Dichotomy
Sometimes there is a big disparity between what I intend to do with my life and my sense of humour. However I think that as long as I recognise that, I can deal with it.
Yesterday I attended a mental health seminar as part of my college course and it was really interesting to hear about the help and organisations that are out there to help people. We also heard lots of facts and figures. For example, in this country enough people take their own lives every year to fill 20 aeroplanes. That's a shocking figure. Everytime a plane crashes in real life, it's on the news, the story hangs around for ages, we tend to remember the big plane crash stories like that Malaysian airliner that disappeared a few years ago and it does affect our views on air travel. Imagine if there were 20 plane crash stories on the news every year. There would be panic, no one would want to fly and people would cry out for something to be done about it and yet funding for mental health care is being cut every year. When you put the number of suicides into terms of airplane crashes, it's truly a shocking figure.
As I was listening to this and feeling genuinely shocked, my gallows humour also kicked in. What if you started a business where you bought up old planes and offered people one way suicide trips? Rather than inconvenience people all over the country with individual suicides, just get them out of the way in a job lot. You'd be with like-minded people who'd understand what you were doing, you wouldn't have to bother with health and safety checks and you could even get funding from religious extremists who want to cause death to Western infidels when driving cars into them is no longer a viable option.
Seriously though, imagine if there was a way to gather together a planeful of people who intended to take their own lives. How many would rethink their decision if they could see how many people felt the same way that they did? How many people would hear the other reasons and either find some common ground or realise that they weren't as bad off as they thought? I find it such a shame that so many people suffer in silence and think they're the only one who feels like they do and there's no other way out or no one to talk to?
This is why I want to do something to help people with their mental health. One person cannot change the world, but you can change the world for one person.
Yesterday I attended a mental health seminar as part of my college course and it was really interesting to hear about the help and organisations that are out there to help people. We also heard lots of facts and figures. For example, in this country enough people take their own lives every year to fill 20 aeroplanes. That's a shocking figure. Everytime a plane crashes in real life, it's on the news, the story hangs around for ages, we tend to remember the big plane crash stories like that Malaysian airliner that disappeared a few years ago and it does affect our views on air travel. Imagine if there were 20 plane crash stories on the news every year. There would be panic, no one would want to fly and people would cry out for something to be done about it and yet funding for mental health care is being cut every year. When you put the number of suicides into terms of airplane crashes, it's truly a shocking figure.
As I was listening to this and feeling genuinely shocked, my gallows humour also kicked in. What if you started a business where you bought up old planes and offered people one way suicide trips? Rather than inconvenience people all over the country with individual suicides, just get them out of the way in a job lot. You'd be with like-minded people who'd understand what you were doing, you wouldn't have to bother with health and safety checks and you could even get funding from religious extremists who want to cause death to Western infidels when driving cars into them is no longer a viable option.
Seriously though, imagine if there was a way to gather together a planeful of people who intended to take their own lives. How many would rethink their decision if they could see how many people felt the same way that they did? How many people would hear the other reasons and either find some common ground or realise that they weren't as bad off as they thought? I find it such a shame that so many people suffer in silence and think they're the only one who feels like they do and there's no other way out or no one to talk to?
This is why I want to do something to help people with their mental health. One person cannot change the world, but you can change the world for one person.