This commentary is a response to “Culture too eager to glorify suicide” by Alan Dennis, which ran in The Daily Cougar on Friday.
There is little evidence to support Mr. Dennis’ opinion that recent teen suicides are driven by either the adoration or imitation of more prominent suicides.
To suggest so trivializes the real and perceived suffering that underlies suicidal tendencies.
An individual’s decision to end their life is an internal one, driven by external factors that induce some combination of depression, hopelessness, contempt for others and fear.
Not all individuals respond to these feelings by killing themselves, which also indicates that neurobiology plays a determining role.
The act of suicide is committed while an individual is focused on their own immediate pain and future relief from their condition.
As such, society’s so-called “glorification” of suicide has little if any influence.
It is more appropriate to implicate an increased disregard for the emotional well-being of others that allows groups of people to bully and belittle another individual to the point where he or she perceives no other escape but death.
People have been committing suicide long before there was conspicuous reporting of celebrity deaths and acts of suicide in literature, and even these cases are considered tragedies.
Where suicide is glorified and even encouraged is in the realm of extremists and terrorists, not Hollywood and books.
Outside of these deviant cases, people do not aspire to kill themselves, nor do they idealize the suicides of others.
Mr. Dennis appears to confuse admiration toward an individual who ends his or her own life as an admiration of the act of suicide itself.
Marc Anderson is a biology and biochemistry graduate student and may be reached at [email protected]
