Our Suicide Epidemic: Those suffering mentally are more important to us than they realize

Start by saying they're needed/their life has real purpose. I’ve heard the breakthrough/sense of relief on the phone. It helps immensely for the words to come from someone who's been there personally.

Summary

Not too long ago, our local regional mainstream newspaper, which, of course, is actually part of a national media conglomerate, published an Editorial that was a shameful display of gaslighting. It linked tired political points, arguing that climate change was somehow the driver of our childhood mental health crisis. Sorry, but there is no epidemic of kids leaving suicide notes lamenting the inability of humanity from keeping the globe from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius! The Editorial was correct to mention Social Media as a problem area for mental health.

A key issue not mentioned in the lazy editorial on mental health is related to family structure. Specifically, given the number of children dealing with divorce, an exacerbating area to our childhood mental health crisis that is completely under the radar is negligence in the Family Court system, which has a shocking amount of capacity to destroy families and the mental wellbeing of children. Every single entity associated with the Court System is willfully ignorant on growing problems such as Coercive Control. In addition to passing Coercive Control-related Bills, much greater sunshine is needed in general regarding the Court system. Unacceptable levels of opaqueness is not limited to the Statehouse.

At a deeper level, though, the over-medicated status-quo path is not working and in the long-run, making things worse. We as a society are eroding any sense of fundamental stability for children, whether it be obvious issues such as family, or smaller, but still impactful ways such as erasing long-standing tenets of language and communication. The complete takeover of our lives by the soulless bureaucratic corporate mentality, which includes the close monitoring of absolutely everything we do. Not being allowed to express emotions such as anger in a healthy way because of helicopter-style responses to all things. Loss of wonder, purpose, meaning of life (why am I here/why bother?). The inability to come to terms with personal trauma. These are the deeper trends that need to be explored further.

When you have a culture that constantly props up the fear gauge, guess what, you will produce anxiousness and depression. If you view kids as weak and broken victims, you will manifest broken, anxious, and depressed kids. This goes for adults as well. We are living in an age of all victimhood all the time.

Yes, let’s acknowledge that there are things to be fearful about and the impact that personal trauma, both large and small can have (and yes even small trauma can manifest in negative ways to our health if ignored and not understood) but let’s view these traumatic and fearful things with a mindset of simple curiosity about why they exist, learn to recognize and acknowledge them in our lives, and then emphasize overcoming with strength, instead of solidifying the victim mentality.

Related, there was a letter-to-the editor in the same paper from the President of a well-meaning non-profit organization from a wealthy community discussing child abuse that had a clear tinge of elitism, insinuating child abuse as a problem associated with lower income households and members of society. I found the overall letter to be well meaning, yet clearly a very outdated, limited, and elitist way to view child abuse.

The letter feeds into a stereotype that allows more well-to-do middle- and upper-income segments of society to “other” child abuse as something that is principally a problem with more lower income households and communities. Many nonprofits and attorneys and social workers who want to help in the area of mental abuse of children are not really able to provide real assistance because the grant money they receive directs the type of abuse they must focus on, which is often too narrowly focused only on physical abuse.

There is a huge problem of mental coercive control type of child abuse seen throughout middle- and upper-income households and communities in which a child is treated like a pawn by a narcissistic-type parent/caretaker. The nonstop gaslighting the child endures for years is extremely damaging, but this type of abuse is completely under the radar of institutions that are charged with helping children, including the family court system. This issue is tied in with the skyrocketing cases of anxiety, depression, and suicide that we are seeing with young people.

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A Personal Journey

If you’ve never been there personally, you have no idea. There is no way to truly understand from the outside looking in. That old saying of not wishing for something even on your worst enemy holds true in this case. Per usual, establishment thinking, and the medical-industrial complex is completely missing the mark on our societal plague of depression and suicide.

Our society is sick. Depression rates are skyrocketing. Substance abuse is skyrocketing. Alcohol abuse is skyrocketing. Prescription medication use is skyrocketing. Diabetes is skyrocketing. Autism-related disorders are skyrocketing. Obesity is skyrocketing. Infertility rates are skyrocketing. Cancer rates are skyrocketing. Allergies are skyrocketing. Auto-immune disorders are skyrocketing. And, yes, suicide rates are skyrocketing. Not only that, they are rising especially fast for young people, although this is a problem across all age groups.

Honestly, what is a bigger indicator that something is seriously off when we have scores of people taking their own life? How bad do things have to get until collectively we finally say enough is enough and that we need to find alternative solutions? What could possibly be a sadder condition than the absolute fact that both actual suicides, as well as suicide attempts are shooting much higher? Here is just one statistic out of a laundry list of alarming facts:

According to the National Center for Health Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate of young people aged 10 to 24 increased by 56 percent in ten years ending in 2017! Things began to level off and progress began to be made to lower the rate, but then, of course, the disastrous COVID lockdowns were implemented and things trended back up.

These trends point out unmistakably that a vast segment of our population is screaming for real help but has not been able to receive it through mainstream thought. There is a completely unacceptable level of quiet suffering going on out there.

So, what is the completely inadequate response to all of this from our leaders and people in charge? The usual, “more research is needed to be done” to figure out what is going on, as well as vowing to make sure more people have access to the standard treatment options available and provided by the establishment. Also, we are starting to see more and more of these designated “days to talk openly about mental health,” which are now popular in corporate offices. I have one overriding response to all of this…. FUCK YOU!! The plans and solutions touted are essentially the same old, same old, not only for the suicide epidemic but all the other health problems listed above—more research and more access to the same cold, money-driven and corrupt health care system.

The standard response to all our ills is at the surface level. The typical medical excuse for a patient dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts is that there is a chemical imbalance in the patient’s head. Wow, how convenient because that makes it all too easy to focus mainly on medication and be able to treat the issue as some sort of isolated issue. Nobody asks why there is chemical imbalance in the first place and why suddenly so many more people are having chemical imbalance issues.

If you are already at the end of the rope and in need of serious help, yes, please take the medication to help you get through and visit the standard therapists offered. However, medication is just a band-aid solution and does not go to the root of why there is depression in the first place. Our medical establishment has no ability to actually reverse the trend; it can just help people manage the pain.

As individuals and collectively as a society, we have lost our purpose. What is the point of life and why are we here on earth? The value of humans in this sense is being steadily eroded. In many ways, life in America decades ago was harder than it is now. However, it seems we had a stronger sense of ourselves as individuals and as a nation. Subconsciously, many people realize we have been sold a bill of goods. Why bother working hard and getting an education simply to become a cog in the machine that will enrich some distant and undefined ideal? Why bother trying anything when every single action taken will be micromanaged and critiqued by the helicopter-style societal philosophy that has taken over.

We now have a laser-driven culture that is looking to “catch everyone” and stifle any sort of real freedoms for youngsters and adults alike. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide to just “be” in modern society. The walls are closing in at every turn and our psyches are collectively rebelling in a multitude of ways. For some people, it’s suicidal thoughts. For others, its uncontrolled eating. Still others, it may be alcohol abuse, or more frequently now, it is scapegoating other groups of people. The connection is all the same; we are all looking around and dazed at how cold and distant our society has become. It is so hard now to find true feeling and others with a desire to really understand on a deeper level. The response to every problem now is what you would expect from a robot-like society—a sanitized, sterile, and clinical-like dissection of a problem that gets treated like an isolated incident. The supposed solutions make things worse, as the impacted individual is suddenly crashed by the overbearing system that wants to bring in the professional army of family doctors, specialists, therapists, piles of medication, lawyer-backed bureaucrats, etc.

When you are in the thick of severe depression, your mind and psyche essentially become overwhelmed and shuts down. Your sense of purpose in life gets completely lost. You see no hope for anyone understanding, no hope for life getting better, and you dread the current path you are on. You can physically feel that pilot light in your gut that drives and sustains you blow out. As a result of the light extinguishing, you feel completely hollow inside.

The vacuum created allows negative forces to completely take over your brain. An extreme form of self-critiquing is 100% in charge of your thoughts. The best way to describe it is a broken record player that no one can get to and fix. The volume is on high and plays the same recording repeatedly all day long, every waking moment of the depressed individual. The record that is playing repeatedly in the person’s head is a collection of the most negative thoughts imaginable that the person has ever felt about themselves or heard from others about them throughout their lives. The recording won’t stop, as the bad forces are in complete control of the person’s mind. From the moment the person wakes up to the moment they fall asleep, that awful recording is playing and is the only thing that person can think about. It is absolute psychological torture and for some it gets to the point that they can’t take the torture anymore. All you want is for that recording to stop but there is no way to get to the record player to turn it off, so it keeps on playing all day every day. Sleep is the only temporary respite.

The best advice that I’ve been able to give people who are dealing with depression is to start by saying that they are needed. Their life has real purpose. I’ve heard the honest breakthrough and sense of relief on the other side of the phone. It is the truth. It helps immensely for the words to come from someone who has been there personally.

Life is precious, especially for those that are suffering from mental illness. We need to get to them from a place of deep, sincere love. Society desperately needs those that are suffering mentally to be able to heal because they will become the leaders at the forefront guiding our society for the better. This in a nutshell is my main message. Give people a real reason to want to carry on. In other words, we need to strengthen that pilot light in our collective gut that creates true passion for life. Remind those suffering from mental difficulties how much they are truly needed to make the world a better place. Those suffering from mental illness are more important to us than they realize.

Younger people are especially vulnerable to our now overbearing society because they still have a natural sense of wonder and have the desire and ability to be in more of a positive, dream-like trance with our natural surroundings. We are rapidly taking away this ability for youngsters to get away, explore on their own (especially in nature), without the constant supervision of the adult world. This is especially true now with the omnipresence of social media. We are trying to treat kids as little versions of adults. The nonstop programming of supervised activities all day long provides no real freedom for kids and no ability for children to explore and understand and develop their true selves. The cold calculated adult world is rapidly crashing the innocent and dream-like world of kids with devastating consequences.

We need to remember there is a purpose to life beyond getting a degree and working at a faceless company for decades. We need to bring back the concept of trust big time. Kids need to be given real breathing space, which is become harder and harder in our modern 24-7 social-media culture. There is really no escape for anyone, and people are feeling it deep inside their psyche. It will require an extremely large pushback by many to create the extra breathing space we all need.

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A Prayer

Dear Sun Crystal

By Jillian Semesnyei

When the path before me is dark as night, you are the ever-burning torch that lights the way.

When marauders are banging at my iron gate, you are the lock that keeps my boundaries safe.

When my pilot light flickers, on its last breath, you are the matchstick that helps reignite.

When I am down and puddled in a heap, you are the guided hand upon my back, that raises me to my feet.

When my lungs become full of ash and soot, you cleanse my breaths and clear the air.

When I have lost my direction and faith, you hand me the map that reminds me to follow my unencumbered heart, and not my confused mind. For it is you who has journeyed with me-day in and day out, my seasoned traveler. It is you whom I want to express gratitude. It is you whom I want to thank.

Thank you, Sun Crystal, for the chance to shape my own destiny and the path of humanity. It is you that I am forever grateful for.