Some Youths Do Not Want to Live

SUICIDE by young people is an alarming trend in India. Researchers in that country estimate that every two minutes someone attempts to take his own life, and every ten minutes someone succeeds.

During 1990 some 60,000 people committed suicide in India, and “nearly half of them were aged between 18 and 35,” noted the magazine India Today. Some suicide victims are as young as ten years old. The real number of people who kill themselves in India is unknown because many families prefer to report suicides as accidents in order to avoid shame.

India Today notes that “over 2,500 adolescents killed themselves over unhappy love affairs” during 1990. According to psychiatrists, another reason for the growing number of suicides among young people is the pressures of competition and performance in school, which start at an early age.

The magazine adds that “psychiatrists believe the breakdown of the joint family has a lot to do with the distress and loneliness which can spark off suicidal feelings” in children. One psychiatrist, Dr. S. G. Dastoor, stated: “If only parents bothered to spend more time with their children and found out what was troubling them, their lives could be saved. I often think it’s the parents who need counselling.”

The Bible encourages Christian parents to spend time with their children and inculcate godly principles in them. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) The Scriptures also admonish parents not to irritate their children but to bring them up “in the discipline and mental-​regulating of Jehovah.”​—Ephesians 6:4.

Further, Christian youths can cope with today’s pressures by applying the wise counsel found in the Bible at Philippians 4:6, 7, which states: “Do not be anxious over anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication along with thanksgiving let your petitions be made known to God; and the peace of God that excels all thought will guard your hearts and your mental powers by means of Christ Jesus.”