This past week, an Academy parent passed along a copy of an article from the August/September 2017 issue of First Things entitled, “Dying of Despair” by Aaron Kheriaty, a professor of psychiatry and medical ethics. The article described how our nation’s suicide rate has spiked over the past ten years, especially among young people. Kheriaty cites both immediate causes, such as the utilitarian turn in education and the advent of invasive social media, and the more generalized social disintegration long noted by social scientists. This more subterranean trend Kheriaty summarizes as follows:
Social bonds are weakening, and the social fabric is fraying. We are at risk of losing a solid identity, a clear orientation, and the coherent narratives that give meaning to our individual and shared lives. In a a world stripped of universally binding truths, the sense that we are losing solid foundations leads to free-floating angst. This is a condition that cannot be tolerated for long (p. 23).
There are bright spots in the American social landscape, however. Kheriaty points out that individuals committed to “prayer, religious faith, participation in a religious community, and practices like cultivating gratitude, forgiveness, and other virtues” are less susceptible suicide, depression, or drug use (p. 24).
What does this mean for us? Perhaps it can prompt us to remember what we are doing when we…
…send our kids to a Catholic school,
.volunteer in their classrooms,
…wait to pick them up from a late track practice,
…invite a new family to our home for dinner,
…pray for our child’s teacher—
We are weaving the fabric of a local Catholic culture. We are doing our part to sustain a community of faith that may be sustaining others more than we know.