Greg Essman
English 101 Research Paper
Have you ever felt like taking your own life and just throwing it all away? No matter how nice a person’s life is, there are often times where a person feels overcome by feelings of disrepair, doubt and hopelessness. The majority of people either push these feelings aside or cope with them, and the feelings may disappear. For others these emotions never seem to fade away and an intense negative feelings continually overwhelm their lives and lead them to believe there is no way to escape or cope with the problems at hand. Because of this, they turn to suicide, they see death as the only solution to their problems. Suicide is a problem that affects all people, in every age group, from every background, in every social class, and should not be taken lightly. Due to the graveness of the issue and its detrimental effects, all people are socially obligated to help prevent suicide at all costs. Suicide is defined as the act or an instance of intentionally killing oneself.
In the United States alone, an average of 29,350 people commits suicide each year this equals to approximately 80 people a day or one person every 18 minutes. Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States and the 3rd leading cause of death between the ages of 15 and 24 (Dealing with Depression). Although the overall rate of suicide has dropped in recent years, teen suicide has increased. Elderly people have the highest rate of completed suicides and about 15 elderly people complete this act each day. Women are three times more likely to attempt suicide, but men are four times more likely to actually complete it and more than half of all suicides are completed with firearms. (American Association of Suicidology, 1999 Summary Data)Some people ask why a person would choose such a permanent option. Risk factors can be identified as events in a person’s life that leads them to begin contemplating suicide. Some of the most common risk factors...