Link – A man kills himself every 13 minutes in the US and we still don’t know how to talk about it

“As predictable as the appearance of Santa Claus in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the holiday season is a time of well-meaning warnings and hand-wringing about depression and suicides.
But while the stereotype of the lonely relative overcome by emotion during the “most wonderful time of year” has become fairly entrenched in pop culture, it’s also a myth, at least in America. According to the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics, suicides rate are the lowest in December and highest in the spring and fall. These presumably innocuous myths distract us from what is actually a very real and generally underreported problem.”

I agree, we need to get past simply repeating false stories, statistics and famous examples. We need to realize that there are people all around us, individuals, not numbers, who are dealing with depression and other mental health issues day in and day out. We need to recognize them, and let them know that we care. We need to be able to check in on each others emotional status just as we would if they had an illness. That’s how you help change the statistics.

A man kills himself every 13 minutes in the US and we still don’t know how to talk about it