Synthesis Essay - Suicide

Is medical treatment or psychiatric help more successful in preventing suicide?

To treat people who have suicidal thoughts with medication is not going to help as much as psychiatric help, because the medication only lasts up to a certain amount of time, mostly only a few hours, but if you go to a psychiatrist, he may be able to change your way how you see life and to give you a second chance to start living again. The problem with psychiatric help is that you can fall into your old habits very easily, but if you keep taking your medication day for day, the chance to get back to where you came from is very small.

In 2002, suicide accounted for about 30,000 deaths in the US alone and approximately 877,000 deaths worldwide—1.5% of the global burden of disease. It is often difficult to predict due to its complex nature. Some of the biological factors for suicide include hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation, 

low blood cholesterol levels and several biological features related to failures in neurotransmitter and neuroendocrine systems, such as the serotonergic, noradrenergic, dopaminergic, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) systems, have been proposed. Even though these things are more less the reason for suicidal thoughts or problems than mental illness, it should be treated, because everything that makes someone feel so bad that they want to kill themselves is not right. Medical treatment to prevent suicidal thoughts is helpful in that case that it stops some brain functions, but you have to take a couple pills a day to actually get the process started. Many people who forget or who don't want to take their medicine fall back into deep depression and sadness and they have to be helped in another way. (http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000271)

On the other hand, psychiatric illness is a major contributing factor to suicide risk, with mood disorders such as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder being associated with about 60% of suicides. Psychiatric disorders are diagnosed in more than 90% of completed suicides, and more than 80% of these disorders are untreated at the time of death, which is the reason why people have to get psychiatric help, because a mental illness is diagnosed way more often than biological dysfunctions. These people feel the "heavy weight of the world laying on their chest" (Suicide Prevention). Psychiatrists try to turn of the voice inside of the people's head which is saying "why suffer why not just get over with the complexity of your intricate design" (Suicide Prevention". This kind of help actually gets into people's mind, with spoken words they reach more than with medical treatment that just stops parts of your brain of working.

I think that psychiatric help is way more successful in preventing suicide even though 80% of all the people who committed suicide and who were diagnosed with a mental illness actually went and got help. People who know that someone in their family or from their friends are suffering from such a thing should talk to the person, they may don't want to be helped, but at the end they'll see how much more fun it it to be alive than to fall into depression and finally ending their life.

MY GLOGSTER: http://www.glogster.com/frannydog/suicide-poetry-project/g-6koaie2mo0cbfh1qpkbqta0

Book 10: The Diary Of A Young Girl

Otto Frank moved his family to Amsterdam from Frankfurt, Germany, their place of origin, once the Nazis came to power and began to enforce cruel laws enacted against the Jewish population. In Amsterdam, Otto enjoys some success as a businessman, but he keeps a close watch on the spreading power of the Nazis. When the Germans invade the Netherlands, the Frank family goes into hiding in a small area above Otto's office. They are joined by the van Daan family. Many of Otto's employees aid the hideaways as they wait and pray for an end to their terrifying ordeal. The war takes a terrible toll on Holland, and food becomes quite scarce. Starvation and crime become rampant in the small country, which only worsens the plight of the Frank family and their friends who hide with them.

On the pages of her diary, Anne explores love and questions the meaning of life in a way that is quite typical of a young teen, yet quite extraordinary under the circumstances under which she lives. Her portrayal provides a stark glimpse into her extraordinary ordeal. She captivates the reader with an innocence that contrasts the stark reality of her situation.

The diary ends abruptly on August 1, 1944. There is no sign-off and no explanation, although it is known from historical records that the family was betrayed and captured by the Nazis.

Book 9: Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone

Young Harry Potter has to lead a hard life: His parents have died in a car crash when he was still a baby, and he is being brought up by his Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. For some reason unbeknownst to the bespectacled ten-year-old, the Dursleys let him live in the small chamber under the stairs, and treat him more like vermin than like a family member. His fat cousin Dudley, the Dursley's real son, keeps bothering Harry all the time. On his eleventh birthday, Harry Potter finally receives a mysterious letter from a certain Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, telling him that he is chosen as one of the future students of that supposedly renowned school. Hagrid, the gigantic man who brought the letter, finally introduces Harry into the real circumstances of his life: His parents were a wizard and a witch, they were killed by the evil wizard Voldemort protecting him. Harry still has a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead from that event. Since he survived the attack as a baby, and also somehow deprived Voldemort from his powers, he has been famous in the wizarding world ever since. The Dursleys, strong disbelievers in that magical crap, never told Harry anything about his true self. So, Harry is strongly surprised, yet absolutely happy to start his training. At Hogwarts, Harry meets his teachers, and becomes friends with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. The three of them accidentally find out that the potions master, Severus Snape, seems to plot on stealing something that is guarded by a three-headed dog. Since nobody would believe some first years to have found out such important things that even would incriminate a Hogwarts teacher, they take it on themselves to find out what Snape is up to. Their quest for the truth leads across many obstacles, from keeping up the everyday school life, a bewitched Quidditch match (Quidditch is a popular wizard sport), Fluffy, the three-headed monster dog and quite some tasks one has to overcome to get to the guarded object.




I think it is a great book because it tells the story with a lot of imaginary. It is free for little children as well as for adults.

Book 8: The Colour

In The Colour, Joseph and Harriet Blackstone are newlyweds who've just migrated to a farm in New Zealand in the 19th century, he to flee a shameful secret, she for the sense of adventure. In this new, harsh land, they find they barely get along. When Joseph finds some gold, called "the colour," in the creek by the farm, he hides it with without telling Harriet. When he can't make a living from the farm, he heads for the gold fields on the other side of the mountains, leaving Harriet behind. After a series of calamities at the farm, Harriet takes the dog and sets off in search of him. Rose Tremain's novel tells a story about the harhsness of a bleak world and the human heart, and what it takes to overcome them both.



This book was actually a bit harder even though i read it in German. It tells a lot about life and it has a lot of metaphors and stuff which are also hard to understand in German. But it#s a great book and i liked the way how the author directed the reader through the story.

Book 7: A hat full of sky

Tiffany Aching, the levelheaded heroine of The Wee Free Men leaves the Chalk to head off into the mountains and begin her apprenticeship in witchcraft, while Rob Anybody, the leader of the Nac Mac Feegle, settles down to married life with the new Kelda. If that doesn't make any sense to you, then you can see why you need to read the first book first.

But there's a strange, invisible creature called a Hiver that's after Tiffany. Drawn by her growing power, it lives by taking over the bodies of powerful sorcerers, and only the Nac Mac Feegle know it's coming. But the new Kelda, jealous of Tiffany, doesn't want to let them leave the Chalk to rescue her.

I liked the Book becausse it was a short one, but with a really good story. I like those kinda magic witch science stories, because they are all different compared to each other. The vocabularies were easy and it had big letters wht made it easier to read.

Book 6: Slumdog Millionaire

In Mumbai, the eighteen year-old orphan from the slums Jamal Malik is tortured by the policemen in a precinct accused of cheating a game show. Jamal, who has no education and works in a call center serving tea, is close to wining twenty million rupees in the show "Kaun Banega Crorepati?" (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?) hosted by Prem Kumar, giving precise answers to the questions and raising suspicion of fraud. The police inspector shows the videotape and after each question, Jamal tells parts of his childhood with his brother Salim, his crush for Latika and their fight to survive on the streets to justify each correct answer, guided by his common sense and past experience, and prove his innocence.



I liked about the book, that the story is really interesting and it was easy to follow what happened. It was a bit hard to understand because the vocabularies weren't that easy, but it worked and I enjoyed reading the book!

Book 5 - The Simpsons

'The Simpsons' is not a real book, it is more like a comic. It's about a family with Mother, Father, and their 3 Children Lisa, Bart and Megan. Homer Simpson, the father, always does a lot of funny stories like he tries to loose weight or to find a job, but everything just ends up with no effort. His son Bart is also a kind of person who isn't doing usual things. He is going to school, but there, f.e. he has a few enemies, but he always met them ut of school and does some kind of funny or more weird stuff with them together. The whole book contains 6 short comics about that what happens to the family at the moment, and you can also find a few comics about Krusty, The Clown, h is also a character from 'The Simpsons', he has his own TV-Show in the show 'The Simpsons', but he is a very weird character. And you can find 2 short Comics about 'Itchy and Scrachty', a mouse and a cat, who fight each other without any word or a reason.
All in all, the comics are very funny to read and I enjoyed to read them in my free time, because they often made me laugh.