Article Review

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Article Review

The presentation is a review of an article by Dokoupil titled; The Suicide Epidemic and What We Can Do to Help. The article presents a series of opinions accounting for the increase of suicide cases in the United States of America. The author provides a touching story on the suicidal death of Thomas, a 56 year old man, and how this affected his family. According to Dokoupil, suicide is not just a personal problem or a generational tic; it is a resultant factor of the way human beings are living today. The article is concluded with various ideas on how to help potential suicide victims.

From the author’s perspective, the first step towards reducing the number of suicide cases is to get rid of items used in suicidal attempts and real suicides like guns and violent media. Solving the problem of unemployment is also another way of solving this problem. It is also necessary to inculcate the fear of death into people. Basically, these solutions are viable and doable if everyone will be willing to do them. These ideas were especially supported by Thomas’s son who vowed to never let suicide rob another family of one of its own. So far, evidence shows that in places where there are no guns, suicide rates are low. However, the other problems have become more severe and this probably explains the increase in suicide.

The author did not consider the fact that there are other causes of suicide apart from guns and the stress that emanates from unemployment. His suggestions are not practicable as problems like unemployment are linked to a lot of factors including the lack f resources and even education. The information used is not relevant as Thomas was an old man who did not experience any of the problems being cited in the article. However, the author uses current data to provide evidence for the proposed solutions.

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