General Education Capstone
Introduction
Suicide is an issue that affects our country in a big way, especially with the increase of bullying incidents in schools around the United States. What can we do as a society to help this problem and recognize the signs? It is possible to notice the signs of someone thinking about committing suicide and there are different tips on how to help the person or even tell an adult about the situation. Suicide can be preventable if given the right knowledge
There Are so many reasons why any individual would choose this topic to write about such as: personal experiences, curiosity or just because they need to know the signs of suicide. I decided to write about suicide because it was something I witnessed more than I should have in high school. One incidence was when I was sitting in my algebra room when we all looked out our window and saw cops and ambulances in the woods next to our school. Apparently, a young man who had recently graduated from this school had hung himself in the woods over a cheating girlfriend whom he really loved. A second incidence is a girl who was a friend of my sister. Now, that group was always a little dramatic and dark because they were the Goths, but you never really took them seriously. She got teased a lot in high school and had a difficult relationship with her family at home. One day after school and while her parents were out she wrote her parents a letter, slit her wrists and lay in the bathtub until she finally passed. There was such a somber feeling at school even though only that small group of gothic teens really knew her. Nobody really saw any signs that she might have been thinking of suicide. Another small situation that I witnessed is when my sister started cutting herself. That’s when I was worried she might be considering it after my parent’s divorce and having to move to another school. However, now she is a celebrated pastry chef in a great relationship and I’m very proud of her. You never really know where one’s mind is unless you really pay attention to the signs.
Literature Review
This topic is heavily researched in the world of Psychology, because it is a Psychological issue. Experts spend a great deal of time trying to understand and prevent suicide. In 1990, J. Fawcett, W. Scheffner, L. Fogg, D. Clark, A. Michael, D. Hedeker, and R. Gibbons published an article in The American Journal of Psychiatry called “Time-related predictors of suicide in major affective disorder.” The studied followed 954 psychiatric patients over a period of ten years. The age of these patients varied from seventeen to seventy nine and all of them suffered from a major affective disorder, which also means a sickness that is related to major emotional issues. The researchers found nine indicators of suicide. There were six that seemed to accurately predict suicide within a year of happening—“panic attacks, severe psychic anxiety, diminished concentration, global insomnia, moderate alcohol abuse, and anhedonia” (Fawcett, et al., 1990). In other words, people who were extremely anxious to the point they had attacks, people who could not sleep or concentrate, people who used alcohol, which is known to be a depressant, and people who had a difficult time experiencing pleasure were all at a very high risk of suicide. With the other three indicators, people were likely to commit suicide after more than a year—“severe hopelessness, suicidal ideation, and history of previous suicide attempts” (Fawcett, et al., 1990). In other words, people who might not try to kill themselves right away but should be looked after might seem very hopeless, think or talk about suicide, or have attempted suicide in the past. After analyzing their results, the researchers tried to figure out how they would be able to prevent people from attempting or succeeding in suicide. They determined that ensuring an understanding of the behavior over a wide range of conditions could only happen if the way they collected information, or data, were standardaized. Also, they looked at which risk factors were the most extreme. They recommended that if any of the first six factors are demonstrated, the person should be helped immediately. Finally, they discovered that their study gave a predictable time period for suicide that would be really helpful in a clinical setting. The work of these researches made a lot of sense. Their study was published in a major journal, had a very large number of people who participated and took place over a very long period of time. The information is probably very reliable. The study can definitely be relied on. They did not seem to hold any biases and demonstrated a strong desire to truly understand suicide.
One major sign that a person might commit suicide are if that person is thinking or talking about it. In the field of Psychology, this is known as suicidal ideation. In 1979, A. Beck, M. Kovaks, and A. Weissman published an article in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology called “The Scale for Suicide Ideation.” This scale is a measurement tool used by professionals in Psychology to figure out how much a patient is thinking about suicide. If a person ranks high on the scale, they are thought to be preoccupied and are at a higher risk of killing themselves. The scale, or test, has 19 questions, or items that the researchers pulled from their research and experience in the field. Once they put together all 19 questions, they tested the scale by having other people take it. They gave it to 90 people who were hospitalized for psychological disorders and found that it had “high internal consistency and moderately high correlations with clinical ratings of suicidal risk and self-administered measures of self-harm” (Beck, et al., 1979). In other words, when they gave it to people who were mentally ill and were known to be potentially suicidal, the scale gave the same results for most or all of the people who took it. It also changed when a person became more or less depressed. Once they found that the test results were the same for people who were known to have these symptoms, the group tried to discover if the test measured what it is supposed to measure, which is also known as construct validity. They performed two different experiments and found that it was valid. Finally, the researchers found that there were three main factors that showed a strong relationship with suicide—“Active Suicidal Desire, Specific Plans for Suicide, and Passive Suicidal Desire” (Beck, et al., 1979). At first, I was not sure what to think of this article, because it is so old. I was sure that after 35 years, people would have been able to find better information. After reading it, though, it seems like the information they found is the same as the information I found on suicide today. I guess the way people think about suicide does not change. Other than that, I thought it was a good article because, like the first one, it was published in a major scholarly journal and has been cited many times. It seems like it has influenced other people’s research, which means it is trustworthy.
Because the other articles were all pretty old, I decided to look for articles that were a bit more recent. I found two that were very helpful. The first was published in 1997 in the British Journal of Psychiatry by E.C. Harris and B. Barraclough. It is called “Suicide as an outcome for mental disorders. A meta-analysis.” The two researchers decided to look at this information because of the strong relationship that mental illness has with suicide. A meta-analysis, they mention, is another way of saying that they compared the statistics of a large number of other studies. They called it a “statistical overview” (Harris and Barraclough, 1997). They looked through medical reports that were filed between 1966 and 1993 that involved people who died and had some kind of mental illness. They settled on 249 reports that were able to follow up and that did not lose their subjects. From these studies, they compared how much suicide was expected to whether the person actually committed suicide for each of the disorders the patients had. From this information, they were able to determine a predictable ratio for suicide rates, which they called a “standardized mortality ratio (SMR)” (Harris and Barraclough). There were a total of 44 disorders considered, 36 of which were related to a high potential for suicide. In the end, the researchers found that all mental disorders lead to an increased rate of suicide, which makes sense because if someone is mentally sick, it might be hard to interact with society. People whose illnesses made it hard for them to interact with society, or people with functional disorders, had the highest suicide rate, people who participated in substance abuse were in the middle and people with organic disorders, which are brain disorders that are not related to mental illness, had the lowest risk. I thought that this study was interesting and useful because it compared so much past research. By hand picking and using information from almost 250 reports over many years and conducted by many different researchers, their results are bound to be trustworthy. However, their breakdown was not really a surprise. Most of the other research mirrors what they found—mental illness leads to a higher rate of suicide. It does not seem like a large study would be necessary to come to this conclusion. Still, it is good to know that the belief most people have is upheld by the scientific community.
Because this last study did not provide as much insight as I was hoping for, I looked for another, more recent study that might help me understand suicide. The last scholarly article I found did not measure suicide rates. Instead, it looked at the personality traits that were connected with suicide ideation. Because the other studies show that suicide ideation is a strong risk factor for suicide, it seemed like these traits may also help people understand if these personality traits are also risked to suicide itself. The study was published in 2005 in Personality and Individual Differences by A. Chioqueta and T. Stiles and is called “Personality traits and the development of depression, hopelessness, and suicide ideation.” In the study, 219 university students were given three tests that were meant to discover what their personality traits, the NEO Personality Inventory Revised, how hopeless they were, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, and how often they think about suicide, or suicide ideation, the Hopkin’s Symptom Checklist-25. All of the tests they used have been through extensive testing themselves and are considered to be reliable sources by the researchers and in the Psychological community. Their findings were very interesting. People who were very neurotic and people who were very open were more likely to become depressed. People who were extraverted were less likely. High levels of neuroticism were also related to hopelessness and suicide ideation. Again, Extraverts were less likely to be hopeless. The individual traits that made up these larger traits were then analyzed. It was very surprising that openness led to depression, but that is what their study said. However, it also said that people who are open are more likely to take action, which takes them away from depression. It made sense that people who are neurotic might struggle. In the study, neuroticism was tied to anger and hostility, neither of which feel very good. Depression and self-consciousness, also considered a part of neuroticism, led to suicide ideation. On the flip side, the traits associated with being an extravert, assertiveness and positive emotions, showed that the person was less likely to think about suicide, which makes sense. All of these findings make a lot of sense and are very useful. The study involved a large number of people, which makes it seem really reliable. The findings are interesting and could be used to conduct more research. For example, it seems like neuroticism has many strong ties to negative mental states, so it would make sense to study it more. The study was not perfect, though. All of the participants were college students. It seems like this is a very narrow group to look at. Their lives are all very similar and that could impact the results of the study. In order to see whether or not these results are true of everyone in society, the same test should be given to people in many different age groups and with many different backgrounds. Still, the results of this study provide a good basis for this continuing research.
Suicide’s Impact at Home and in the World
Understanding how suicide happens is incredibly important for people all over the world. If it is studied academically, the knowledge is known to be dependable. People can trust it. If people can trust it, they can take this understanding, no matter where they live, and apply it so that, hopefully, suicide is no longer a problem. According to the American Foundation of suicide prevention (2014), in 2012 40,600 suicides were reported which means someone in this country died by suicide every 13 minutes. However, it’s not just white Americans in this country who are struggling with suicide. There are many other cultures and countries that are dealing with this, all because of the cultural differences and the expectations from the particular culture. In the United States, there seem to be high rates of suicide amongst Native Americans. “Cultures often come into conflict. For example, the conflict between the traditional Native American culture and the dominant American culture has often been viewed as providing a major role in precipitating Native American suicide (Pompili, Maurizio, et. Al., 2014), one article suggests. It seems to happen the most with young Native American people (Johnson and Tomren, 1999). Research shows the relationships between personality and suicide risk, so it seems that the way these cultures interact leads to suicide. It could be a matter of self-consciousness seen in the study conducted by Chioqueta and Stiles (2005) study. The lives of Native Americans has changed a great deal in the last 200 years. Where they used to be able to freely roam if they likes and practice their culture, many tribes only have small bits of land now. Perhaps they do not know how they fit into this new world, which may make them self-conscious and neurotic and lead to depression. Also, many of these tribes were badly mistreated by the people who colonized America. They may not feel they were able to express themselves, which may make them introverted, another trait linked to depression. Examining this problem form an academic standpoint keeps a person from getting stuck on how sad it is and lets them see how the problem might be solved.
Another group that has a high suicide rate worldwide is teenagers. Academic understanding helps us to see why. I watched a video (2013) that a director filmed about a person dealing with the thought of suicide called Requiem. In the video, a teenage boy has flashbacks of all the issues he’s struggling with in his life with his alcoholic mom, fighting with his best friend, difficulty with school and being bullied. He leaves goodbye letters and pictures for his mom and best friend and ends up at a remote part of town where he pulls out a gun. In those last few moments he rethinks everything he has gone through and decides to pull the trigger and end his pain. At the end you don’t see him actually shoot himself as the screen goes black but you can hear the piercing sound and automatically feel sadness for the person. The video was very well made, although it was without any dialogue, only actions by the actors. I believe what the author wanted to convey was just the immense pain the main character was feeling and he didn’t feel like the film needed dialogue to portray that. IT game viewers signs on what to look for if you think a loved one is thinking about suicide and to also cherish every moment you have with someone. Possibly the director could have experienced this traumatic event in his life and that’s why the video was so powerful. Looking at it with the academic knowledge, it seems that this person was suffering from depression, so it made sense that suicide became an issue. It might have been preventable if other people in the film knew the signs.
Preventing suicide is the main goal of academic knowledge of the issue. After discovering a blog that a woman had wrote about why she didn’t agree with guns being in her home because of losing two loved ones to suicide by gun. “Each year in the US, firearms are used in nearly 20,000 suicides, just over half of all suicides. By comparison, roughly 11,000 Americans are murdered with guns annually” (2014). In this blog the author discusses her experience with suicide and why she thinks we need to be more educated on gun control. Most of what she talks about is her opinion but she gives some statistics and reasons as to why she thinks having a gun in the house causes a greater risk for a loved one committing suicides or dangerous avoidable accidents can be prevented. Because she researched the topic so well, her information seems as trustworthy as the people who published their work in scholarly journals.
Suicide is also very common in the gay community. A news story (2012) we are all aware of is a young gay Rutgers student who was spied on through webcam by his roommate and supposed friend of his, who was a female. The webcam recorded him intimately hugging a male in his dorm room. The day after the roommate posted many things about Tyler being gay over social media. It was ultimately too much for the Rutgers student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge and killed himself from the torment of being gay and bullied. The two who had spied on Tyler later got charged with invasion of privacy. He had come out to his parents a week before he committed suicide and afterwards his parents said they saw no signs of even depression, but, he felt like he was not able to be himself, which is a form of introversion. Even though he did not seem sad, he could not be open. Had the people who spied on him been sensitive to this, they might not have posted the information and the boy might have survived. So, basically, you don’t always know when someone is that far down they can’t get themselves out. Many times people can be good at hiding their problems until they are overtaken by them and leave people to wonder “What did we miss?” The writer of this story didn’t seem very biased. Rather, he stated the facts of the case that were presented in court. I also believe it can be used to inspire people that bullying in any fashion is unacceptable.
Suicide is also common in the artistic community. Because of this, many artists try to develop an understanding of the academic findings regarding suicide. During a very interesting podcast (2014) on a poet’s experience with suicide, she discusses how to talk to people who are thinking about committing suicide. Jennifer Hecht candidly exposes how she had some dark times in her life that caused her to consider suicide. After that many of her close friends began committing suicide in a short period of time and this really affected her in many ways. It caused her to see how people on the other side of suicide feel when a loved one ends their life so it inspired her to change her life and her thinking in a big way. Hecht also talks about how turning to religion doesn’t always help someone who is seriously depressed and considering ending their lives. Hecht ended up writing a book on her experiences of suicide and changed many victim’s lives on both sides. I do believe that this podcast is hugely biased, but it explains her experiences with suicide which I think gives her a huge platform on talking to people about how suicide affects not only the individual but their loved ones.
I believe that suicide will seriously affect communities all over the world. This epidemic will make us stop and realize that there are many things we can do to make sure this is taken seriously. For example, schools are talking more about how bullying can affect someone and cause them to take drastic measures to make sure their pain stops permanently. I also think it has given us more tips on what to look for and even many support groups have started for people who have had experiences with this.
When people think about suicide, most often they think about the topic I’ve been discussing this whole entire paper which is teen suicide in regards to bullying and adolescent stress. However, another topic when it comes to suicide is soldiers enduring PTSD when they arrive home. PTSD is a type of anxiety disorder after living a traumatic event or natural disaster. People with this disorder are at an increased risk for suicide. Many people try to figure out why this is happening and how the soldiers are feeling. A scientific study was done to try to come to some answer of why this was happening. “Although Guerra and Calhoun (2011) identified the numbing cluster as the likely source of the PTSD-SI relationship, an even more detailed analysis at the individual symptom level may be warranted. At the cluster level the PTSD-SI relationship may be primarily attributable to numbing, but it may be specifically attributable to individual symptoms within the numbing cluster, particularly loss of interest (Criterion C4), detachment/estrangement (C5), and restricted affect (C6), which are considered the core symptoms of numbing” (Davis, Witte, Weathers, 2014). There are 2.3 million American veterans suffering from PTSD after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and over half of those people don’t seek treatment. I read an article (2014) about an Army vet who became so depressed that he start shooting Heroin and became very addicted (Brennan, 2014). He spent almost 30 months overseas as an infantryman. “The local dealers all knew he was good for the cash, because each month the government deposited a disability payment of almost $4,000 into Jarek's bank account. As he liked to joke, he was PTSD: Paid Till Suicide or Death” (Brennan, 2014). The reason I became so interested is because I noticed he was from Fort Drum, which is right where I live and my husband is currently an infantryman who lives there. He has never been deployed but I’m concerned that one day he will have to leave me and our family. I’m also worried about the aftereffects of the war he will be fighting in. Will he come back different? How do I need to react or help him? Now back to the article I mentioned in the beginning; Jarek mentioned how Veterans are given so many pain killers to help relieve their suffering from their injuries nut really it leads to heavier and more addicting substances that can and will kill them or make them want to kill themselves. “People with PTSD have "an ordinary reaction to an abnormal event. It's a high-impact event that doesn't fit within normal ordinary life events — it breaks apart their view of the world," Seif explains. "The three feelings characterized by PTSD are guilt, anxiety, and anger” (Rodriguez, 2014).
Active Citizenship
Becoming an active citizen is a sure way to prevent suicide. It would arm people in all of the communities with high levels with the knowledge, understanding and perspective that will help preven suicide. According to Psychology Today (ND), there are six reasons people attempt or succeed in committing suicide which are: Depression, psychotic issues, out of impulse, crying out for someone to help them, because of physical illnesses, and because they have made a serious mistake that they can’t live within their lives. Suicide is preventable if loved ones know the signs and are supportive and loving individuals in the life of the one considering suicide. Learning to understand the signs and having the courage to take action when they arise helps a person become an active citizen. It also helps a person become more sensitive, so that the situation that happened at Rutgers is not repeated. Often times bullying, depression, and broken relationships can be the cause of this devastating situation and it can hurt many people. Many of my resources include statistics but also people who have had experience with suicide personally or through other relationships. There are also many sources on the internet that provide useful steps for preventing suicide, such as an article published by JAMA. All of this information can be used by the general public as well as doctors. Be aware of the consequences of your actions and always tell an adult if you have suspicions about a loved one because you can be the person who saves someone’s life.
Resources
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. 2014. Understanding and preventing suicide
through research, education, and advocacy. Retrieved from https://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures
Beck, A., Kovacs, M., & Weissman, A. (1979). Assessment Of Suicidal Intention: The Scale For Suicide Ideation. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 47(2), 343-352.
Brennan, N. 2014. Vice News. "I'm PTSD — Paid Till Suicide or Death". Retrieved from
https://news.vice.com/article/im-ptsd-paid-till-suicide-or-death
Chioqueta, A., & Stiles, T. (2005). Personality Traits And The Development Of Depression, Hopelessness, And Suicide Ideation. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 1283-1291.
Davis M, Witte T, Weathers F. (2014) Posttraumatic stress disorder and suicidal ideation: The
role of specific symptoms within the framework of the interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/eds/detail/detail?sid=dd14f556-e629-4b84-8614-da603cbd2e62%40sessionmgr198&vid=2&hid=117&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=pdh&AN=2013-35556-001
Fawcett, J., Scheffner, W., Fogg, L., Clark, D., Young, M., Hedeker, D., & Gibbons, R. (1990). Time-related predictors of suicide in major affective disorder. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 147(9), 1189-1194.
Harris, E., & Barraclough, B. (1997). Suicide As An Outcome For Mental Disorders. A Meta-analysis. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 170, 205-228.
Hecht, J. 2014. Suicide, and Hope for Our Future Selves. Retrieved from
http://www.onbeing.org/program/jennifer-michael-hecht-hope-for-our-future-selves/20140327/audio?embed=1
Johnson, T., & Tomren, H. (1999). Helplessness, Hopelessness, and Despair: Identifying the Precursors to Indian Youth Suicide. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 23(3), 287-301.
Lickerman, A. ND. Psychology Today. The Six Reasons People Attempt Suicide. Retrieved
Mann, J. (2005). Suicide Prevention Strategies: A Systematic Review. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 294(16), 2064-2074.
Navajo Joe Films. 2014. Requiem: A short Film About Suicide. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-eOr0LhrGo
Parker, I. 2002. The New Yorker. The Story of a Suicide. Retrieved from
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/02/06/the-story-of-a-suicide
Paugh, D. 2014. Alliance of Hope for Suicide Survivors. Research: What Makes us Safer in
our Homes? Retrieved from http://www.allianceofhope.org/blog_/
Pompili, Maurizio, ed. Suicide : A Global Perspective. SAIF Zone, Sharjah, UAE: Bentham
Science Publishers, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 22 November 2014.
