Saving 10,000: Winning a War on Suicide in Japan

 

When you call a suicide helpline in Japan you may have to dial that number 30 or 40 times, because the lines are so busy. A lot of people have a lot of problems, but nobody to talk to, nobody to listen, and they say “Please God, someone answer the phone.”
I dream of a war, a war on suicide, but I don’t even know who is the enemy. Who is it, what is it, that’s killing so many of us? One million people in the world every year, 30,000 lives lost in Japan alone. I don’t know what I’m doing, I just know I have to do something.
In Japan nobody dares to talk about the causes of suicide or how to fight them, but manuals teaching you how to kill yourself sell over a million copies. What if 10,000 lives could be saved in Japan? Not by miracles but by ideas, by honesty. Would anybody dare to listen? If death is darkness this is about life, this is about trying to take back life from the jaws of death; this is about choosing hope over despair, even when you’re desperately hanging on by your fingernails.

http://youtu.be/oo0SHLxc2d0