Suicide

In her testimony for Christianity Today, Caresse Spencer recounts how she demolished her faith in pursuit of her "best life" during the pandemic.

In 2020, I typed two lethal words: F- God. With that, I resigned from Christianity. As the world fell apart due to the pandemic, my faith crumbled too. I stripped my vocabulary of the term God, soaked in the oppression of my past. Anger consumed me.

Caresse began questioning Christian teachings, especially around sexuality and biblical contradictions. Years of suppressing her desires left her feeling robbed and burdened by faith. Torn between the God she once served and her true self, she finally chose herself, embarking on what she called a “world tour”-exploring queer love, polyamory, sex, drugs, and even other religions. “I said yes to everything I had once denied myself and believed I had found freedom.”

Initially, the rebellion felt exhilarating: “There’s a rush that comes with rebellion and a thrill in doing things once feared.” But anxiety and emptiness crept in. She found herself “floating in a vast emptiness-lost and scared. Life had lost its meaning.” When rebellion no longer satisfied, she was left with “no God, no faith, no love, no peace.”

Suicidal thoughts became a constant presence. At her lowest, she cried out, “Help me!” and then a Christian friend called, asking if she was okay. For the first time, she admitted she was not. Her friend’s support pulled her back from the brink. Later, her sister gently asked, “Do you want to surrender?” Caresse accepted: “It was the invitation I’d been waiting for without even knowing it. I said yes-to surrendering my pride, confusion, rebellion, and emptiness. My life changed in an instant.”

Now, she talks to God about everything and has found peace. “God refused to let me die in disbelief. Because of this grace, I now understand that the only way to find true life is to lose it first.”

TikTok’s grip on our collective attention spans might be even more dangerous than we thought. According to the company’s own research, users may only need to watch 260 videos before developing addictive behaviors. The findings also link excessive use to a series of mental health issues, including impaired memory, loss of analytical skills, diminished empathy, and heightened anxiety.

Lawsuits have filed against TikTok, accusing the platform of falsely advertising its algorithm and putting children at risk. The lawsuits claim that the company prioritized user engagement over the well-being of its younger audience.

The unredacted documents suggest that TikTok struggled to balance safety with its desire to keep users engaged. While the platform implemented features like screen time alerts and usage limits, its own data shows these measures had little effect. In fact, the screen time limit feature reduced usage by only 1.5 minutes per day, raising concerns that such interventions were more about optics than actual safety.

The platform’s effect on body image also emerged as a significant issue. The documents allege that TikTok’s algorithm has a bias toward promoting content from conventionally attractive users. Meanwhile, harmful content—such as videos related to eating disorders and suicidal ideation—often slipped through moderation and became part of algorithm-driven “bubbles” that young users were frequently exposed to.

In a statement to NPR, a TikTok spokesperson responded to the allegations, saying, “We have robust safeguards in place, which include proactively removing suspected underage users, and we have voluntarily launched safety features like default screen time limits, family pairing, and privacy settings for minors under 16.”

A Florida mother has sued artificial intelligence chatbot startup Character.AI accusing it of causing her 14-year-old son's suicide in February of 2024. She said he became addicted to the company's service and deeply attached to a chatbot it created.

Megan Garcia is on a mission to raise awareness about the dangers of AI. Garcia maintains that the site’s protocols to protect children are woefully inadequate, and wants to spare other parents from the pain she’s had to endure.

In an interview, Garcia said, “I want them to understand that this is a platform that the designers chose to put out without proper guardrails, safety measures or testing, and it is a product that is designed to keep our kids addicted and to manipulate them.”

Garcia maintains that her son, Sewell Setzer III, had been chatting with an AI chatbot on the platform for months, and that as a result, he’d become more withdrawn and sullen. Sewell eventually quit the JV basketball team during this time.

It was only after confiscating his phone as punishment for misbehavior that Garcia discovered that many of the chatbot’s conversations with her son were sexually explicit. “I don’t think any parent would approve of that,” said Garcia, adding that the discovery was “gut wrenching.”

In the lawsuit, Garcia says that her son had been specifically chatting with it in the moments before he died. In the exchange, Sewell had mentioned considering self-harm, and the chatbot seemed to encourage that desire. Sewell then shot himself with his stepfather's pistol "seconds" later, the lawsuit said.

Garcia said, “There were no suicide pop-up boxes that said, ‘If you need help, please call the suicide crisis hotline.’ None of that. I don’t understand how a product could allow that, where a bot is not only continuing a conversation about self-harm but also prompting it and kind of directing it.”

After the lawsuit was announced, Character.AI announced a sweeping set of changes designed to protect its younger users, a move that Garcia derided as “too little, too late.”

In May of 2023, over 5,000 Americans were asked “Do you currently have or are you currently being treated for depression?" The study showed that around 24% of women in the U.S. reported currently having or being treated for depression, compared to 11% of men.

These numbers have increased from a similar study in 2017, when 17.6% of women reported currently having or being treated for depression, compared to 9% of men. In six years, the total number of men and women having or being treated for depression increased from 13.5% (2017) to 17.8% (2023).

• According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 1 in 5 Americans suffer from a mental illness.
• Anxiety disorders are the highest reported mental health issue in the U.S. with 42.5 million Americans claiming to suffer from this illness. (Mental Health America).
• Mental health crises account for 60 million visits to primary care and 6 million ER visits annually. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
• More than 40,000 Americans die annually from suicide, which is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S.

Editor’s Note: You can view many more mental health statistics here and here.

In his book, The Anxious Generation, author Jonathan Haidt confirms our worst fears about what happened to Generation Z, the first generation to go through puberty with constant access to the internet. He writes, “… it was not merely that playing and socializing had shifted to phones, tablets, and gaming consoles but that real-life pleasures and risks were also disappearing: rough-and-tumble outdoor activities, opportunities for physical independence, unsupervised recreation.”

Free play had been in retreat and technology on the march since the 1980s. But it took the invention of the smartphone to complete the mutation of childhood from “play-based” to “phone-based.” He writes, "… giving smartphones to young people en masse constitutes the largest uncontrolled experiment humanity has ever performed on its own children.”

While all this was happening, parents (who were hypnotized by their phones, too) were hearing about, and sometimes seeing at home, children succumbing to real distress—depression, anxiety, self-harm, even suicide.

Starting in about 2010, suicide rates for young adolescents in the U.S. shot up (increasing 91% for boys ages 10-14 and 167% for girls). The rate of self-injury almost tripled between 2010 and 2020.

Ironically, the creation of social media—with their promise of “connectedness”—has left young people lonelier and with fewer friends. For girls, the apps have proved toxic, Mr. Haidt writes: “Social media use does not just correlate with mental illness; it causes it …. The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation … in all of us."

There is a brilliant short interview on Patheos with Os Guinness based on his book, A Free People's Suicide. Guinness argues that America may be on the road to a slow death by suicide.

Guinness said,

The title [of the book] goes back to Abraham Lincoln. “As a nation of free men, either we will live free for all time or die by suicide.” Strong, free nations always bring themselves down. That's going to be America's problem. It won't come down from foreign challenges but by internal corruptions, and in this case by the corruption of freedom.

Guinness also adds, "This is explicitly not a partisan issue. ... The framers had a vision of freedom which … was not only negative freedom from but also a positive freedom to be. American freedom now is almost exclusively freedom from—freedom from interference or freedom from constraint."

Editor’s Note: See also historian Will Durant's observation that “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

History is filled with the evidence that nations which forsake godly principles and embrace sin will face severe consequences.

In his article for The Atlantic, David Brooks says that recently he’s been obsessed with the following two questions:

The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.

Brooks concludes: “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy.”

Why are so many young men so angry online?

Men are trailing women in college and in the workplace, fewer of their relationships are leading to marriage, and many men feel masculinity is under attack. When young men turn to places like YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) seeking male solidarity, they often find more rage. “It may look like we have an epidemic of male anger, but under the anger is loneliness and sadness,” says Justin Baldoni, a filmmaker and actor behind Man Enough, a podcast about masculinity.

Often the result is depression, and sometimes worse. The suicide rate among men is about four times higher than that of women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Approximately 65% of men in the US say they’re hesitant to seek professional help for stress, anxiety, or depression, according to a study this month from Cleveland Clinic. And the respondents who expressed such reluctance were twice as likely as other men to spend several hours a day on social media.

A young woman named Trieste Belmont was struggling with depression. Her grandmother had just passed, and she was going through a dramatic break-up. She was teaching a dance class at this time, but without a driver’s license, she relied on a friend to drive her to and from work every week. One day however the friend didn’t show, and Belmont waited for hours before being forced to walk home.

The route she used went over a high bridge. And when she got there, she stopped for a moment. She said:

I was just having one of the worst days of my life. And I was looking down at all the cars, just feeling so useless and like such a burden to everyone in my life that I decided that this was the time and I needed to end my life. I was sobbing and crying and working up the courage to just go through with it, because I knew at that moment that it was going to make everyone’s lives better.

At that moment, a driver, whose face Belmont didn’t see, and whose hand she would never shake, passed over the bridge and hollered out of the window. “Don’t jump,” they said.

It immediately clicked a lightbulb went on in her head; that if a stranger could care enough to speak up, then suicide was not the answer. She enrolled in therapy, and with the help of her friends, family, and therapist, she is far down the road indeed from that dark and fateful day.

Belmont uses the incident as an example to teach others to be kind to people, as it’s never obvious what they’re going through. The smallest kindness is multiplied by the distance, socially, between two strangers.

With Christmas and New Year celebrations behind us, the cold, dark days of January can really get us down. January 16th has been dubbed by experts as the “most depressing day of the year.” But where does the term come from, and what can you do to combat the blues?

The term Blue Monday was coined by psychologist Dr. Cliff Arnall, who worked out a formula to show how the third Monday in January is especially bad. It takes into account factors including the average time for New Year's resolutions to fail, the bad weather, debt, the time since Christmas, and motivational levels.

On average, 1 in 15 people become depressed in winter and suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It is believed that the problem is related to the way that the body responds to light. The main theory suggests that a lack of sunlight may stop a part of the brain called the hypothalamus from working properly. This could impact the production of the hormone melatonin, which makes you feel sleepy. People with SAD produce it in higher levels than normal. The production of serotonin could also be affected, further impacting mood, appetite, sleep, and feelings of depression.

What can you do to feel better? Dr. Arnall said that people should embrace the opportunity to turn over a new leaf. “Whether it's embarking on a new career, meeting new friends, taking up a new hobby or booking a new adventure, January is a great time to make those big decisions.”

His pronouncements could hardly sound more drastic. In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society.

During an interview in late 2012 he said, “I feel like the only solution is pretty clear. In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” Seppuku is an act of ritual disembowelment that was a code among dishonored samurai in the 19th century.

When asked by a school-age boy to elaborate on his mass seppuku theories, Dr. Narita graphically described to a group of assembled students a scene from “Midsommar.” This is a 2019 horror film in which a Swedish cult sends one of its oldest members to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. Dr. Narita said, “Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s a more difficult question to answer. So, if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.”

At other times, he has broached the topic of euthanasia. He said in one interview, “The possibility of making it mandatory in the future … will come up in discussion.” Dr. Narita, 37, said that his statements had been “taken out of context,” and that he was mainly addressing a growing effort to push the most senior people out of leadership positions in business and politics—to make room for younger generations. Nevertheless, with his comments on euthanasia and social security, which appear clear enough, he has pushed the hottest button in Japan.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is not a pleasant or positive illustration, but it does highlight the dangers of losing the biblical doctrine of the Imago Dei and the sanctity of every human life.

Conservatives are not alone in opposing the slippery slope that is the growing trend toward advocating for euthanasia. The liberal periodical The Nation, as well as liberal disability advocates, are raising the alarm as well. The reality is that the lives of Americans with disabilities are being devalued:

Disability is something people are taught to hate and fear. And people with disabilities are frequently not given the resources they need to live or the assistance they need to participate fully in society. The poverty rate for disabled people is more than double that of nondisabled people. Further, the unemployment rate for disabled people is more than double that of nondisabled people. The responsibility for care that is shirked by the state frequently falls on families, who are overwhelmed. Instead of being given the resources they need to thrive, many, if not most, people with disabilities are treated like expensive burdens.

Diane Coleman, the president of Not Dead Yet, has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair and a respirator. She says, “It is not the disabilities that ruin lives. It is the system and society that fails to support disabled people. It’s not religious, nor is it pro-life. It’s about going up against a ‘better dead than disabled mindset.’”

Coleman says medical professionals have devalued her life and others with disabilities. One member of her staff was told by his father that it would have been better if he’d died in the accident that made him a quadriplegic. Coleman said, “Those experiences are so well-known in the community.”

23-year-old Jules Good, assistant director of Not Dead Yet, said of her experience, shared by many others: “When I was 18, I got a pretty rough diagnosis. I was super depressed and attempted suicide. And when I went to my first counseling appointment with a new therapist, I explained my whole deal. And she looked me in the eye and said, ‘Yeah, I’d probably kill myself if I were you.’”

A woman in Sunderland, England nearly leapt to her death from in 2018 from Wearmouth Bridge, very well known as a place where people come to end their lives. She now returns to that site regularly to post messages encouraging others who are having a rough time to get help.

Paige Hunter, now 21, says that when she was a teenager suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, she found herself standing at the edge of the bridge, thinking about ending it all. That’s when a pair of Good Samaritans approached Hunter, telling her “You are worth so much more than this.”

That not only stopped her from jumping, but changed her life. The next day, Hunter wrote those eight words that were told to her on several pieces of paper and posted them all over the bridge where she had her epiphany. That’s where her campaign, Notes of Hope, began.

Since then, Hunter said she’s left over 1,000 laminated, handwritten messages on the Wearmouth Bridge encouraging others struggling with mental health issues to seek help. She’s received lots of feedback and thinks she’s saved dozens of lives through her efforts—and even improved her own. Hunter said, “It’s definitely therapeutic for me to write these messages.”

25-year-old Callum Doggrell said his life was saved by Hunter’s efforts. “I was going through a really rough patch, and I was at a point in my life where I didn’t want to be here anymore,” he said. That was in early 2019. He thought about his one-year-old son and other loved ones and decided to push past his trouble and carry on. He and Hunter are now in contact.

Teen marijuana use has been soaring, and is up nearly 250% just since 2017. The common argument is that unlike “hard drugs,” marijuana is relatively harmless, certainly no worse than alcohol. But just because some people can get away with smoking it doesn’t mean everyone can. And the pot today’s teenagers are smoking is not the same as the pot their parents smoked back in college. The concentrations of THC, its psychoactive chemical, in today’s marijuana are much higher today than in the past. Many teens also consume refined products, which can have THC levels of 90% or more.

According to a new study from Columbia University researchers, recreational pot use in teens is associated with increased depression and increased suicidal thoughts. It’s also associated with higher levels of truancy and fighting, as well as lower grade point averages.

A new Danish study estimates that nearly a third of cases of schizophrenia in men in their 20s could be a result of pot use. The Washington Post recently ran a major story featuring stories of parents whose children started experiencing severe psychotic episodes as a result of pot, sometimes leading to suicide. The Post notes, “That sense of disbelief—pot wouldn’t do this—is prevalent among parents who have watched their teenagers become gripped by addiction.” And as Politico noted earlier this year, scientists are only beginning to do serious research on the health effects of pot.

A new study found that hospitalizations for pediatric suicidal behavior increased by 163 percent over an 11-year period. According to an article in The New York Times, “The portion of American hospital beds occupied by children with suicidal or self-harming behavior has soared over the course of a decade … The study did not include psychiatric hospitals, or reflect the years of the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that it is a considerable undercount.”

A doctor quoted in the article lamented, “The hospital ends up being the place you go when all else fails. Could you have nipped it in the bud earlier? That is a systems-of-care problem.” She added, “This is playing itself out in an attention-grabbing way.”

One the study’s co-authors, pointed to “a growing use of social media among children and adolescents and in particular, growing use among younger adolescents,” which she said had been shown to increase symptoms of depression.

Whatever the reason, she added, “we don’t have the magic formula to figure out how to dial this back and make things better.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Note the crying need for the gospel and for the church, especially considering the quote at the end—“we don’t have the magic formula to figure out how to dial this back and make things better.”

The most recent CDC biannual Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey found that children who identify as part of the LGB community are significantly more likely to undergo serious mental health struggles.

More than half of female high schoolers who identify as bisexual have seriously considered attempting suicide. This is compared to 20 percent of heterosexual female students. A staggering 26 percent of bisexual female students attempted suicide. This is compared to 15 percent of lesbians and eight percent of straight girls.

Among males, bisexuals were 40 percent likely to consider suicide, with the rate being 35 percent among gay teens. This is compared to 10 percent of heterosexual teens who considered suicide. Five percent actually attempted suicide, compared to 20 percent of gay teens and 17 percent of bisexual males.

One researcher said these rates are so high because bisexual students have trouble fitting in with peers, as they can be rejected by both the straight and lesbian communities.

In an issue of Christianity Today, Glenn Pearson shares the story of his journey to faith:

You’re probably familiar with the popular arcade game called Whac-A-Mole, where mechanical moles randomly pop out of their holes while you try whacking them with a mallet before they retreat. I grew up in a “reverse Whac-A-Mole” world, feeling like the only mole in a family of mallets.

All the men in my family had significant issues. When I was 12, my dad left our family. He withheld both financial and emotional support, and he rejected or mocked conventional displays of affection. In Matthew 7:9, Jesus asks, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Well, I have someone I can nominate.

But my dad wasn’t the only disaster in our family. When my grandfather was in his 60s, he decided he had cancer, so one day he jumped in front of a speeding train at a railroad crossing. His was not our family’s sole suicide. My brother suffered from schizophrenia and manic depression. After spending most of the last 20 years of his life in and out of mental hospitals, he hanged himself. My mother’s side didn’t escape dysfunction either. Her father had an emotional breakdown and spent several months in a hospital for indigents. There wasn’t a healthy man anywhere in sight.

Religion played almost no role in my family. But deep down I knew that something was wrong in my life, which led me to dabble in occult practices like astrology, séances, and white magic.

During my sophomore year of college, I stumbled into a campus Christian meeting and heard the gospel for the first time. As the presenter spoke, the Holy Spirit burned two realizations into my heart: that this “new thing” was 100 percent true, and that I would be a part of it. That night, even though I knew almost nothing about the theology of salvation, I brushed aside my intellectual skepticism and eagerly made a commitment to Jesus.

Over the next few months, I became increasingly involved with a couple of campus Christian groups. I was impressed by how “together” the members seemed and by the quality of their relationships. I also began applying my intellectual curiosity to questions surrounding the Bible’s reliability. I discovered far more support for the intellectual integrity of the Christian faith than I had ever supposed.

Years ago, I visited a counselor hoping to piece together the complexities of my background. After hearing parts of my story, he commented, “There is no explanation for you. In my professional opinion, someone with your background should be unemployable, divorced three times, abusive, an alcoholic, or some other kind of addict. The fact that you’re none of these things is a testimony to God’s incredible grace.”

In recent years, I’ve established one-on-one mentoring relationships with about two dozen younger men. I just try to understand their circumstances, communicate that I’m on their side, and point them to practical insights rooted in Scripture and tempered by real-life experience. Essentially, I’m offering these men something I never had. It’s just one way God continually uses what could have been a curse on my life to bring blessing to others

Editor’s Note: Glenn E. Pearson spent 19 years as executive vice president of the Georgia Hospital Association. He and his wife currently live outside Los Angeles.

The term “deaths of despair” was coined in 2015 by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. The researchers were seeking to find what was causing the decline in U.S. life expectancies in the later part of the 20th century. They discovered the dramatic increase in death rates for middle-aged, white non-Hispanic men and women was coming from three causes: drug overdoses, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease. Deaths from these causes have increased between 56 percent and 387 percent and average 70,000 per year.

The researchers said, “The pillars that once helped give life meaning—a good job, a stable home life, a voice in the community—have all eroded.” Those pillars are certainly important, but another factor may have an even more detrimental effect.

Research suggests a potential cause of deaths of despair could be the decline in religious participation that began in the late 1980s. The researchers found “there is a strong negative relationship between religiosity and mortality due to deaths of despair.”

In 2010, country singer Jason Aldean released a song called “Church Pew or Bar Stool” in which he complains about how he’s stuck in a “church pew or bar stool kind of town.” He sings, “There’s only two means of salvation around here that seem to work / Whiskey or the Bible, a shot glass or revival.” That’s a crude dichotomy, but it appears to increasingly be the choice many Americans face. They’ll either find hope from a community of faith or the lonely despair that leads them to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

Two Harvard health professors (one an epidemiologist) note that declining church attendance is a public health crisis.

Of course, the point of the gospel is not to lower your blood pressure, but to know and love God. ... But there are many public health benefits of church attendance. Consider how it appears to affect health care professionals. Some of my (Tyler’s) research examined their behaviors over the course of more than a decade and a half using data from the Nurses’ Health Study, which followed more than 70,000 participants.

Medical workers who said they attended religious services frequently (given America’s religious composition, these were largely in Christian churches) were 29 percent less likely to become depressed, about 50 percent less likely to divorce, and five times less likely to commit suicide than those who never attended.

And, in perhaps the most striking finding of all, health care professionals who attended services weekly were 33 percent less likely to die during a 16-year follow-up period than people who never attended. These effects are of a big enough magnitude to make a practical difference and not just a statistical difference.

Our findings aren’t unique. A number of large, well-designed research studies have found that religious service attendance is associated with greater longevity, less depression, less suicide, less smoking, less substance abuse, better cancer and cardiovascular- disease survival, less divorce, greater social support, greater meaning in life, greater life satisfaction, more volunteering, and greater civic engagement.

The findings are extensive and growing.