More than 29,000 people in the United States die by suicide every year. It is this country's 11th leading cause of death. Many people are uneducated about the real facts of suicide. Suicide is defined as intentional, self-inflicted death.
Most of the time people who commit suicide are suffering from depression or other types of depressive illnesses. When someone is depressed they do not think like a "normal" person. Their illness prevents them from looking forward to anything. A lot of times the person does not even know they are suffering from a treatable illness. They are overwhelmed with emotional and physical pain and eventually it becomes unbearable. Sometimes the person does not really want to die, but just end the suffering. The suicidal state of mind has been described as constricted, filled with a sense of self-hatred, rejection, and hopelessness.
So what causes a person to become depressed? It is actually a biological illnesses related to imbalance or disrupted brain chemistry. A combination of genetic, psychological and environmental factors all play a role in how and when a depressive illness may manifest itself. Depression can appear out of nowhere, when everything is going fine, at a time when there would be no reason for a person to feel depressed. There are many different types of depressive illnesses. Seasonal Affective Disorder, Unipolar Depression, Bipolar Illness or Manic Depression, Dysthymia, Cyclothymia, Atypical Depression, and Premenstrual Syndrome are a few of the illnesses. .
Different things can contribute to someone feeling suicidal. People can usually deal with isolated stressful or traumatic events and experiences reasonably well, but when there is an accumulation of such events over an extended period, normal coping strategies can be pushed to the limit. The stress or trauma generated by a given event will vary from person to person depending on their background and how they deal with that particular stressor.