day after day just keeps on adding salts to our wounds. If we are still afraid to share our emotions cause it wont look good as a boy, we are just harming ourselves day in and out. Boys and Men out their, let me tell you its ok to cry, its ok to vent out emotions, it doesnt make us less manly.
For non- binary people, they always have been taunted about their gender. Not everyone figures out their sexuality and gender very early and its ok to take our time to come out. But homophobic slurs and jokes on same sex couples and gender unspecified people, makes them believe they are abnormal and they are not meant for this world. Suicide rates are generally higher in queer folks than straight people because of this reason. If we are a little more considerate and oen minded to their plight, a lot of deaths can be prevented.
How to prevent suicides-
Well if we know any friend and family member going through any issues no matter how small it seems,we shouldnt ignore it. If we care about that person, we should take responsibility and have an non- judgemental open hearted conversations with them. We should hear them out and do out bit. We all cant do everything but we all can do something and it helps a lot. In this case being a non-judgemental hearer to their problems. We should not label someone, cause we dont know their past traumas, their emotional state. We all act in a certain way because of our experiences. My way of doing things and decisions might be different from someone else cause their experiences taught them differently. Judging someone’s reaction and decision based on our personal experiences is stupid. If we had being in their shoes, if we had faced what they faced since childhood, if we felt what they felt, we might well had made the same decision or reacted in that way. Jokes and friendly banters are always welcome but their is always a thin line between them and insulting someone. A joke for someone can very well be a triggering insult for someone else. If the other person isnt comfortable with the topic or the joke we better stop it right there without asking for any explaination. We all have to a safe space for someone. Practically we cant help everyone but we very well can help people close to us whom we care about. And for others even if we cant help, lets not make it worse for them.
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