By Nor Hasaliza Asikin Binti Nawi
The proliferation of technology has brought 1001 benefits to human’s life through incredible invention and innovation that will change the future. However, there’s the bane behind the boon of these achievements which turn out to be the global issue and the rise in suicide cases is one of the costs that must be paid by the human. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 person dies every 40 seconds and almost 800,000 people take their own life every year, which makes suicide as the second leading cause of death among young people after road injury. By 2020, it is predicted that the rate of death will increase to 1 person dies in every 20 seconds (Ritchie, Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2019).
It might be unfair to pointing fingers solely to the technology proliferate for an upward surge in the suicide cases. However, research indicated that technology has contributed to the issues, especially through the social media. According to The Lancet medical journal, low self-esteem, poor body image, poor sleep and online harassment are contributed by social media (Balasegaram, 2019). As an example, in a few months, there are 2 suicide cases of Sulli and Goo Hara, a K-Pop idol which take their own life after receiving hateful comments and cyber bullying in social media(Hun & Lee, 2019). Earlier, in Malaysia, a 16 years old girl has been reported to take her own life after getting 69% votes on a poll asking if she could die or not via her Instagram account (Balasegaram, 2019). All this is just few suicide cases that covered by the media, while there’s could be numerous attempted depression cases out there awaited and might be ended with a tragic ending.
Suicide is the serious global public health issues which need the tremendous actions at world level due to its impact to the public and our future generation. The preventive action must be taken from now onwards and WHO has been prioritized the reduction of suicide mortality as a global target (“Suicide in The World”, 2019). However, this preventive initiative needs the comprehensive action by each country to ensure that the tragedy that cost millions of lives can be overcome.
In Malaysia, the survey conducted by national mental health survey in 2017 indicated that 1 in 5 Malaysian’s teenagers have suffered from depression with 10% from it have the thought to take their own life (Balasegaram, 2019). Suicides should be put as an uppermost concern in drafting the 12th Malaysia Plan and Malaysian society must come together in order to nurture a robust world for future generation (Abdul Razak, 2019). Ministry of Health (MOH) has prepared for National Strategic Action Plan on mental health 2019 – 2025 and as part of World Mental Health Day 2019 which initiated by WHO as world’s awareness programs, #Let’s Talk campaign has been introduced by MOH to encourage people in need to seek help (Amirul Ihsan, 2019).
In conclusion, suicide is the serious global mental health issues and the preventive action to combat this threat in order to create a better world for our future generations is the entire world responsibilities. The awareness program or any initiative by the world organization or each country is supposed be discuss and share to the international level in order to give an idea and helps other countries in needs. This is because, day by day the challenges will be vary and towards the industrial revolutions 4.0 it will definitely get greater. Hence, our action’s today will command the world’s of tomorrow, where our future generation will heritage.
References
Abdul Razak, D. (2019, September 13). Tackling suicidal tendencies. Retrieved from New Straits Times https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2019/09/521241/tackling-suicidal-tendencies
Amirul Ihsan. S. L. (2019, October 8). A beacon for mental health. Retrieved from New Straits Times https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/heal/2019/10/527962/beacon-mental-health
Balasegaram, M. (2019, Mei 26). Human Writes: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people today. Retrieved from The Star Online https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/living/2019/05/26/suicide-help
Hun. C. S., and Lee. S. H. (2019, November 25). Suicides by K-Pop Stars Prompt Soul-Searching in South Korea. Retrieved from The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/world/asia/goo-hara-kpop-suicide.html
Ritchie. H., Roser. M. and Ortiz-Ospina. E. (2019). Suicide: one person dies every 40 seconds. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-09-2019-suicide-one-person-dies-every-40-seconds “Suicide in The World – Global Health Estimates”. Geneva: World Health Organization (2019). Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-09-2019