Suicide Is Not Newsworthy

A young man threatens to kill himself in his home. Because it is heard that he may be in possession of firearms, a dozen law enforcement personnel surround his house and arrest him. He is sent to the hospital for assessment and later that day he is released. There is no mention in the newspaper about his cry for help and the local television station gives him a whopping 30-second spot. Because it's not news, certainly not the kind that anyone wants to know about. Nobody wants to hear about suicide. They want to read about snapping turtles that cause traffic jams or the best way to move a piano, but suicide......

Nah. Nobody wants to hear about that. And what they want to hear even less of is attempted suicide. Attempted suicide or non-fatal suicidal behavior is self-injury with the desire to end one's life that does not result in death as opposed to completed suicide, or the "act of taking one's own life.” Most people think that by pretending that attempted or completed suicide does not exist it will make the problem somehow go away. Got bad news for you Charlie. Suicide, whether brought on by post traumatic stress disorder or by plain old everyday depression is not going to go away just because you don't want to hear about it. It's a very real outcome of a very real illness that very real people suffer from.

Suicide is the seventh-most common cause of death among Canadian males, and tenth-highest among both sexes combined. According to Statistics Canada, among Canadians aged 15 to 24, suicide ranked second among the most common causes of death during 2003-2007 accounting for one-fifth of total mortality. The rate of suicide for all ages during the period 2000 - 2007 was 15 per 100,000 persons in Nova Scotia alone. According to recent articles in the Toronto Star, the Edmonton Sun, and the Alberta Daily Herald Tribune, the amount of suicides in the military was greater than the number of soldiers lost in Afghanistan.