Question 2

According to Sy Mukherjee, suicide has become the second leading cause of death
for young people in 2016. This statement has been supported by the News Straits Time
Report, which is the number of suicide cases rise rapidly among Malaysian Youth. From this
statements, we can conclude that suicide is not something that can be over looked. It has
been a phenomenon which has becoming a critical issues among youth in Malaysia
nowadays. As we known, suicide is a process that an individual will end his or her life
purposely ending their life. While, the teenage suicide is the intentional act that made by
teenagers below age of 19 to take their lives. This heart breaking issues is not occur
immediately, but it is a series of processes that goes on mind before manifesting the plan of
suicide. There are a several factors that can be underlined based on the reason of suicide or
the reason that lead teenagers to commit suicide.

First of all, the factor that lead teenagers to commit suicide among the others is
depression. What is depression? Depression is the most common of all psychological
disorders that affecting people around the worldwide. According to Kayla & Maureen (2016),
depression can affect one’s ability on the simplest things. Depressed feeling happened when
someone get pushed by surrounding that makes them feel like if they vanished from the
people’s live, nobody cares. For an instance, teenagers study to meet the expectations of their
parent and teachers. The keen competition among schools to stay on top forces teachers to
work their students harder, while parents expect their children to be the best in the school.
This cause stress among the teenagers and lead them to depression. There are also some
parents that pushed their children to get flying colours in their examination just to show-off
especially towards their friend. The children might be feeling that their parents just want to use
them for their self-interest. They still fulfil their parents’ request for being a successful student
but they just achieve the goal without passion. Depressed feelings is dangerous towards
people because it is hard to function normally, cannot focus when doing some work and
participate in once-enjoyable activities. This is because the depression come out from mild
feelings of uneasiness, sadness, hopeless, empty, anxious and stress. This symptom also will
lead this patient to become an introvert person that does not want to socialize with people
around them and lastly they decided to attempt suicide as the last choice.

After that, family’s problem also can effect teens’ behaviour and feeling that can lead
them to commit suicide if they cannot handle it properly. This factor has been supported by
Rahn K. Bailey, et.al.(2011) said that suicide is influenced by psychosocial, cultural, and
environmental risk. Some teenager suffer depression because of problems at home. As there
are some parents who encounter problems may take it out on their children and may even
blame a child for the family’s misfortune. This cause give them signal of depression and disturb
their emotional. As the result, they are far more likely to commit suicide. Besides that, there
are lots of broken family that exist in Malaysia whether they are wealthy or poor family. The
term of broken family exist because of the divorce, abuse, neglect, or the death of a parent at
the young age. Parental divorce is the most common reason why the problems begin to take
place. When the parent getting divorced, there will just think of their own decision without
thinking the others including their children. As for teens, they will stressed out because they
have to rely on themselves because their parents have been in their own separated way and
they will short on love from both of their parents. They will also feel abandoned by their parents
and they have no one to rely on when they have problems and they tend to keep their problem
all by themselves. At last, they will think that there are no use if they still live but no one could
love them. So, they decided to commit suicide.

Furthermore, bullying is also a prime reason why teenagers begin to think of suicide.
Bullying is usually defined as an aggressive behavioural pattern among school-aged children
and teenagers that implicates apparent power imbalance. Usually, bullying comprises of
actions such as perpetration, victimization, taunting, teasing, threatening to cause harm,
name-calling, spreading rumours about someone, and embarrassing in public. The bullies can
bully their victim whether using physical contact or verbal bullying. The bullies like to bully
everyone that they want as long as they happy and satisfied. The victims usually a person that
cannot defend themselves when they get bullied. The experiences of being bullied make them
believe there’s no more future and they will start feeling abandoned because the lack of
support network around them. The victim strongly need support network from his or her
beloved one such as family, best friends, teachers and counsellors. But, when nobody steps
in to solve this problem, it triggers thoughts of suicide to the victims as they feel alone and
isolated from the rest of the world. A recent study led by H.Lingyao, et.al, (2016) said that
bullying increases the probability of suicidal ideation among Chinese adolescent student, and
the risk was highest in victim perpetrators. Therefore, it is proved that bullying lead commit
suicide among teenagers as they grow up with lack of support network and negative
environment.

In my opinion, suicide has becoming more serious that has affected our entire country.
However, suicide is an occurrence that can be preventable. First of all, we need to raise the
awareness of suicide towards teenagers by informing them about the facts of suicide which is
including the factors, symptoms and the effects. This awareness will improve their
acknowledgement of suicide and prevent them from being involved with it. Another step to
prevent the teen suicide is by recognizing and treating depression. Activities such as
counselling session, psychotherapy and mood elevating medications not only decrease teen
depression and suicide ideation, but also help to improve their mental health. From this point
of view, I conclude that campaign of awareness and consultant of depression are the best
prevention effort in order to overcome the increase of suicide cases among youth in Malaysia.

In a nutshell, suicide is a crucial topic that intervening in teen life. This must be prevent
from leading the cause of death in Malaysia. Society must take action and play their own
responsibilities in order to make the changes and lesser the number of suicide from occurring
each year. What is the most important is society need to ensure the positive environment
around teenagers by making involving them in society activities, make good communication
with them sharing the happiness together. So, teenagers know that they have proactive
support from surrounding and their desires to attempt suicide will decrease.
References

Evich, P. (2015, August 19). Why I Deleted Social Media. Retrieved from Odyssey:
https://www. theodysseyonline.com/open-letter-deleted-social-media

Hazlina Aziz. (2018, January 03). Two Challenges Confronting Education. News Straits Time.
Retrieved from https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2018/01/320906/two-
challenges-confronting-education.

Kayla & Moureen. (2016). Teen Depression and Suicide: A Silent Crisis. Journel of
Christian Nursing, 33(2), 78-86. https://journals.lww.com/journalofchristian
nursing/fulltext/2016/04000/Teen_Depression_and_Suicide__A_Silent_
Crisis.9.aspx.

Lingyao, H.,Lan,G. & Hong. W. (2016). Bullying, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation Among
Adolescent in the Fujian Province of China: A Cross-sectional Study. International
Journal of Surgery Oncology, 95(5). https://journals.lww.com/md-journal/fulltext/
2016/02020/Bullying,_Depression,_and_Suicidal_Ideation_Among.14.aspx

Rahn K. B, Tejas, C.P, Jaymie, A & Mohammad Jaleel. (2011). Suicide: Current Trends.
Journal of the National Medication Association, 103(7), 614-617. https://journals.lww.
com/mdjournal/fulltext/2016/02020/Bullying,_Depression,_and_Suicidal_Ideation_Am
ong.14.aspx.

Sy Mukherjee. (2018, May 16). Suicide Became the Second Leading Cause of Death for
Young People in 2016. We Don’t Know Why. Retrieved from (September 15, 2018) at
Fortune: http://fortune.com/2018/05/16/teen-suicide-attempts-rise-study/
APPENDIX