This week is National Suicide Prevention Week.  Suicide is a growing issue among today's teens and society as a whole.  There is nothing more valuable than the human life.  God has created us for a purpose.  To throw our lives away is not only wrong to us but wrong to the one who gave us life.  We need to do whatever we can to raise awareness. 

http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

http://www.sprc.org/ link for the suicide prevention resource center

Some statistics on suicide and info on  suicide prevention...

• In the year 2000, approximately one million people died from suicide: a "global" mortality rate of 16 per 100,000, or one death every 40 seconds.
• In the last 45 years suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide. Suicide is now among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15-44 years (both sexes); these figures do not include suicide attempts up to 20 times more frequent than completed suicide.
• Suicide worldwide is estimated to represent 1.8% of the total global burden of disease in 1998, and 2.4% in countries with market and former socialist economies in 2020.
• Although traditionally suicide rates have been highest among the male elderly, rates among young people have been increasing to such an extent that they are now the group at highest risk in a third of countries, in both developed and developing countries.
• Mental disorders (particularly depression and substance abuse) are associated with more than 90% of all cases of suicide; however, suicide results from many complex sociocultural factors and is more likely to occur particularly during periods of socioeconomic, family and individual crisis situations (e.g. loss of a loved one, employment, honour).

• At least 100,000 adolescents commit suicide every year.

Effective interventions

• Strategies involving restriction of access to common methods of suicide have proved to be effective in reducing suicide rates; however, there is a need to adopt multi-sectoral approaches involving other levels of intervention and activities, such as crisis centres.
• There is compelling evidence indicating that adequate prevention and treatment of depression, alcohol and substance abuse can reduce suicide rates.
• School-based interventions involving crisis management, self-esteem enhancement and the development of coping skills and healthy decision making have been demostrated to reduce the risk of suicide among the youth.

Challenges and obstacles

• Worldwide, the prevention of suicide has not been adequately addressed due to basically a lack of awareness of suicide as a major problem and the taboo in many societies to discuss openly about it. In fact, only a few countries have included prevention of suicide among their priorities.
• Reliability of suicide certification and reporting is an issue in great need of improvement.
• It is clear that suicide prevention requires intervention also from outside the health sector and calls for an innovative, comprehensive multi-sectoral approach, including both health and non-health sectors, e.g. education, labour, police, justice, religion, law, politics, the media.

What we can do...

Reduce mortality and morbidity due to suicidal behaviours;

Break the taboo surrounding suicide;

Bring together national authorities and the public to overcome challenges.

www.twloha.com

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. 

My heart goes out to those who've lost, those we've lost or near lost. 

www.twloha.com

^checkit^