Shobhna Srivastava

By Nishi Misra and Shobhna Srivastava

There are three feelings that prompt a person to take their life: hopelessness, helplessness and worthlessness. Studies have found that the risk of suicide increases with decreasing happiness. In the recent past, people have been left clueless when celebrities and successful people ended their lives despite appearing overtly happy. What prompted them to do so? Modern society today highlights the importance of success over failure. Although we are motivated to be successful in life, it should not become our main gauge of happiness. In the same way we should not let success be our main goal in life and get discouraged by failure. Happiness has been viewed in two ways: as concerning the well-being of a person, and as the opposite of depression. Each one of us has different ways of measuring happiness. The quality of one’s happiness depends on one’s priorities in life. Happiness is not merely something that can be quantified with how much success and failure one has because such metric is very much subjective. How do we prevent a young life from extinguishing? How do we identify suicidal behavior among successful people and help those around? The present chapter covers the possible reasons why successful people commit suicide. Role of media in preventing suicide and measures for preventing suicide by successful people has been discussed.

Part of the book: Suicide