By Fahed Khitan
For years, any person boarding a high rise in Amman and declaration of his intention to commit suicide was enough to alert the local media, sending reporters and photographers to the scene to document the event. In the event that the person actually commits suicide, the story becomes page-one news that is analyzed from psychologists, professors of sociology and sometimes politicians, to look at the underlying motives behind the case of suicide.
The situation completely changed in recent years. The day before yesterday, a young man committed suicide from the Abdoun Bridge. The news did not last an hour on news websites. The next day [yesterday], it did not receive any attention in print papers. Death, in this tragic way, has become small news.
Specialists say that despite the high incidence of suicide in Jordan over the past years, Jordan becoming the eighth Arab country in suicide ratio, it is still not considered phenomenon in the Kingdom.
Maybe this diagnosis is correct, if the rates of suicide at our country was compared with our counterparts in the region. This, however, should not lead us to ignore the recorded incidents.
I did not hear about one official or civil organization that records and monitors suicide in Jordan. It is rather that the resume of a person who has committed suicide ends with his or her death, leading him to become a mere record.
What I mean by monitoring: A comprehensive social study of each case and research in the circumstances that led the person to prefer death to life. Hence, prepare an annual report of suicides, explains in detail the circumstances of each case, and ways to deal with similar cases of people going through the same circumstances. It is imperative, also, to understand the social and economic environment for this class; to dismantle the "phenomenon" in a broader context.
Indifference to a phenomenon in its infancy, carries with it the risk of aggravation in the future. In this case, it seems more important, because it relates to human life.
We focus on this aspect in particular, because when revisiting previous suicide cases, it was found possible to avoid them with a few pre-emptive steps, and psychological treatments. In many cases, security and civil defense men managed to convince some people to refrain from committing suicide at the last minute; imagine if early treatment for these cases were available? Maybe we succeed in preventing them from boarding Abdoun Bridge or the roof of a building in the first place.
Studying the cases gives insight into dealing with people who have similar conditions, and increases the ability of professionals to predict subsequent steps.
In short, we must do everything we can to give these people an option other than the Abdoun Bridge.
@fahed_khitan
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic edition
