Khaled Al-Suleiman Okaz newspaper I have no doubt that a normal human being will not take his life at his own will. Fear of death is a natural human trait and therefore one will not commit suicide unless he reaches a point of extreme mental distress that would destroy his ability to think and push him to the edge of the abyss. But this does not exonerate the factors and causes of his desperation that pushed him to the brink. A man takes this extreme step either because of a guilty conscience or as a means of escaping from responsibility. His mental distress is the real killer even though it does not push him into the abyss of death. No human being is born with an unstable mental condition. Everyone gets a chance to lead a normal life as long as he is provided with equal opportunities to cope with its challenges. But when a man finds himself pushed to the wall again and again with no escape route open before him and if he is continuously pelted with stones of injustice, unfairness, favoritism, discrimination and isolation, he will definitely lose his sanity unless a helping hand is stretched out to him from the top of the wall to rescue him. Some of us think that providing treatment to people suffering from psychiatric disorders is to place them in mental asylums or keep them chained at homes and leave them to die a natural death. Society and its institutions are accountable for every individual member. Society may not be responsible for feeding or clothing him but is responsible for providing him an equitable opportunity to have a decent living so as not to push him into insanity and then abandon him to die. Social institutions tend to focus on symptoms of the disease and avoid attention to the underlying cause. As long as society views individuals who kill themselves as the source of the suicide problem, we can expect acts of desperation to continue amid us.
