Our young are dying yet nobody seems to hear the heartbreaking wails of the parents and loved ones of those who out of hopelessness, helplessness or worthlessness found solace in killing themselves.

        Our young are dying yet nobody seems to care about their passings or the way they abruptly and tragically left our world.

        Our young are dying yet the community, school, church, government and even family members of suicide victims haven’t done enough to initiate an effective suicide prevention program to discourage and stop our children from taking their own lives.

        Our young are dying, yet we are not bothered at all because they are not ours.

        Our young are dying because we are uncomfortable talking about the roots of the crimeless criminal called suicide.

        The way things are going, we remain deaf, unfeeling and simply oblivious to the frightening reality that recently, three young persons – a college student, an out-of-school youth and a new graduate – committed suicide on separate occasions.

        The first was a former beauty pageant titleholder in one of the cities in Bicol. She was enrolled in a Catholic university in Naga at the time of her death last Aug. 1. She hung herself using the power cord of a laptop.

        The second victim, a 23-year old pretty lass, was someone I met and briefly worked with in a government agency. Her parents found her lifeless body hanging in the bathroom sometime in mid-August. I learned about her demise from friends while we were speed walking at the cathedral grounds one beautiful early morning.

        The third, the latest case, involved a young college drop out. He shot himself on the head inside his sports car. His tragic death was news on local radios and TVs.

         According to records of the Philippine National Police (PNP), 11 other self-inflicted deaths occurred in the first nine months of this year. Of the total of 14 cases, two were recorded by the Naga City Police Office just for the month of August, while 12 were reported to the Camarines Sur Police Provincial Office from January to August this year. Three of the victims were women in their 20s, the other one was just 19-years old. The rest were men, the oldest was 52 while the youngest was 19. Five of the victims used guns to end their miseries, while the remaining nine died with broken necks due to hanging.

        Because most if not all families of suicide victims normally hide the real cause of death of their loved ones, many believe there are more unreported cases than those officially listed.

        What is scary about the rising cases of suicide in the province is eleven of the victims were within the range of 19-30 years old, the prime period in a person’s life when love blossoms and dreams are formed, pursued and celebrated.

        What then drove the victims to kill themselves? Like the darkest pit where the victims found themselves in when they decided to commit suicide, the answers lie in the bottomless abyss of the victims’ mental and emotional condition then.

         Maybe it is because they felt so alone and neglected. Maybe they found life so painfully unbearable that they believed death would make it simply bearable. Maybe they thought that it is only by killing themselves that they would finally find peace and happiness.

        There are so many maybes. But amid the madness of it all, only one thing is certain. They all died crying for love, attention, care, understanding, and kindness in a world that is so anesthetized, so cold and so thoughtless or so ignorant to their sufferings.

        My heart bleeds for the victims and their families. That’s what pushed me to write about them. Losing one’s child or a loved one in such a painful way must be emotionally devastating on the part of the bereaved. It’s like the world has unexpectedly crumbled on them with the sudden and violent death of their beloved family member.

         The successive cases of suicide I’ve mentioned are loud wake up calls for us. They are desperate cries for help by the victims, yet many of us are either not listening, don’t want to listen or we prefer to just ignore them because they are too painful to deal with.

        Early this month, Iriga City heeded the silent agonies of the victims and their families. During the first Bicol Experts’ Sharing of Time and Talent (BEST2) forum last Sept. 4 at the St. Anthony of Padua Parish Hall, 2009 Dr. Marietta Aster Nagrampa Almazan, an Iriguena-born psychiatrist based in the United States talked about the importance of a Suicide Prevention Program to save desperate people from committing suicide.

        Dr. Almanzan is the president and chief executive officer of Specialty Center Inc., a psychiatric clinic she owns in the United States (US). The US-based doctor was quoted as saying that data from the World Health Organization say that suicide is one of the three leading causes of death among men and women aged 15-45 years old all over the world and that it even outnumbers deaths caused by homicides.

        The good news is Dr. Almazan, one of this year’s Sumagang awardees, promise to work for the formation of support groups in schools in Camarines Sur that would be trained to provide intervention and other services to prevent suicide from happening among students.

        On the part of one of the Catholic universities where two of the youthful victims studied, I learned from a knowledgeable source that a crisis management group(CMG) was created in June 2008 to provide intervention measures on reports of attempted suicides and suicides among its students.

        When I asked about the details and the number of students involved in self-inflicted death, the source told me that the figures are confidential and not for public consumption. But with or without the exact number of suicides cases in that school, the creation and existence of the CMG is enough proof that university officials are alarmed by the rising suicide incidents in their campus as early as the middle of last year. The good thing about it is they are doing something positive to address the serious problem.

        A social taboo, suicide is seldom discussed openly in public out of respect for the victim and the grief and privacy of the victim’s family. Suicide prospers because most of us are too appalled to admit that it is happening and that it is killing people. This must stop. Our apathy and paralysis today may turn into a hellish nightmare when due to our indifference, suicide might one of these days take away the life of our very own child, relative or friend.

        Experts on suicide say it is preventable. Studies reveal that 80 percent of people who attempt or complete suicide show overt and covert warning signs. These tell-tale signs include: talking about suicide or a wish to die; accounts of hopelessness, helplessness, or worthlessness; preoccupation with death; or abrupt or unexplained changes in behavior; and other abnormal emotional and psychological symptoms.

        An individual who observes these ominous clues in a person should ask him whether he is entertaining thoughts of suicide. If yes, the observer should immediately refer the person to a mental health professional to treat and prevent that person from harming himself.

        Mental health experts agree that self-inflicted death can be prevented because the suicidal state of mind is usually temporary in nature. Thus, it is crucial that people are informed how to spot suicide indicators. Equally essential are the need to put in place deterrence mechanisms like a 24/7 suicide hotline, creation of support groups and other interventions, which should form part of a wholistic suicide prevention program.

        Although as the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, popularly known as Horace said that “To save a man’s life against his will is the same as killing him,” self-murder is viewed by the Catholic Church and other major religions as a grave sin because it violates the sanctity of life.

        As we celebrate the tercentenary of our devotion to Ina, let’s make it more meaningful in a way that will fittingly honor her motherhood by saving the lives of people, who right this very moment, in their solitude are plotting to murder themselves.

         We must act now before it’s too late! We must prevent and stop the young and the old from killing themselves. Life is sacred!