Tag Archives: suicide

As a Christian, I believe my living is supposed to serve Him and that pretty much rules out any ‘right’ I have to decide when or how I die.

As a scientist who has focused on this question for the past decade, I should have a pretty good idea of who is and isn’t going to die by suicide. But the sad truth is, I don’t.

The recent suicide of WSU quarterback Tyler Hilinski hit me harder than most news stories. I don’t know the circumstances that led up to his death or the state of his mental health, but it made me reflect on the millions of Americans, especially those in my own millennial generation, who suffer from depression and anxiety.

The first time I experienced suicide was when I was 16 and my mom attempted to kill herself through a prescription drug overdose.

Today there is a much more compassionate understanding of the mental and emotional turmoil that would lead someone to take his or her own life and there are no restrictions on funerals for those died this way being held in LDS chapels nor are there any other arrangements that would set them apart from other funerals.

The question of taking any life, even one’s own, is taken very seriously in Buddhism.