There’s something wrong with a country where citizens are killing themselves at increasing rates.
But that’s exactly what one alarming new report shows is happening in America.
What is happening to our young people?
A study surveying suicide rates in the United States was recently conducted by the Journal of the American Medical Association. The results are concerning, to say the least.
“Suicide rates among 15- to 24-year-olds reached a 17-year-high in 2017,” The Hill reported. “Researchers found an especially pronounced increase among 15- to 19-year-olds and young men, according to the study.”
Suicide is always a tragedy, but its impact is particularly disturbing when its victims are young people with so much life left to live. It’s a problem that demands mourning — and solutions.
The answerable why
The rising trend in suicide among young Americans parallels another disturbing trend — so-called “deaths of despair” among middle-aged Americans who have actually lowered life expectancy for some demographics for the first time in recent memory.
Clearly, something is amiss in the American soul. Yet, public policy and media coverage surrounding suicide often fails to provide a coherent account of why suicides are happening, and what can be done to prevent them.
While the media gives lip service to modern plagues like the deterioration of social structures, they continue to do everything possible to undermine the role of faith in the public square, and feature relentlessly negative coverage of most religious organizations in America.
But the answer to increasing despair and suicide is more religion and family, not less. First Things magazine notes:
We now have a sizable body of medical research which suggests that prayer, religious faith, participation in a religious community, and practices like cultivating gratitude, forgiveness, and other virtues can reduce the risk of depression, lower the risk of suicide, diminish drug abuse, and aid in recovery.
There are straightforward reasons why religious practice protects against suicide. Church attendance is a social activity that protects people against loneliness and isolation. While this is not of course a unique benefit of religion, certain things are. Judaism, Christianity, and (in most cases) Islam have strong moral prohibitions against suicide.
Furthermore, religious faith can instill a sense of meaning and purpose that transcends present exigencies; this helps people not only survive periods of intense anguish, but even to find meaning in suffering.
And the evidence backs this up.
First Things further reported:
To cite just one finding from among a growing body of medical research on this subject, Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health recently published a study of suicide and religious participation among women in the U.S. Against the grim backdrop of increasing suicide rates, this study of 89,000 participants found that some groups remain protected from the rising tide of despair and self-harm. Between 1996 and 2010, those who attended any religious service once a week or more were five times less likely to commit suicide.
Meanwhile, leftist media organizations like Vox tell us that we’ll be just fine without religion or the traditional family.
As the evidence to the contrary piles up, when will they admit that they were wrong?
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