Suicide Prevention

The Solution to Suicide

Suicide is the very definition of a silent killer.  Clinical depression and issues derived from poor mental health are the root of suicide.  “Suicide is connected to other forms of injury and violence. For example, people who have experienced violence, including child abuse, bullying, or sexual violence have a higher suicide risk” (Center for Disease Control, 1).  The rates of suicide in the United States have been on a steady climb for the past two decades.  “Suicide rates increased 37% between 2000-2018 and decreased 5% between 2018-2020. However, rates returned to their peak in 2022” (CDC, 1).  The suicide epidemic is widespread across the country and needs to be adressed and resolved.  Measures need to be taken not only to provide assistance and care for people with mental health issues but also prevent the problems from even arising in the future.  “It is estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (59.3 million in 2022; 23.1% of the U.S. adult population)” (Nation Institute of Mental Health, 1).

According to the CDC, one of the best ways to prevent a suicide attempt is to provide a protective environment to individuals struggling with their mental health or those suspected of having suicidal thoughts/idiation (“Preventing Suicide”).  One step of this process is creating a safe and accepting environment to all cultures and ethnicities.  This can allow individuals who struggle with suicide to feel more accepted and less like they are alone with no means of recovery.  A second aspect of suicide prevention is the removal of anything that can be used in a lethal way.  The primary avenues being firearms as well as prescription and over the counter medicines in large quantities. The argument about these preventative measures is that if an individual wants to end their life they will find a way to do it regardless of the environmental measures taken to prevent it. While this is technically true, attempting to provide an environment that makes it difficult to accomplish a suicide does decrease the individuals likelihood of going through with it (CDC, 1).  

Another solution would be to increase help seeking among suicidal or potentially suicidal individuals.  According to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center “teaching people to recognize when they need support—and helping them to find it—you can enable them to reduce their suicide risk” (1).  By educating individuals to recognize this problem, it allows them to seek help right when they need it without someone else having to guess or question them.  This also allows them to obtain help before it’s too late.  The SPRC also adds that “Self-help tools and outreach campaigns are examples of ways to lower an individual’s barriers to obtaining help, such as not knowing what services exist or believing that help won’t be effective.”  Overall it is simply more effective for the request for help to come directly from the person that needs it as opposed to a concerned third party.  However, it opens the question of whether or not the individual will even ask for help.  The current state of societal norms does make this question valid, but the process of encouraging individuals to come forward and seek help is the first step in mainstreaming this idea of seeking your own help for your problems without fear or judgment. 

Another pair of solutions for a suicidal individual are brief interventions and therapies.  Brief interventions have been the best method for individuals who are nearing the act of suicide and feel they are close to commiting it.  “Brief interventions have been shown to be effective at reducing risk and helping people live through high-risk periods” (AFSP, 1).  This offers at risk individuals alternative avenues to treat their mental illness instead of resorting to ending their life.  The second half of this solution would be therapies addressing the individual's illness and suicidal thoughts.  Therapies are one of the main avenues mental health experts and psychologists recommend for those dealing with mental health problems and thoughts of suicide and are used after brief interventions with high risk individuals (AFSP, 1).  Two of the most prominent therapy methods are dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and attachment based family therapy (ABFT).  “Dialectical Behavior Therapy, developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan, focuses on the interaction between the environment and basic biological functions that underlie emotion regulation and behavioral control” (AFSP, 1).  This form of therapy focuses on accepting and moving past problems as opposed to simply trying to solve them outright. The second therapy form “Attachment Based Family Therapy (ABFT), was developed by Dr. Guy Diamond for reducing suicide risk among suicidal adolescents and is a family treatment that seeks to improve communication, perspective taking and problem solving in families” (AFSP, 1).  This therapy form approaches the younger generation and uses their bonds with their family members as a way to help them.  By strengthening the bonds between parents and their children, psychologists can heighten their will to live and give them more mental stability.  This also provides the child with a stronger sense of self worth and promotes mental stability. 

Suicide is a social epidemic, devastating the citizens of the United States.  The steady climb of suicide rates in the past 20 years has continued and has not showed much sign of stopping.  The only way to combat this rise is to provide protective environments, improve help seeking, and provide therapy and brief interventions to those struggling with mental health and suicide.  Overall, the most effective combatant to suicide would be encouraging and promoting personal help seeking.  Allowing individuals to seek help for themselves and reach out to professionals when they feel ready will be the cornerstone in the fight to drop suicide rates.  This method is by far the most difficult to implement in large numbers.  However, it provides more upside and allows for future generations to continue helping themselves in the battle against mental illness.  This method provides the ability for the individuals to help themselves and dictate how they address their problems according to their own timeline. 

Works Cited

A Comprehensive Approach to Suicide Prevention – Suicide Prevention Resource Center. (n.d.). https://sprc.org/effective-prevention/comprehensive-approach

Mental illness. (n.d.). National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness

Preventing suicide. (2024, September 10). Suicide Prevention.  https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/prevention/

Therapies. (2023, July 11). American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. https://afsp.org/therapies/

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Project 2

Kafka and Suicide

Franz Kafka was a German writer born in the 19th century.  He wrote many short stories based on his own personal life experiences.  These stories highlighted feelings of unpleasantness, fright, confusion, and alienation.  These original and abnormal works accredited Kafka with his own genre, dubbed “Kafkaesque”.  The works of this genre fall perfectly in line with the emotions Kafka created with his writings.  His feelings of despair and hopelessness are highlighted in his story The Trial with the quote “It's often safer to be in chains than to be free”.  Based on the attitude of all his works, Kafka would understand how large of a problem the suicide epidemic is. He would relate to those struggling with mental health and depression and how these feelings are derived from their feelings of alienation from society as well as the confusion and hopelessness that troubles them in their everyday lives.  Kafka would however conclude that efforts to halt this epidemic would be impossible and that these are simply the struggles of life.

Franz Kafka had a very dark, depressed style of writing that would insinuate his struggles  with suicide and mental health were experienced first hand. Suicide would be something he saw as a true social epidemic.  For example, the Franz Kafka Museum noted that “From his early years, Franz Kafka suffered from a sense of physical interiority, a feeling that physically he was inadequately endowed for life” (Kafka 1).  Kafka faced many of the same challenges as those who are struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts in todays society.  As CNN’s Amarachi Orie writes, “Kafka struggled with anxiety, hopelessness and isolation throughout his life—feelings that both inspired and hindered his work” (Anderson 2).   Kafka wrote often about these feelings of despair and emptiness in his personal diary.  Kafka went so far as to write, “Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself” (Kafka 56).  In other entries of his diary he writes about the emptiness he feels even when surrounded by family.  Additionally, he describes his complete inability to coexist with other people.  Kafka exhibited symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation throughout his entire life, as evidenced in work.  These feelings of emptiness, despair, and hopelessness plagued the author constantly throughout nearly every stage of his life. 

Suicide is a detrimental action taken by those struggling to cope with their with their mental health issues and depressive feelings. “Most often, suicidal thoughts are the result of feeling like [one] can't cope when…faced with what seems to be an overwhelming life situation”(Mayo 1).  The symptoms of self hatred, self isolation, and lonliness were prevalent in Kafka's life and he often included these emotions of despair and hopelessness in his works.  “The Metamorphosis” is one story that reflects Kafka’s struggle in a very detailed view.  “One of the first casualties is communication. From behind the door of his room Gregor tries to explain his predicament. On the other side of the door are his family and the chief clerk of his firm, who has arrived at the house to ask why he is not at work”( Beveridge 2). The casualty and absence of communication is a prevalent sign of suicidal thoughts and depression. “Mental illness often results in a breakdown in communication. The sufferer finds it difficult to describe what is happening to them, while their relatives feel mystified. It is as if the mentally disturbed person is stranded in another world, whose language is not comprehensible to others” (Beveridge 2). This is clearly represented in “The Metamorphosis” as Gregor can’t communicate with his family after being transformed, and finds himself unable to show his family what has happened to him, nor explain that this new insect-like form is actually him.

The many elements of depression, such as suicidal ideation and inability to communicate, seemed to plague Kafka at the same time.  He touched on many of these themes in his personal diary.  “I didn’t want any new clothes at all; because if I had to look ugly anyway, I wanted to at least be comfortable. I let the awful clothes affect even my posture, walked around with my back bowed, my shoulders drooping, my hands and arms all over the place. I was afraid of mirrors, because they showed an inescapable ugliness” (Kafka Diary 48). This highlights Kafka’s true distaste for his physical appearance and his struggle to cope with it.  Kafka also visits the fact that he feels incapable of loving anyone. “I am fond of lovers but I cannot love, I am too far away, I am banished” (Kafka Diary 121). This exhibits Kafka’s true feelings that he is undeserving of love from anyone, and that he is truly alone and his continued feeling of despair and hopelessness. Additionally, Kafka displays the thought of his unhappiness as necessary to his life, believing it was meant for him and unavoidable.  “I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity” (Kafka Diary 268).  This is yet another key emotion in the mind of someone dealing with depression and suicidal ideation; the feeling that unhappiness is somehow meant to be felt, and thus is inescapable. 

The fact that suicide is a social epidemic would likely be agreed upon by Franz Kakfa.  His feeling of communicational death, hate for himself and his appearance, loneliness, and the thought that he cannot be loved are all characteristics of someone dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts.  These emotions and thoughts were clearly displayed in his vast diary entries as well as his short story “The Metamorphosis”.  Despite the author never fully revealing that he was depressed, his literary works as well as his troubled past dictate he was struggling with his mental health throughout the majority of his life.  Which means he would more than likely conclude that suicide is a detrimental epidemic sweeping across the world.

 

Works Cited

Anderson, Sonja. “An Ailing Franz Kafka Curses Writer’s Block in This Handwritten Letter to a Friend.” Smithsonian.Com, Smithsonian Institution, 6 June 2024, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-sick-franz-kafka-curses-writers-block-in-this-handwritten-letter-to-a-friend-180984471/. 

Beveridge, Allan. “Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: Advances in Psychiatric Treatment.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, 2 Jan. 2018, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-psychiatric-treatment/article/metamorphosis-by-franz-kafka/39FDF4BEB32897BD86DB6D842A9FC0D3. 

“The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1913 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.499492/page/n11/mode/2up. Accessed 18 Nov. 2024. 

“Physical and Mental Conditions and Their Causes.” Franz Kafka, 8 Mar. 2019, kafkamuseum.cz/en/franz-kafka/illnesses/physical-and-mental-conditions-and-their-cause

“Suicide and Suicidal Thoughts.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 19 July 2022, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/suicide/symptoms-causes/syc-20378048.

 

 

Reflective Essay

Comp Two

Composition two has evolved my writing and research skills immensely since the beginning of the semester.  Prior to taking this course, my writing capabilities were very one dimensional and lacked the characteristics to really create an acceptable college essay.  During high school, essays involving extensive research were nearly unheard of and I had very little experience with researching topics I was asked to write about.  This class came as a large wake up call for me from the very first essay. That first assignment forced me to evolve and allow my writing to improve as well as my ability to find and pick apart informed sources.  I eventually learned how to word and format my essay to the standards of college writing as opposed to the simple high school skills that worked for me in the past. Citing sources correctly was another crucial skill I learned from this course that was rather overlooked by my high school teachers.  Writing lengthy in-depth papers about topics that required research was overall the biggest challenge for me this semester.  Rhetorical analysis was by far the most challenging yet the most interesting topic I was asked to write about. It required a lot of work on my part.  However, the depth the assignment required to dive into the authors works and attitudes and make fact based theories on their thoughts on a subject was fascinating to me.  Overall this course required a lot of adaptation and dedication from me in order to perform to my best ability.  Although the course challenged me a lot at the beginning, it also taught me many essential writing skills along the way.  This course was by far my most difficult but I feel it allowed me to gain benefits from all the effort I put into it.

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