Still working to recover. Please don't edit quite yet.

suicide

From Anarchopedia
Revision as of 10:46, 28 September 2013 by 89.185.37.93 (Talk) (→‎Reasons for suicide)

Jump to: navigation, search

Suicide (Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of intentionally taking one's own life. The term "suicide" can also be used to refer to a person who has killed himself or herself. Considered by modern medicine to be a mental health issue, suicide may also be caused by psychological factors such as the difficulty of coping with depression or other mental disorders. It may also stem from social and cultural pressures. Nearly a million people worldwide die by suicide annually. While completed suicides are higher in men, women have higher rates for suicide attempts. Elderly males have the highest suicide rate, although rates for young adults have been increasing in recent years.[1]

Views toward suicide have varied in history and society. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism generally condemn suicide as a dishonorable act and some countries have made it a crime to attempt to kill oneself, the irony of these laws and the destruction of free will apparently lost aspects in these cases. In some cultures suicide may be accepted under some circumstances, such as Japanese committing seppuku for honor, suicide attacks, or the self-immolation of Buddhist monks as a form of protest. 

Hello! adcabcd interesting adcabcd site! I'm really like it! Very, very adcabcd good!

Very nice site! 

Hello! agdadda interesting agdadda site! I'm really like it! Very, very agdadda good!

Very nice site!

Impact of suicide

It is estimated that an average of six people are suicide "survivors" for each suicide that occurs in the United States.[2] In the context of suicide, the word "survivors" refers to the family and friends of the person who has died by suicide; this figure therefore does not represent the total number of people who may be affected. For example, the suicide of a child may leave the school and their entire community left to make sense of the act.

As with any death, family and friends of a suicide victim feel grief associated with loss. These suicide survivors are often overwhelmed with psychological trauma as well, depending on many factors associated with the event. This trauma can leave survivors feeling guilty, angry, remorseful, helpless, and confused. It can be especially difficult for survivors because many of their questions as to why the victim felt the need to take his or her own life are left unanswered. Moreover, survivors often feel that they have failed or that they should have intervened in some way. Given these complex sets of emotions associated with a loved one's suicide, survivors usually find it difficult to discuss the death with others, causing them to feel isolated from their own network of family and friends and often making them reluctant to form new relationships as well.[3]

"Survivor groups" can offer counseling and help bring many of the issues associated with suicide out into the open. They can also help survivors reach out to their own friends and family who may be feeling similarly and thus begin the healing process. In addition, counseling services and therapy can provide invaluable support to the bereaved. Some such groups can be found online, providing a forum for discussion amongst survivors of suicide (see Support Groups for Survivors section below).

Economic impact

Deaths and injuries from suicidal behavior represent $25 billion each year in direct costs, including health care services, funeral services, autopsies and investigations, and indirect costs like lost productivity.[4] [5]

These costs may be counterbalanced by economic gains. Expenditure on those who would have continued living is reduced, including pensions, social security, health care services for the mentally ill [6] as well as other normal budgetary expenditure per head of living population.

Views on suicide

Criminal

Main article: Legal views of suicide


In some jurisdictions, an act or failed act of suicide is considered to be a crime. Some places consider failure to be attempted murder, with the victim being oneself, and will prosecute such offenders for attempted murder.[unverified] More commonly, a surviving party member who assisted in the suicide attempt will face criminal charges.

In Brazil, suicide is not a crime, but willfully instigating or assisting in its completion is.[unverified] If the help is directed to a minor, the penalty is applied in its double and not considered as homicide. In Italy and Canada, instigating another to suicide is also a criminal offence.[unverified] In Singapore, assisting in the suicide of a mentally-handicapped person is a capital offense.

A tantō knife prepared for seppuku

Cultural

Main article: Cultural views of suicide


In the Warring States Period and the Edo period of Japan, samurai who disgraced their honor chose to end their own lives by seppuku, a method in which the samurai takes a sword and slices into his abdomen, causing a fatal injury. The cut is usually performed diagonally from the top corner of the samurai's writing hand, and has long been considered an honorable form of death (even when done to punish dishonor). Though such a wound would be fatal, seppuku was not always technically suicide, as the samurai's assistant (the kaishaku) would stand by to cut short any suffering by quickly administering decapitation, sometimes as soon as the first tiny incision into the abdomen was made.

Religious

Main article: Religious views of suicide

Suicide is considered a sin by most Christian groups, including the Catholic Church, based largely on the writings of influential Christian thinkers of the middle ages, such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Their arguments are based largely around the commandment, "thou shalt not kill" (made applicable under the New Covenant by Christ in Matthew 19:18), and the ideas that life is a gift given by God which should not be spurned, and that suicide is against the "natural order" and thus interferes with God's master plan for the world[1]. However, suicide was not considered a sin under the Byzantine Christian code of Justinian, for instance [2]. Counter-arguments include the following: that the sixth commandment is more accurately translated as "thou shalt not murder," not necessarily applying to the self; that taking one's own life no more violates God's plan than does curing a disease; and that a number of suicides by followers of God are recorded in the Bible with no dire condemnation[3].

Suicide is not allowed in the religion of Islam. Suicide by Muslim standards is a sign of disbelief in God.[4]

Debate over suicide

Main article: Philosophical views of suicide


Some see suicide as a legitimate matter of personal choice and a human right (colloquially known as the right to die movement), and maintain that no one should be forced to suffer against their will, particularly from conditions such as incurable disease, mental illness, and old age that have no possibility of improvement. Proponents of this view reject the belief that suicide is always irrational, arguing instead that it can be a valid, albeit drastic, last resort for those enduring major pain or trauma. This perspective is most popular in Continental Europe[5], where euthanasia and other such topics are commonly discussed in parliament, although it has a good deal of support in the United States as well.

A narrower segment of this group considers suicide something between a grave but condonable choice in some circumstances and a sacrosanct right for anyone (even a young and healthy person) who believes they have rationally and conscientiously come to the decision to end their own lives. Notable supporters of this school of thought include German pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer[6], and Scottish empiricist David Hume[7]. Adherents of this view often advocate the abrogation of statutes that restrict the liberties of people known to be suicidal, such as laws permitting their involuntary commitment to mental hospitals. Critics may argue that suicidal impulses are often products of mental illness rather than rational self-interest, and that because of the gravity and irreversibility of the decision to take one's life it is more prudent for society to err on the side of caution and at least delay the suicidal act.

See also

Lists

Further reading

Documents and periodicals

  • Frederick, C. J. Trends in Mental Health: Self-destructive Behavior Among Younger Age Groups. Rockville, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse. 1976. ED 132 782.
  • Lipsitz, J. S., Making It the Hard Way: Adolescents in the 1980s. Testimony presented to the Crisis Intervention Task Force of the House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families. 1983. ED 248 002.
  • McBrien, R. J. "Are You Thinking of Killing Yourself? Confronting Suicidal Thoughts." SCHOOL COUNSELOR 31 (1983): 75–82.
  • Ray, L. Y. "Adolescent Suicide." Personnel and Guidance Journal 62 (1983): 131-35.
  • Rosenkrantz, A. L. "A Note on Adolescent Suicide: Incidence, Dynamics and Some Suggestions for Treatment." Adolescence 13 (l978): 209–14.
  • Suicide Among School Age Youth. Albany, NY: The State Education Department of the University of the State of New York, 1984. ED 253 819.
  • Suicide and Attempted Suicide in Young People. Report on a Conference. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 1974. ED 162 204.
  • Teenagers in Crisis: Issues and Programs. Hearing Before the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families. House of Representatives Ninety-eighth Congress, First Session. Washington, DC: Congress of the U. S., October, 1983. ED 248 445.
  • Smith, R. M. Adolescent Suicide and Intervention in Perspective. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, Boston, MA, August, 1979. ED 184 017.

Nonfiction books

External links

General information

Suicide prevention

Views on suicide

Support groups

Support groups for survivors

This article contains content from Wikipedia. Current versions of the GNU FDL article Suicide on WP may contain information useful to the improvement of this article WP
  1. ↑ How can suicide be prevented?. URL accessed on 2007-04-13.
  2. ↑ http://www.suicidology.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=6
  3. ↑ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/suicide/info/
  4. ↑ Preventing suicide. URL accessed on 2007-04-13.
  5. ↑ The Cost of Suicide Mortality in New Brunswick, 1996. URL accessed on 2007-04-13.
  6. ↑ Yang B, Lester D. Recalculating the economic cost of suicide. Death studies, 2007 Apr;31(4):351-61
Retrieved from "http://eng.anarchopedia.org/index.php?title=suicide&oldid=56285"