MENTAL HEALTH // You Are Not Alone In This

It's World Suicide Prevention Day today.

i'm not really sure what that means.

Around a million people die by suicide across the world every single year. A million people. Almost 6000 of those are within the U.K and Ireland., and it's suspected that 140,000 people attempt suicide each year in England and Wales alone.

The statistics are shocking.

But it's about so much more than statistics, this suicide thing. It's about people: real people, whose real lives are being cut inexplicably short.

i'm not really sure what we can do with one day to prevent all that.

i guess what we can do is use today - and the rest of this suicide prevention week - to pause and take note: to make a conscious effort to notice those struggling around us; to take people's thoughts and feelings seriously and to be gentle with them; to make each other aware of the facts and information around this issue and the labyrinth of complexities it opens up; to point people in the direction of resources and organisations providing help; and to remember that we're all just people, in different states of brokenness, trying to find our way through this thing called life.

Sometimes we might find ourselves fumbling in the darkness for a while. Sometimes the darkness seems like it might never end. But there is hope: there are hands to be held, help to be sought, days of laughter and light to be relished, and a life of purpose and meaning that you were meant to live.

The internet has been full of posts about suicide prevention today - all of them far more informative and significant than this - and i'd recommend you invest some time in reading them. Some starting places might include the Mental Health Foundation's 'U Can Cope' video or To Write Love On Her Arms' twitter stream, but a simple google search will turn up a whole host of pages of worth. If you need help immediately, please don't hesitate to contact the Samaritans (UK) or the Suicide Prevention Line (USA); and, as always, my links page has a list of some other organisations working in the field of mental health.

i hope and pray that today might have been a day that was made to count.

(Credit: BBC - Health: Suicide)