Before the guest speaker came in to speak to us about suicide, I thought the subject was fairly straight forward. I had no idea that there were so many intricacies, from statistics to methods of addressing someone considering suicide. I suppose I visualized the act as this distant, horrible thing that could never have an effect on my life. Yet, publicity on suicide is increasing in the media and for good reason. The stress of the educational system makes suicide more and more prevalent in college, so the presentation we heard was definitely appropriate and necessary.
“The Cat Lady” seemed rather personable, probably because she is a graduate student and thus someone to whom we can relate. Regardless, her knowledge was extensive, including personal anecdotes, statistical information, and strategies. She walked us through every step of the process of stopping someone from committing suicide, including traits to recognize that someone is considering suicide, methods we can use to confront that person, and telephone numbers to call in order to obtain professional help.
What made her presentation so interesting was that she knew how to speak to our age group about a very uncomfortable topic. Her statistics, especially the one about how 80% of the population considers suicide, were shocking, yet informative. As a result of her presentation, I know never to use the “we need to talk” line, not just when talking to a partner, but in serious talks about drugs and suicide as well.
Hopefully, I will never have to use the suggestions she presented in a real life situation, but I feel more prepared if I do encounter that reality.
I as well thought of this as a very distant and horrible act that rarely happened in our present society. However clearly from the facts and the statistics I too was completely wrong. I also thought she did extremely well on making such an uncomfortable topic something that is able to be talked about. Overall, I that this was a great topic to bring to the attention of people of our age group seeing how it prevails the most in us.
ReplyDeleteI too thought some of her statistics were interesting, but I'm not sure if they were particularly accurate. For example, her "80% of people consider suicide" statistic; I'm skeptical as to what "considering suicide" actually entails. And when you contrast that with one of her other statistics of "seriously considering suicide", what's the difference? I think it would be interesting to look up the methods used to measure these feelings in the research which she was reporting on.
ReplyDeleteShe provided the references if you want to look up the research. Put your knowledge of Methods to good use!
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