Media personality talks about increase in suicide cases

He wrote,

"I was in the studio listening to the sound I tried to put together the previous night. The security personnel came to announce the arrival of my cousin Jimmy (not his real name).

Jimmy was one bubbly guy who was always ready to have a party. Always fun to be with; but on this very day, something was seriously amiss.

There was this faraway look in his eyes, obviously troubled by something. I instructed my studio engineer to excuse us so I could have a one on one with Jimmy. No sooner had he left, Jimmy turned to me and said, "Charly, tonight am ending it all, I can't go on like this, am going to kill myself."

Abegi stop talking nonsense, was all I could utter. I decided to probe further to figure out what was really troubling Jimmy.

He had lost a lot of money in the various business ventures he got involved with, his woman had left him and that really devastated him; but in my head that wasn't enough justification for anybody to want to kill himself! Of course, I didn't take him serious, I just tried to talk to him sharing my own problems with him in the hope of calming him down.

Three days later, I received the sad news that Jimmy had hung himself from his ceiling fan in his sitting room.

My heart was broken with the news, above all I felt so very guilty for a long long time. Perhaps I should have spent more time listening to him that day, who knows I might have been able to get him to see things differently.

Since then I've learnt to listen a lot more and counsel with a lot more sensitivity.

No one can ever truly phantom what goes on in one's mind that will lead them to activate their own death.

People commit suicide for various reasons. Stress factors, like how they deal with their relationship issues, or how broken their spirit feels, poverty, even their mental state are the things that trigger suicide for some of us who can't deal with the reality of living. As a result, in an attempt to desperately escape suffering or a troubling situation, they commit suicide.

Therefore before we start to get judgmental, to say that people who go that route are cowards, let's know that we all don't have the same kind of strength or the same inbuilt shock absorber to deal with everyday issues that trouble us.

Let's remember that some of us are dying in silence, depressed, perhaps already contemplating suicide."