Why are millennial suicides on the rise?
Unknown to many and perhaps undetected by our authorities is the recent phenomenon of unusual number of incidence of suicides and self-inflicted harm and injuries involving young and very young victims. This should alarm parents and other family members because most of the victims are below the age of thirty. Young people, students and young professionals included, across all economic strata, are drinking poisons, hanging themselves, jumping from tall buildings or slashing their throats and wrists. With all the conveniences of modern living and instant pleasures brought about by technology and with all the entertainment and outlets for fun and gratification, why then are too young people killing themselves ?
The answers are many but oftentimes ignored or just taken for granted. First of all, we have dysfunctional families. We have absentee fathers who have no personal bonding with sons and daughters. The children feel some emptiness and void, certain longing for a fatherly caring and concern. Many fathers are working abroad as OFWs, or here but too busy with business, professions, jobs or their own vices and selfish preoccupations. And mothers who are ignorant of their duties and responsibilities beyond feeding and clothing their children. Mothers who have no maturity to understand those who are struggling with puberty and adolescence. We have families that do not have spiritual life together, family members that do not talk and interact personally anymore.
Then, we have schools and churches that do not understand the youth. Teachers and church ministers who are not able to integrate human psychology into the technical and social subjects they are teaching. Mentors and pastors who do not have knowledge in human psychology, who practice their mission and their vocation in isolation of the realities of human growth and development. The Church and the Schools have failed to help the family provide for the young a haven that provides caring and compassion, support and understanding: Schools that provide education without true wisdom; and Church that propagates faith without human understanding.
Therefore, this sudden upsurge of suicides and self-destruction is a result of failure and we are all to blame. We had been too busy earning a living or making a sense in our own inadequacies and insecurities, forgetting to nurture our young and mold them into strong and happy beings. In our preoccupation with things mundane, we have overlooked what really matters most, and that is to be around at the most critical moments of our children’s lives. We forgot our fundamental duties as parents when God entrusted to us the jewels of life — our sons and daughters. We failed because we did not put God in the center of our lives, and in the inner thoughts of our kids.
Perhaps, there is still time for us to make up for our inadequacies. Perhaps, we could still fill the void and the emptiness that are gradually destroying those who mean most to us. We hope that it is not yet too late to know and befriend our children. Perhaps God will help us make up for all those lost years of our inadvertence and neglect.
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