I would like to start this speech by asking what you think of suicide. Has it ever been an option to deal with your struggles in life? Have you ever thought about leaving this world because you don’t think it understands you? Have you ever imagined yourself cutting a vein, jumping off from a 20-storey building, overdosing yourself with drugs or simply just stop breathing? I mean, seriously, have you?
According to the statistics conducted by the World Health Organization, one person commits suicide every 40 seconds counting to millions of suicide deaths at the end of the year.
That is why, it is considered as one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Furthermore, suicide rates have increased to 40% from the last 50 years (.
So, why do people commit suicide? Kurt Cobain said it was drugs. Vincent Van Gogh said it was the feeling of worthlessness. Virginia Woolf said it was mental illness. Marilyn Monroe said nothing. Nonetheless, most suicides are committed by highly-creative people.
Does this mean passion in music, art and literature can drive people to their deaths? Absolutely not!
There are different causes of suicides. According to Wikipedia, the common causes of suicides are obviously mental disorders, suffering, unrequited love, stress, guilt, self-sacrifice, catastrophic injuries, financial loss, loneliness, drugs, so on and so forth. However, there can be a lot of reasons behind a suicide attempt of a person. One of the sad truths is most of the time, their reasons are incomprehensible.
Famous people who have committed suicide include Vincent Van Gogh, a mentally disturbed Dutch painter who shot himself in the chest; Kurt Cobain, lead vocalist of Nirvana who was believed to have died due to drug overdose; Virginia Woolf, a feminist writer who drowned herself in a river near their house; Sylvia Plath, a notable poet who gassed herself in a microwave oven while her children were sleeping on the other room.
Some people take their lives for heroic causes. For example, Mahatma Gandhi protested against the war between the Hindus and Muslim by means of starving himself to death which was successfully stopped before he died. In Japan during World War II, soldiers kill themselves first rather than falling in the hands of the Nazis. Moreover, Japanese pilots also volunteered to sacrifice their lives by crashing their aircrafts to an enemy’s base.
Indeed, people have different views about life. Some even denounce life and believe there is a much better world after it. We cannot always blame mental disorders as the cause of suicide rates. Highly creative people can be sane and appreciative of their life. No matter how troublesome life is, suicide is not always an option to solve problems. Escaping it would only produce more for the ones left behind.
Suicide may have been one of the most famous resorts in escaping a problem or a life that is believed to be not worth living. However, environment can also affect a person who is tempted to it. If only we can all be sensitive to the people around us, sometimes a simple smile and good conversation can save someone’s life.
Works Cited
Suicide. Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 21 October 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide
Suicide. (2017, Apr 18). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/paper-on-essay-suicide/