This editorial represents the opinion of The Bona Venture staff
In 2010, one person died due to suicide every 13.7 minutes.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in America. While illnesses such as cancer and heart disease are physical ailments, the problems that lead to suicide are all mental. It’s hard to diagnose someone with a mental illness unless he or she is willing to talk about it.
It’s time to do something about it.
On the Notice Board from Wednesday, Sept. 18, students were notified of the Out of the Darkness Walk. The walk, held by the Cattaraugus County Suicide Prevention Coalition, will take place tomorrow.
All money raised will benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Half the money will stay in Western New York, while the rest will be used nationally to help with research, according to the Notice Board.
How many times a day do you hear a person say “I’m going to kill myself” over something simple, like having a lot of homework or because something didn’t work out the way they wanted it to? Suicide is something people joke about in passing, mainly because they are uneducated about it.
This walk is not just in support of those who have tried to kill themselves or in remembrance of those who already have; it’s to let the people who say or think the words “I’m going to kill myself” know that they are not alone.
Registration for the walk will begin at 9 a.m. at the Olean Intermediate Middle School track. The walk itself will begin at 10 a.m. and go until noon.
A suicide attempt is made every minute of every day, according to the Out of the Darkness Walk page on the AFSP website. If you do the math, it adds up to over 525,600 suicide attempts a year.
If you need extra motivation to take the walk, think about it this way: during the two hours it will take for the walk, more than 7,200 people will try to kill themselves.
If you can’t take the walk for yourself, walk in their honor. Walk because they felt so desperate, so without other options, that they tried to take their own life.
If that’s not motivation, than what is?
People die every day. Whether it’s from cancer, heart disease or old age, people die. It’s a fact of life that’s unavoidable. But death should not happen because someone feels so alone and so desperate that they see no other way than to take their own life.
Suicide isn’t something we can ignore until it goes away. In 2010, 38,364 people killed themselves. While the statistics from 2011 and 2012 are still not available, the numbers have been steadily rising since 2005, according to AFSP.
Suicide is a silent killer. It consumes a person’s mind until they decide that it’s their only choice, that there’s no other way to go.
We need to help people learn that there are other ways to cope with whatever their problem may be.
At St. Bonaventure, we try our very best to live by Franciscan values. What could be more Franciscan than taking a walk that could potentially help save lives?
