I honestly believe religion creates suicides in many cases. Kids whose views are not accepted by parents or church are prone. I think we are better off without religion period.

We need more mental health education, funding and awareness. What we don't need is guilt, horror, fear.

Nope. We need compassion, lovingkindness, and a willingness to witness and be present for anothers' suffering for that.

Can I ask a crass question? While an undeniable tragedy to loved ones... why do we need to prevent suicide? There are seven billion people on this planet.

I get it if it’s a teen. Young people have less experience to fall back on and less perspective ... and are probably more emotional and subject to rash decisions

But if an adult is so profoundly unhappy with life, who am I to tell them things will get better?

I wonder what the suicide rate was 3000 years ago

Hardly. Religions cause suicide all the time.

Why prevent it?

Suicide ought to be a right, the ultimate right, in fact.

When Drukheim released his study on suicide, which also was the egining of the science of sociology, he showed that the more rigid the religion a person belonged to the higher the liklihood that they woudl commit suicide. To give you an idea Catholics were about three times as likely as the general population to commit suicide.

So, religion actually increases the li9klihood of suicide.

If you consider that religion is based on instillihngt guilt fear and shame, it is pretty obvious why they increase the risk of suicide.

Here is a link to Durkheim's study. [thoughtco.com]

There’s some truth to that. When Christianity was taking over the world, the idea of a better afterlife was added so that those in power could stay in power, and with the promise of a better afterlife, the slaves would heed their masters without uprising. However, with the promise of a better afterlife, slaves would opt out rather than suffer at the hands of the church. So they made suicide a sin so that they could continue to keep the slaves as long as they could.

As to why Christians are “pro-life,” they’re not. They just want you die on THEIR terms, not yours.

I think lacking belief in an afterlife is a far more compelling reason not to kill yourself than thinking you’ll go to heaven.

I would suggest that religion encourages suicide because there's always that thought that "there will be another life - another chance to get sh@t right". If people really understood the finality of death they might not be so quick to take that route.

Christianity made me want to commit suicide when I was deep in the church. I was stuck in a situation where no matter what avenue I chose to rectify it, according to the church, I would burn in hell. I had an epiphany that made me stop popping Xanax like it was candy and drinking myself into blacking out while hoping I wouldn't wake up. And here I am, not shackled to the confines of religion. Free and alive...so, religion does not keep people from committing suicide.

If you are suicidal likelyhood is it's for one of two reasons.

Neurology; in which case it can be managed but is wholly determined by the brain otherwise.

Really bad life experience and trauma mainly related to poverty and abuse!

If you want to stop suicide you have to stop poverty which would in turn help reduce violent and other forms of abusive bahaviours. Also build strong support networks for people with suicidal feelings ... Support is the single biggest factor and one the church has systematically failed on throughout history.

There is still a surprising amount of missconception, superstitiion and damaging control excercised by religous communities upon vulnerable people with mental health issues, suicide being the most acute end result.

The church categorically makes the sitution much worse in various ways; judgement .. lack of correct support networks.. confusion over possession and mental health .. all sorts of problems are created.

Funny you should mention this. Apparently, the opposite is true, at least for LGBTQ+ folks: [huffingtonpost.com]

No.
We don't need religion for anything.

To me, if you truly believe in a marvelous Heaven you should hurry up the process of getting there, except Gawd told you not to.........ooopsy!

I would bet more religious people commit suicide. Is there some place that might have statistics?

I always thought we would have less suicide without religion.

Seems to me, If you keep telling a depressed person that the afterlife is better, and there is no sadness or pain, they would want to check it out...

Let's not forget the 72 virgins...

Not that I would want 72 virgins, but I am sure someone would...

Really....

Religion created to also prevent people from killing themselves for fear of going to hell? If no religion was created you would have no knowledge of hell.

Pro life until the human leaves the birthing canal. After that, it’s either kill it or use it.

No. We just need clear thinking and good mental health care. Both, unfortunately, are in short supply, and so religion's pretense to make suicide a "sin", possibly even the unpardonable sin, may play a role, just as it plays a role apparently in helping restrain some people from pillaging and raping their way through life, via the threat of eternal perdition.

But one needs to be careful in suggesting that religion is literally needed to prevent harms. That's rather like someone living in, say, Naples, Italy, claimig that the mafia is needed so that the garbage gets collected. Just because the mafia has inserted itself into civic life in those parts of the world, and provides things that society and government fail to provide as a rationalization for the protection money it extorts, does not mean the mafia is literally needed to deliver public services.

I think religion increases suicide. A believer contemplating suicide is usually told to pray to God or some other deity for relief from the depression or solve the problem. If the depression doesn't end and problem not solved they are left with no recourse as where agnostics and atheists are better informed of proper ways to help the sufferer.

More likely, religion is the direct or indirect cause of a great many suicides.

No - Just my take.
People end their life either spontaneously for instance in a fit of melancholy brought on my some all consuming life event - or in a measured thought out way, so they won't get found out -till its too late - anything else is para-suicide. Any which way they do it - religion wouldn't have stopped them; or it would have stopped them way before the planning stage.

Religion is only needed when a person doesn't have the guts or brains to face reality.