When I was still healthy, I never thought that so many people were suffering from suicidal thoughts. According to WHO statistics, one person dies every day every 40 seconds for suicide. I thought that was happening where it’s distant to me. I never imagined it in the first place. And I never thought how lonely they were forced to fight.
Last year, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many person to live lonely. In Italy, there was lockdown in March and December, and they couldn’t even meet the people they wanted to meet. Although there was no lockdown in Japan, the school was closed all at once in March, and as a university student (I was enrolled in a Japanese university for half a year), I couldn’t attend school for half a year. It made me sad because I couldn’t make friends in university.
The feeling of knowing that the life that was there was not the norm was similar to that of 2016. When I saw the image of the 2016 earthquake, I was really shocked to know that our life would go away so easily. That led me to become interested in psychology, which is a “study to cure a broken heart.” In the process of studying psychology, I was informed that many disaster victims were forced to live alone.
Taking Italy as an example, it is said that many victims were living in relatives’ homes in the winter of 2016 (the year when the earthquake occurred), rather than putting them in temporary housing immediately after the earthquake (my friend in Visso told me so). For Italians with a strong community love (campanirismo: patriotism to their lands), not being able to live in the community seems to be a much bigger blow than we can imagine. After that, temporary housing called SAE and MAPRE will be built, and the victims will be able to return to their hometown. However, not all of them return to temporary housing, and it seems that many people abandon their hometowns. In particular, in disaster-striken area there are many senior citizens, so it is presumed that some people could not be contacted easily.
I’m sorry that the story changed a lot, but let’s return to suicide here. I myself had a difficult time mentally, and I am still repeating ups and downs, but what I can say from my experience is “how many people live in loneliness”. It was SNS (like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) that helped me when I was having a hard time. On Twitter, mainly English-speaking people send positive words to mental health, and on Facebook, a self-help group of people with mental illness is active. In this pandemic of COVID-19, where it has become difficult to actually hold hands and hug each other, the significance of SNS’s existence may be gradually increasing.
There are other reasons why we find support using SNS meaningful. Getting to know someone who actually has mental difficulties in the real world is not so easy. This is because there is stigma in mental illness, and there is still a strong recognition that “people with mental illness are weak” In Japan, there is a strong awareness that “mental illness is not a real”, and in Italy, there is a strong awareness that “life is a gift from God, so it is not permissible to throw it away”, and in both countries it’s not easy to talk about suicide. We don’t have many opportunities to talk to. I think SNS makes that easy.
Someone helped me when I was suffering, but if there’s anything I can do to reduce suicide, join a volunteer like “anata no ibasyo” or “telefono azzurro” In addition to doing things, if anyone seems to be suffering from SNS, you can say a word. If you think the words are useless, just saying “un abbraccio (sending you a hug)” will save them a lot. Such a small move will eventually save someone’s life.
Helping one person might not change the world, but it can change the world of that person.
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