FEATURED ARTICLE: Help! I’m Under Pressure #Silence

August 2, 2012 / Kagiso / 1 Comment

We’ve read these articles countless times, “Third Suicide of First Semester”, “Student Kills Herself Due to Failing”, but what are we as students and parents doing about it?

The following excerpt is from a WITS Vuvuzela article titled “Third Suicide of First Semester”, and covers a certain portion about an incident that can also happen to you, be it directly or indirectly.

“ Wandile Mashinini, 2nd year BComm marketing, was found in his room at South Point’s KSI residence. According to a friend, who asked not to be named, his girlfriend became worried when he didn’t respond to her knocking. She and the building manager then broke through the door and found he had hanged himself . It is believed that he left a note.

The friend said his Facebook updates had shown he was suicidal. “He said: ‘I will kill myself and die’ and ‘I’m tired of all of this and am sorry to my family’. We thought he was joking.”

She said Mashinini had been struggling academically and reportedly had not met the requirements for two of his courses. “

Worryingly, this all ends with comments where you honestly think someone was joking. Depression, especially from academic pressure is as real as you and me, it can affect anyone, doesn’t discriminate and the end result is usually a loss of life. Student Commune will commit itself to trying to link up with trained counsellors and organizations to link up our users with, if ever the need arises. We constantly try our best to publish as much necessary information to students as we can, and sharing University of Johannesburg’s PsyCAD (The Centre for Psychological Services & Career Development) page is one way we have been trying to raise student psychological matters with our own users.

If you need any help, you can contact:

UJ PsyCAD on (011) 559 4441, or their Twitter @PsyCaD and Facebook PsyCaD@UJ.
WITS Career Counselling and Development Unit on (011) 717 9140.
The South African Anxiety and Depression Group between 8am-8pm on 0800 567 567 or by SMS 31393 or on Twitter @TheSADAG.

Post your queries anonymously if you must, these are just avenues to help you guys. Please take care and all the best with your studies

#Share4Awareness.