Last May, citing the “substantial” rise in suicide among the middle-aged, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described suicide as “an increasing public health concern.” That realization has begun to spread: in the same month, Newsweek ran a cover article called “ The Suicide Epidemic,” noting that, around the world, self-harm takes “more lives than war, murder, and natural disasters combined.” In America, these numbers-which many experts believe are lower than the actual figures, owing to under-reporting-cannot simply be attributed to the toll of a long recession, or increasing gun ownership: clinical depression is also on the rise. Among young people in the U.S., suicide is the third most common cause of death among all Americans, suicide claims more lives than car accidents, which were previously the leading cause of injury-related death. In the United States, suicide rates have risen, particularly among middle-aged people: between 19, the number of Americans between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-four who took their own lives rose by almost thirty per cent. That’s a shocking number, and it speaks to a global trend. I felt faith, like I could talk to him.”Ī week after Benjamin was reunited with Laybourn, Le Monde, the leading newspaper on the other side of the English Channel, published the results of a medical study of French fifteen-year-olds, which revealed that almost twenty-one per cent of girls and nine per cent of boys reported attempting suicide in the past year. But it was Laybourn’s basic sense of compassion, Benjamin said, that did the trick: “When he came along it burst the bubble of that world I was in. The connection wasn’t even so hard: it turns out that the two men grew up ten minutes away from each other. He still walks over the Waterloo Bridge on his commute, a daily reminder of that day, six years ago, when he saved a man’s life simply by asking him to talk. Mike is Neil Laybourn, a thirty-one-year-old native of Surrey who works as a personal trainer. He did, and the two men met once again- this time with a hug. The Good Samaritan’s girlfriend saw the plea on Facebook and encouraged her boyfriend to go public. I couldn’t remember anything about him.” But millions of people shared the story online the hashtag “FindMike” was among Twitter’s trending keywords in the United Kingdom and as far afield as South Africa, Australia, and Canada. “It felt like looking for a needle in a haystack. “I didn’t expect to find him,” Benjamin told the Guardian. This January, to help raise awareness of mental-health issues, Benjamin-with the support of celebrities like Stephen Fry, Boy George, and David Cameron-launched a social-media campaign to find the man he had nicknamed Mike. As the years went on, he forgot the name of the man who had persuaded him to go on living. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 or chat at .īenjamin didn’t jump.
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