Suicide is the act of someone deliberately taking one's own life. Suicidal behavior is any deliberate action with potentially life-threatening consequences, such as shooting oneself with intention to kill oneself, taking a drug overdose intentionally, or deliberately crashing a car in hope to not be alive anymore.
Causes:
Suicidal thoughts and behaviors often occur in response to circumstances that are perceived or realized as overwhelming and intolerable, such as:
- Death of a loved one
- Family member who committed suicide (almost always someone who shared a common mood disorder)
- Emotional Trauma
- Guilty feelings
- Physical illness
- Financial problems
- Social Isolation
- Aging
There are many other causes for suicide. It is important to realize that anyone is at risk depending on their genetics and learned psychological well being. Something that causes one person to consider suicide would not be something to cause another person to consider suicide, but anyone could have something that could cause them to consider ending their life!
At a training recently, the topic of assisted suicide came up during a conversation about suicide. The facilitator had a "pearl" of wisdom for the group when discussing suicide vs. "assisted suicide" (or euthenasia:
ReplyDeleteEuthenasia is the ending of a death process....while Suicide is the ending of a life process. Very cool way to differentiate the two.