The Global Scale of Suicide

 
There are lies
There are damned lies
And there are statistics

We live in an age of instant communication in which we are endlessly bombarded by official statistics. For a variety of reasons not all of these statistics give a true picture. Suicide is one extremely important and critical issue which is misrepresented by official statistics.

One example being the often quoted 'statistic' that 'only one-in-six suicides leave a suicide note'.

Well, given that (for a wide variety of reasons) the actual number of suicides is both unknown and unknowable; how can anyone conclude that only one-in-six leave a suicide note?

Clearly such statistics are a nonsense.

The only true statistic is that 100% of us do not know (nor can know), how many of us are actually taking our own lives.

Fortunately in contrast to statistics we have truths.

One significant but simple truth is that Suicide is a global killer, and as such is a potential threat and danger to every individual and family upon our planet. Despite this, we appear determined to ignore the very existence of one of our own biggest killers.

 

It seems that rather than face the shocking truth that suicide is a very real threat to each and every one of us we prefer to believe that by ignoring It - It will go away.  It won't !!! ... and it's madness to believe that it will.  Has our entire species gone into denial.

 

This 'bury our heads in the sand' approach is much worse than a nonsense.

 

Nonsenses don't normally kill people on such a vast scale -  normally.

 

But our ostrich-like avoidance of any unacceptable truth is typical of our confusion, ignorance and fear surrounding issues such as self-harm and suicide.

 

The problem could be that Suicide does not share the same high visibility profile as other global killers such as AIDS, Heart Disease and Cancer.  Their high visibility profiles serve to orchestrate positive global action against the conditions concerned.

 

Suicide does not.

 

In this respect, suicide truly stands alone.  

 

However, it is vital that we all understand that...

  • Each of our deaths by suicide is preventable.
  • We are 'curable' which is to say that we can, and do recover from a suicidal crisis.
  • Depression (the main cause of suicide) is itself 'treatable' and we can, and do recover from depression.
Having said that, the sooner that we, our religions, societies and governments, accept that suicide is a reality, which is killing large numbers of us in ever increasing numbers. The sooner we can start addressing ‘the problem’ - and then eradicating ‘the problem’, as the mature and responsible species we like to tell ourselves that we are.