Suicide. The word itself carries difficult-to-name feelings…pain, shame, disbelief, gnawing questions.
Professionals who deal with it in an ongoing way recently referred to it as an epidemic of hopelessness, a mental health crisis. Last year high school students admitted to persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness. Nearly 20% reported seriously considering suicide over the past year. Twice as many girls than as boys report mental health or suicidal thoughts. (This Week, April 15, 2022)
The causes are certainly complex, but it doesn’t take much serious observation to conclude that there is a sense in which children and youth are reflecting the anxiety and loneliness they see in their parents. The intense polarization we see everywhere has diminished, if not destroyed, community. As social beings we need relationship.
A case can also be made that the widespread secular/political devaluing of life is not only contributing to rising suicide attempts, but also the regular shootings that shock us in television reports.
The most shocking thing I have read and am pondering is the claim of Matthew Sleeth: “Our society is changing suicide from a moral wrong to a personal right. As this happens, the pain of those left behind after a suicide will be denied and downplayed, and we will begin to accept suicide as a universal human right.” (Hope Always: how to be a force for life in a culture of suicide, Tyndale, 2021, p. 33).
Somehow we must make real the Christian understanding of us persons being “in the image of God,” none being worthless, each being a unique, unrepeatable miracle of God, and God loving each of us as though we were the only person in the world to love.