HOEDSPRUIT: Community takes part in suicide awareness walk

The Hoedspruit Victim Support Unit (VSU) together with Hlokomela and the Delpoort Family, whose young man committed suicide a year ago on September 29, hosted a Suicide Awareness Walk in Hoedspruit on Saturday.

Debby Thomson from VSU, stated that the purpose of the walk was to raise awareness of the prevalence of suicide and to let people know that there is always another option.

They also distributed flyers with a list of different counsellors and support services both in our area and nationally that are available to anyone who is feeling like they are at that stage.

The aim to host the walk every year just to keep reminding people that there is help out there and that suicide is not the last option.

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“As part of Victim Support unit, we have to attend to a number of suicide scenes as well as assist with attempted suicide incidents and it is always very difficult, both for the Victim Support Unit Volunteers to have to experience and for the families to have to cope with. As this is suicide awareness month and the date of the walk coincided with the first anniversary after the suicide of the Delpoort’s young 16-year-old son, they as a family approached us to assist them in doing something both to spread awareness against the need for suicide as well as to do something to honour their son on the anniversary of his death,” Thomson explained.

“WE, of course were very happy to get on board and assist them. The march was arranged in conjunction with a similar event in Tzaneen on the September 24 which was arranged there by families who had also lost to suicide. During the month they also all did talks to high school kids in both towns about Suicide and how to prevent it,” she continued.

Suicidal stats according to VSU, last year – more than 800 000 successful suicides globally that translates into 1 every 40 seconds.

According to VSU for every successful suicide, there is an average of another 20 attempted suicides, which brings the further down to 1 every 2 seconds.

In SA, approximately 6 to 8 000 people commit suicide every year.

That translates to 8 % of all deaths in South Africa are due to Suicide (and in a country with one of the top 5 highest murder rates in the world, that makes that figure even more shocking).

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White South African Men have the highest suicide rate in SA.

Average stats reveal that 14 men of all ages, die every day.

Teens specifically are a very vulnerable age group with an average of 1 in every 4 teens in South Africa having tried or contemplated suicide at some stage.

One out of every seven unnatural deaths in teens is due to suicide.