The Declined Suicide Rate During Covid Might Have Terrifying Implications

A suicide boom is approaching

When I was a teenager, being suicidal was not a reflection of how bad my life was, but how bad I thought my life was. This badness was created by comparing myself to others. I looked around and saw so many people live a life I was envious of and, in my own negative reflection, made myself miserable. However, during the summer after my freshman year in high school, I got the opportunity to work on a boat in Europe and was able to escape for a few months. Sadness would still hit me at times, and nothing in my life had really changed, but I was stable. This stability came because I wasn’t comparing myself to others, I wasn’t wishing I was going to parties, and I wasn’t hating myself for not having some kind of romantic relationship. It seemed like things were improving and, because of this change in mindset, when I came back for sophomore year, I thought I would get a fresh start and everything would be different. It wasn’t. Everything was exactly the same as before, and it completely destroyed me. Within a month of starting school again, I made my suicide attempt and shouldn’t be alive to tell this story.

A recent article published by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention stated that the suicide rate for 2020 was the first year to go down…