Reasons Why Teachers Commit Suicide
Hello folks! I hope you are all doing well despite the quarantine these days. We hope and fervently pray that this pandemic will end soon so that we could also go back to our daily routine without any worries.
Today I will be talking about a very sensitive topic that is real in our setting as teachers. Well, you may have already heard about rare cases of “suicide” among teachers. There were already previous news about teachers cutting their own lives because of problems or reasons that burdened them. We simply question why those teachers were able to do that to themselves without even knowing the real scenario they may be facing that led them to their dark fate.
Well, today I will list down the most probable reasons why educators cut-off their lives that easily.
FAMILY/RELATIVE PROBLEMS
This is a very rare reason because most of us have close family ties that bind us, but in some cases there are people who tried to survive alone, even if he/she got a family but what if the family is the main reason for the burden he/she is facing? Teachers are not exempted because there are teachers who tried so hard to make up things with their family. An example is a father who is a drunkard and always ask for money or if the mother is a “sugarol” who always empty her pocket due to playing “mahjong or tong-its”. If the teacher is the only breadwinner of the family and the family members are not cooperating. Well, this reason is possible enough for a certain person to go insane if he/she cannot cope up with the weight of the trials alone. These are most of the family related problems teachers are prone to:
Vices of family members;
Family feud;
Jealousy of relatives;
MONEY PROBLEMS
This reason is true somehow since most teachers are tied-up with debts and loans after all. We all know that most teachers are the breadwinner but depending on the situation, there are some cases wherein a certain debt is too huge that it is impossible to settle in just 3 years. Most teachers do have loans but we can cope up with that by controlling our loans according only to our needs but how about those other who don’t think like us. There are teachers who figured it out late that all the interest has come higher than what is expected to the extent that nothing is left on the salary except debts. Somehow this is the reason why other teachers do the bad deed to immediately run from the problem in an instant, requiring the end of his/her own life.
WORK-RELATED PROBLEMS
This reason is the most common among the teachers who committed suicide across the country. Stress is the number one suspect when it comes to work-related problems, plus anxiety, which sooner becomes depression. Being a teacher requires more time in making your lesson plans, instructional materials, reports, forms etc., and you may somehow heard the complaints of teachers having to deal with these bulk of works. Aside from teaching (which is the main function of a teacher), teachers are also obliged to give reports and so many documents needed by the division for some reasons, thus adding to the overall loads of teaching, plus the ancillary designations like being a coach or a coordinator and so on. More likely, most teachers can cope with these kind of workload but there are also those who are really fragile enough in handling work-related problems which caused them to resort to cut-off their problems resorting to suicide.
DRUGS
People who work for drugs and those who use drugs usually will go insane and may think weird thoughts as the effect of long term drug use. This will cause them to hallucinate and create heinous acts and even committing suicide as the result of the drug in their bodies. I have known 2 teachers here in our place who were drug users. They were discharge from their post as teachers, and the other one lived in prison. The fact that even teachers are prone to this addiction because teachers are also human thus can also do bad things like taking their own life as well.
BROKEN HEART AND BREAK-UP
This may be the most crazy reason of all since by just hearing the word “broken heart” we tend to just smile to ourselves because most of us have already experience this maybe twice or even thrice in our lives, lucky for us who are strong enough to bear the pain. There are some teachers who tend to cut-off their lives because of some love problems. It is vague to us because this reason is really just very light, but maybe for others they gave it all that’s why they aren’t that prepared for the huge pain causing them to just end it. There are even those who tried to commit suicide because a partner cheated (for married couples) resorting to the annulment of marriage causing havoc to the entire family. Break-ups have never been easy for others that they tend to think suicide is the answer to end their pains.
To all teachers out there, please contain yourselves and embrace life as it is. We need to live our lives the best way we can even if life gets too hard. As teachers, problems are already part of our system, whether we like it or not we are all bound to have problems but if we have God as the center of everything, trust me no matter how difficult our problem is, we will surely cope with it anytime soon. Having a circle of true friends also is a great help to give us encouragement and advice. The first person to always have our back is of course our family. It is very uncommon for Filipinos to have families that are wicked, most of our families are close to us and they are the first person to stay with us through thick and thin so there is no room for bad thoughts to come up whenever we feel lonely. Life is a gift from above and we don’t have the right to cut-it off on our own so maybe just enjoy it to the fullest even if you breakdown, remember that there is always a rainbow after the rain. – Clea | Helpline PH
