Baffled and puzzled researchers and observers are surprised by the increasing level of suicide by people in midlife in the last decade. Obviously the reasons are numerous and varied, and deeply personal for each individual that considers and/or makes this decision. In my own case, I have had seriously considered this act on a number of occasions as an adult, but rarely to the point of being moments away from executing it. Why ? At different times over the last three plus decades, there were a number of different reasons for the most part, but a couple of reasons that were at core in all circumstances. Among them are perpetual unhappiness; occupational unfulfillment, dissatisfaction, and frustrations; financial stress and hardship; lonelyness, isolation, and lack of love and affection; and and overall dispair and gloom. Having a lifelong chronic case of depression, defined clinicly as dystymia, which is exacerabated by these reasons, only adds fuel to the fire for the potential for suicide. When one reaches an age well along into middle age, you more or less give up hope and cease to have any meaningful dreams or aspirations of one's life changing and achieving the potential and success you have failed at through your life. What is left is an emptyness, a feeling and belief of a life that is largely over and has little to promise in the future. Declining health and a noticeable downturn in one's senses and own physical appearance, strength, stamina, and resiliency are also some noteworthy contributing factors. My own particular circumstances echo these sentiments, feelings, and outlook held by many in my general age group. When you add winter weather and its cold, snow, lack of sunshine, and hostile storms, it just adds more to the mix. I am well aware of my mental illness and have to try very hard not to let it get to me. As I get older and more experienced and better understanding of the entire process, I am better able to recognize symptoms as well as potential and ongoing trigger mechanisms in my environment. One has to set goals and objectives to look forward to which can reduce and even eliminate psychological tendencies to drift in the direction of self-harm. For me, that means a number of things. I have to focus hard on my hobbies and pastimes to keep me looking forward; I have to maintain hope of better employment that is more fulfilling, meaningful, rewarding, stimulating, and with greater compensation that will allow me to enjoy activities and events that are both participatory and spectatorial that will also benefit me in many ways. Currently, I live in a place where the climate is hostile and detrimental to me personally, so I have to always continue to believe I will relocate to a place where the climate is more to my advantages not only psychologically but also physically. There are other areas that I also have to keep in mind in a positive way as well to help me out. Being alone and isolated for the most part from most people can be a problem, but I have tried very hard not to make that a problem although there have been times when circumstances have compelled me to reach out for significant others with both success and failure. This is unquestionably a genetic condition which has significant major trigger mechanisms environmentally. When one has a condition like mine, one has to take it day to day and try to focus exclusively on the potential positives that may occur in the future and not on the seemingly endless of negatives that are in the present. To not do so has potential disastrous consequences. You never know what the future holds in the coming months and years, but hopefully it will be okay. I am fearful and lacking confidence in the future that awaits me, but I try hard not to look at things in the negative when in that mindset. Fortunately, dwelling on the negatives in my own past and the long of history of failures and shortcomings that has defined me in the past and continue to is not something that has any kind of hold on me ever which is a positive in its own strange way. And equally strange is the knowledge that there are many, many others out there in the United States like me with problems and major shortcomings that in a harmful environment can trigger unpleasant thoughts. This outre form of kinship gives me strength at times in only what could be described as strange.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/19suicide.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Dysthymia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia
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