My Thoughts

I struggle with whether this format is the correct place to discuss this issue but I feel compelled to write about it. It isn’t my intention for it to sound flippant.

Very early this morning whilst out walking I discovered a young man hanging from a tree. His death (at his own hand) and the trauma it caused me was upsetting but insignificant compared with the grief that it would cause those close to him.

As the adrenaline subsided and the emergency services I called arrived to go about their clinical procedure I was left pondering; what could possibly make someone want to take their own life? Having never suffered from depression the premise seems so foreign to me and having lost a close friend in an eerily similar fashion some years back I know first hand how many people’s lives can be changed.

These days depression seems to be a “social disease” a bit like obesity, alcohol dependency and stress. It is something that we have grown to accept as a normal part of our society but I have realized that it isn’t and to normalize it is in some way accepting that it is.

I profess to knowing very little about how depression works or the statistics and various organisations that deal with suicide; a quick Google search tells me there are many which in itself is depressing.

All I can really say for now is that it doesn’t take much to ask someone if they are OK or if they need to talk or tell them that things will get better.

It may not make a scrap of difference but there is no harm in trying.

depression.org.nz