I do not know what it's like to suffer from depression, to want to take my own life. I have never uttered the words "I want to kill myself" or "There's nothing left, give me a reason to live". I do not know what it feels like to believe there is no way out but death. I am lucky. I have friends and family I can talk too. I am mentally and physically healthy. Things such as these I take for granted, as do many Americans my age. Few of us stop to think about the 786,000+ lives that are lost each year to suicide around the world. We do not stop to think about why an individual would want to take his/her own life. And most important, we do not stop to think about how to prevent such tragedies from occurring.
More teenagers and young adults die from suicide each year than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza and chronic lung disease. Suicide among children ages 10 to 14 increased nearly 100 percent between 1981 and 1998. One youth commits suicide every two hours in the United States. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in 1997 that each year, some 786,000+ people commit suicide around the world. This is the equivalence of one suicide every forty seconds, somewhere in the world. By the year 2020, WHO estimates this number to rise to 1.5 million. In 1999, suicide was reported as being the 11th leading cause of death in the USA, and the 3rd leading cause of death among those 15 to 24 years old (after accidents and homicide), and the 4th leading cause of death among 10 to 14 year olds. 90% of suicides in America were by Caucasians; 72% were by white men. African-American women have the lowest suicide rate of any ethnicity in the US. The most shocking suicide rate I came across, was that in China. It is reported that 560 Chinese people a day commit suicide. This means that 43.6% of the world's suicides take place in China, despite the country only having some 21.
