If you had to guess the profile of a person most likely to commit suicide, chances are you would conjure up the image of an angst-ridden teenage boy or young man. Ten years ago, you would have been right; men aged 15-24 were the highest risk group.
However, the Samaritans last week warned that middle-aged men are more likely to take their own life than any other group; older men now account for just under half of the 5,600 or so suicides a year in the UK.
Over the past eight years the number of younger men (while still worrying) who commit suicide has gone down, while the rate of suicides of men aged between 35 and 54 has gone up, almost unnoticed.
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When you’ve been the humanist lie that the end of all things is the happiness of man, rather than the glory of God (sola dei glora) for your whole life, so much so, that you it becomes part of your subconscious worldview, then no wonder you reach a point where the prospect of happiness seems out of reach and thus life itself a burden.