The Filipino’s inborn courage

Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote: “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”

The World Health Organization reported in 2017 that for every 100,000 Filipinos, six male Filipinos and two Filipinas die of suicide. Early this year, the Union of Catholic Asian News reported that at least six Filipinos die daily by suicide. The highest suicide rate was among youth, 15 to 24 years old, and it comprises around half of Filipino suicides. It is also increasing annually. Of this age group, young adults (ages 20 to 35) comprise the highest share (30 percent) of suicides. The remaining 16 percent came from teens (ages 10 to 19).

The Philippine suicide rate is, however, one of the lowest in the world. This very rate demonstrates that the Filipinos are one of the most resilient people there are today. However, the 2,413 deaths by suicide in 2016 alone are too many for comfort. For the only Catholic country in Asia, those deaths ask an unspoken question: Where were we when these fellowmen needed at least a willing ear to listen?

In an article published last year in Asia Pacific Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, Mark Anthony Quintos of the University of the Philippines Los Baños pointed out that the central context of Filipino suicides is “family relationship problems,” particularly involving isolation and integration issues among those

15 to 24 years old. In a sense, a suicide of a Filipino is an indicator of a breaking down of family relationships; a dysfunctional indicator, that is.

The family is crucial in preventing its members from completing a suicidal plan. It is so because suicidal individuals must not be left alone until the suicidal impulse passes. The family is also instrumental in removing access to means of suicide, such as knives and high structures, especially when wrist slashing and leaping from tall buildings are the most common means. Solitude and means, therefore, are a fatal combination for Filipinos planning to commit suicide.

Sally Brampton, in her autobiography “Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression,” wrote: “People… are inclined to think, about suicide, that no fight was involved.” The person is “simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive.”

However, it should also be remembered that Filipinos, by blood, are resilient. With a little help, a Filipino has the in-born courage to defeat that “hard struggle to stay alive.”