Warning: Do not read if articles about suicide are likely to provoke suicidal feelings. Contact your GP or call a helpline (Samaritans)
Over a million people die by suicide each year worldwide. That is one every 40 seconds. By the time you’ve got to the end of this blog post, 6 people will have committed suicide. The even worse statistic is that only 1 in 20 who attempt suicide, succeed. Every 2 seconds, somebody attempts suicide, that’s 120 people by the end of this blog post. 120 people that don’t see any reason to live.
Imagining having no reason to live is very difficult when you have everything to live for. Unfortunately many people that believe they have no reason to live; have exactly the same as you but they also have a mental health problem. 90% of suicides are linked to depression which is far more common than you could imagine. Suicide is one of those things that we put with cancer, heart attacks, car crashes. They are all something that will never happen to you or somebody close, they always happen to somebody else. Sometimes it is time to face reality and realise that 1 in 6000 people will die by suicide. Potentially 1 in 300 will attempt suicide. You probably have over 300 friends on Facebook. There might be 300 people that follow you on Twitter. You might be in a year group at school or university with almost 300 people in it. That isn’t many people.
Worldwide, somewhere between 10% and 14% of people have suicidal thoughts. That’s as much as 1 in 7 people. If you’re from the UK and you think that this can’t be right for places like this; 1 in 10 students at our universities have suicidal thoughts. That’s 1 in 10 that will admit to suicidal thoughts. You probably know a handful of them.
Little things make big differences. Both good and bad differences. Telling somebody that they’d be better off dead could have a far bigger impact than you ever thought it could. Telling somebody how much they mean to you, may just save their life.
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. So why not send a little message to somebody you think has been feeling down recently. Cheer them up, because you may just put that suicidal thought out of their mind.
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