Suicide Awareness

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Understanding Suicide

About 30,000 people reportedly kill themselves each year in the United States.

People who attempt suicide are often trying to get away from a life situation that seems impossible to deal with.

Many who make a suicide attempt are seeking relief from:
Bad thoughts or feelings
-Feeling ashamed, guilty, or like a burden to others
-Feeling like a victim
-Feelings of rejection, loss, or
-loneliness

Suicidal behaviors may be triggered by a situation or event that the person views as overwhelming, such as:
-Aging (the elderly have the highest rate of suicide)
-Death of a loved one
-Dependence on alcohol or other drug
-Emotional trauma
-Serious physical illness
-Unemployment or financial problems

Risk factors or triggers for suicide in adolescents include:
-Access to firearms
-Family member who committed suicide (almost always someone who shared a common mood disorder)
-History of deliberate self-harm
-History of neglect or abuse
-Living in communities where there have been recent outbreaks of suicide in young people
-Romantic breakup

Posted in: Class Work, Web Narratives

Keep Going: A Look at Growing Old

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At 96, Sherman Price is Russellville, Kentucky’s self-proclaimed “oldest citizen.” He was born on the day that WWI began, and he was 5 years old when it ended. He was a teenager during the Great Depression and he remembers that his family was among the first in their neighborhood to buy a radio.

“I used to be real backwards, bashful, you know? But after I got over that I went the other way and I can go up to anyone that I want to and go to talking to them and it don’t bother me a bit.”

Price is a greeter at his church, and a farmer who still raises horses and angus calves. He says that he believes that having a purpose every day in his work is what has kept him going and that the only thing he worries about when he dies is that his livestock won’t be cared for.

 

Posted in: Class Work, Web Narratives

The Life and Lies of Elizabeth St. John

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Sara John is a self proclaimed “bookworm” who uses reading and writing as an outlet to escape the reality of her parents not living together. Because of the difficulties at home, Sara said, she has put up a wall to keep people out, so when she is writing she can truly be herself without any fear of being judged. This is a story of the struggles of a little girl growing up with the absence of a father and how she deals with issues that it involves.

Posted in: Class Work, Student Work, Web Narratives