This should have been written long ago. Alas, silence is the hardest thing to overcome when discussing suicide.
Last week, an 18-year-old male was found dead at Picnic Point'his death later deemed a suicide. Every year suicide claims the lives of about 30,000 Americans, making it the 11th leading cause of death. It is the second leading cause of death among people between the ages of 15 and 34.
Yet news coverage of suicide in this context is severely lacking. Homicides, car accidents and other horrible tragedies get the headlines. Suicide is now written about constantly in the context of terrorist acts, but barely a murmur is heard regarding suicide as a public health problem.
The Daily Cardinal and other news organizations should accept indictment on this account. Painfully little public discussion exists regarding suicide. When confronted with its occurrence, the most likely reaction is avoidance. No one wants to deal with it; no one wants to talk about it.
But suicide needs to be talked about; its warning signs need to be discussed; the networks for prevention and assistance need to be publicized.
Nationwide, suicide takes about twice as many lives as homicide. According to the Firearm Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, the disparity is even more severe in this state, with a suicide rate of 11 per 100,000 and a murder rate of 3.3 compared to nationwide rates of 10.3 and 5.9, respectively.
While suicide rates steadily declined in the 1990s overall, they remained steady among youth, teens and early 20s, and rose in the African American community. According to the Center for Disease Control, every day 86 Americans die from suicide and another 1,500 attempt to take their lives.
Suicide is particularly insidious because its dangers are so often ignored and because its occurrence is so often misinterpreted or sensationalized.
Suicide is typically reported or talked about as the end result of a single act or single set of circumstances. A good example here is the widespread coverage of Pat Flounders, the woman who committed suicide three months after her husband died in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York. The standard remark was that she was the latest victim of the terrorist attacks. But what many of the news articles failed to point out, as noted by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, is that Flounders had been suffering from a drinking problem and depression before Sept. 11 and that she refused treatment after her husband died.
According to the AFSP, more than \90 percent of suicide victims have a significant psychiatric illness at the time of their death. These are often undiagnosed, untreated or both."" Of all people suffering from depression, 15 percent of untreated cases result in suicide.
Often the most difficult thing to overcome is the stigma associated with disclosing suicidal thoughts. Feeling depressed should be viewed as a medical condition that can be treated and overcome. It is not a sign of weakness.
UW-Madison students should know that they are not alone. University Health Services maintains a 24-hour crisis intervention number at 265-6565 and has an array of counseling services. The Mental Health Center of Dane County's 24-hour suicide prevention line is 280-2600. The MHC also maintains a Survivors of Suicide counseling service.
