I would like us to consider a subject which becomes important to us all from time to time, but which is generally confusing and threatening so that we normally try to pass on from it as quickly as possible. The subject is suicide.

There are a number of reasons why I am concerned with talking about it. I am continually involved as a minister in suicide cases, both accomplished and contemplated. The other day, our ministerial association met with the staff of the mental health clinic, and they told us that in our community of 12,000, their clinic handles an average of 26 crisis interventions a month involving suicide contemplations. Finally, I recently noticed an interesting article on the subject in our paper titled, "Doctor blames suicides on ‘fairy tale’ outlook." If you didn’t notice or…