General Topic:
Effect of suicide on the people who are left behind
Audience:
People of the community including students, teachers, doctors, workers etc.
Title:
After Effects of Suicide
Specific Purpose:
The purpose of this speech is to persuade the listeners to keep in knowledge the basic needs of the family members, friends and all the people they interact daily with.
Attention Step:
One day i was comming back home from school. It was a very fine day. When i reached home i saw a lot of police officers infront of my house and an ambulance. I ran towards the house. As i approached near, i heard the loud screaming of my mother. One of the police officers tried to stop me and said i cant go in. I pushed him away and i ran into the house. It was 25th of April and my father was lying dead. He killed himself. A suicide in my own house.
Reasons for Listening:
What is the probability of you being in the same position as I was? Its very high. Millions of people commit suicide everyday in the world. But the people they leave behind face the circuimstances their entire life.
Speaker Credibility:
We are all familiar with the reality of death and we know that death is a normal part of our lives but death by sudden unexpected ways causes significant challenges to the persons family, friends and other people of the community.
Need Step:
I am pretty sure that we all have at least once in our life time encountered an act of suicide somewhere around us in our society. Have you ever talked to the people who’s relatives committed suicide? Have you ever talked to a mother who’s son was found dead in a lake? Have you ever talked to a man who’s brother hanged himself with the ceiling fan? Have you ever talked to a wife who’s husband went out and never came back ? Its very important for us to talk about it. Its hard but its very important.
We can only handle this issue by talking to the people who’s relatives have committed suicide. It depends on us. Weither we can be a part of the problem or we can be a part of a solution.
Speaker Credibility (again):
Most of us never try to be a part of the solution. We never talk. All we do is to blame. Blame the people who are left behind. We blame and shame them. It wasn’t something they did. The fault does not lay in them. Instead we should talk about anythng else. We can talk about other events except the particular event of suicide. We can tell them that the time will pass. It will be over soon and time is the biggest remedy. It will heal the pain. But we never talk.
After the death of my father, all of us remained in shock for a very long period of time. We were not able to express our feelings to anyone because no one talked to us. We were plunged into deep guilt for years. All of us were scared. We all struggled in our ways and every day life. We wandered in search of strenth and toughness. Long story short, we behaved like victims. Our life was just like a battle and we were trying to fight with it. But all we ever got was defeat. In a very bad way.
Transition:
We all need to be a part of solution to this on growing problem. We need to be open to explain our fears about suicide and letting others know about what we feel instead of keeping it all inside and committing suicide at the end.
Satisfaction Step:
If we have support, we can only lessen the after effects of a person committing suicide in our family. We can reduce the pain, horror, shame, anger and the sense of betrayal.
For the family it is necessary to know how every one in the family is feeling and what are his or her problems that are causing him or her trouble and making him over think.
For the friends, they need to keep track of their fellow’s feelings and thinking.
Teachers need to learn about the mentality of their students.
And at the end, the community in which we are living needs to know that which person in the society is in problem that can lead to suicide or anything bad close to suicide.
We all know that the rate of suicide is increasing day by day and the only way to stop or atleast hinder it is to talk about it. Only we can help others to think positively. We can help people around us to get over their problems.
Transition:
We have found a very important hub of knowledge out of our collective pain.
Counteracting Opposition and Visualization step:
It is a very common belief that the problem will disappear if we wont talk about it or if we ignore it. We need to stop thinking like that. We can never reduce the pain by ignoring it. There was no one who thought like this when me and my family needed it but it is here now. Let’s make it sure that we all use it in coping with this problem. Let’s make it sure that the resources needed to solve the issue are already present our there. All we need to do is to avail them and use them. We need to stop judging others and we also need to stop calling other’s names. We need to stop bullying and we need to stop hating others.
The research has shown that sometimes when a high profile personality suicides like a leader or a celebrity, then the people who follow them follow them through suicide as well. They tend to think that the one they have idealized their whole life has committed suicide then what good are they for in this world. So when they face a problem or something, instead of solving it they try to committ suicide.
We need to stop this and we need to learn through our mistakes. We need to tell poeple where this road is going and where all this is leading us to.
Transition:
People need to think that they are not walking on this road alone. Knowledge is a great power and when shared with others causes thorough effects.
Visualization Continued:
Internent is the biggest source of getting information about anything today. We can simply search on the internet about the suicide rate in the world and we would know that the rate is really high.
Along with this, there are also instructions available about how to cope with this problem, how to talk to suicidal people and how to change their view about life and the problems of life.
What can we do? How can we make a difference? We can read about it on the internet and we can help others. Its very handy and easy to find and all we have to do is to talk.
Transition:
For every single suicide, there are at least six people who are affected. On an average scale, those six people interact with six other people and impact them with the effects of suicide. And so on it goes.
Conclusion:
It is quite obvious that we can not reach everyone out there but what we can do is we can help within our circle. We can talk to the people around us. We can help those who we interact with daily. We can do it for those who are alive and for those who are dead. And we can do it right now.
I invite all of you to take a stand and aware people of the consiquences by starting a public campaign. I am sure that no one of us that are sitting here in front of me wants to experience what i have gone through. So go and talk.
References:
· Suicide social report 2010
· SPINZ
· The Quiet Pages: The reporting of suicide
· The Lowdown