What's up, porch? How are we doing tonight?

Hey, good to see you. My name is Timothy E. Tick. I'm one of the teaching

professors here at Watermark on Sunday mornings as well as right here at the porch on Tuesday night.

So I want to just say welcome to everyone that is right here in the room in Dallas, Texas.

And then also another way of people watching all over the nation at various porch live locations.

Just want to say hello to porch live Tulsa, porch live midland, porch live Indianapolis tonight.

I hope that all is well with you. And then I know that we have people all over the nation in world who are just tuning in by themselves in your apartment, in your condo wherever you're at tonight.

I'm glad that you are watching tonight is really a special night. It's an important night because we are going to talk about a really heavy subject.

We're going to talk tonight about suicide. And so I just want to start by asking you if you would just slip up your hand if your life has ever been impacted by suicide.

So I just want you to take a minute. I want you to look around and I want you to see the various hands raised that suicide has impacted a good majority of the room tonight.

That's one of the reasons that I want to step into it. Another reason that I want to step into it is simply because statistics would show that young adults that the percentage of people that have thought about suicide that have contemplated it or have activated on it is significant.

So just to share some stats with you suicide rates have increased by approximately 36% between 2000 in 2021.

In 2021, which is really the most recent statistics, someone died by suicide about every 11 minutes here in the United States.

In 2021, an estimated 12.3 million American adults seriously thought about suicide. Just think about that. 12 million people seriously thought about it.

3.5 million people planned a suicide attempt in 1.7 million people attempted suicide.

Suicide was the second leading cause of death for people between 20 and 34 here in the United States. So just think about that.

People in your age group, the second leading cause of death for young adults is suicide.

Psychiatry professor at UCLA Carl Flesher says this while suicide rates are rising among young people.

The highest rates are among young adults ages 25 to 34. So if that's you, statistics are rising in your demographic regarding suicide.

Now if we were to just zoom out a minute and not just talk about suicide, but just talk about things that might lead to suicide, whether it's depression or anxiety in 2021 at least 43.5% of 18 to 29 year olds experienced symptoms of death.

And the symptoms of depression in 48 and a half percent of 18 to 29 year olds screened positive for anxiety. And you might say, well we are coming out of the pandemic.

Yeah, and I would just say that many of us have never adjusted back to normal life. And the past two years have been extremely difficult.

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