It Is Apparently Possible To Just Give Up And Die With No Medical Reason

Last Updated on 2020-11-23 , 10:53 am

Every so often, I see this particular millennial on the Internet cry about how they just wanna die.

“Life’s so dreary. Tiresome. I just want to get it done and over with already.”

And when push comes to shove…

“I want to die. I want to die. But I’m scared of killing myself. What if I cut my wrist and it just flops? What if I leap off the Ferris Wheel, but I only manage to break my back? I just wanna die, like without reason or anything. Just like that, pew-pew and I’m gone. Is that so hard?”

Yeah, you can imagine. He certainly has some deep-seated issues. Though rather ‘fortunately’, the aforementioned millennial is still alive and kicking to this day.

“Fml,” he tweeted just the other day. “Got myself a packet of Oreos and a glass of milk and spilt everything over my newly-minted jeans. I wanna die.”

Well, some things never change.

Nevertheless, as ‘snowflake-like’ as the aforementioned millennial would appear to be, his rants do give rise to a certain troubled community in this world.

Faced with trauma and problems the likes of which normal people would hope never to ever encounter, these troubled personnel see no redeeming route other than the most forgiving one, death.

But while some choose to take it themselves, by way of suicide, others opt to simply…

Wait it out. 

Or as the following article headline insinuates…

Simply give up and die, without any medical reason whatsoever.

It Is Apparently Possible To Just Give Up And Die With No Medical Reason

Before you diss this entire article and term it a ‘satirical piece that’s so shitty it’s actually better than The Onion‘, I implore you; it’s certainly no satirical article. 

The following details and observations all stem from a rather reputable source, and are reportedly based off observations as far back as the 1600s. So before you dismiss the notion as a mere ‘figment of my depressed imagination’, I beg you;

Hear me out.

According to IFLScience, a person who has lost the will to live could actually die, with no medical or physiological reason whatsoever. This medically documented yet poorly understood phenomenon has been termed:

“give-up-itis”.

NO WAIT DON’T LEAVE JUST YET. Yes, the term might be ludicrously kiddish, especially considering the dark roots of the problem, but it’s true: First described in Americans and South Korean soldiers who perished in captivity at prisoner-of-war (PoW) camps during the Korean War, the condition was later applied to Vietnam War PoWs, shipwreck survivors and eventually identified as a common occurrence in Nazi concentration camps.

Simply put, give-up-itis is projected to set in during a psychologically traumatic situation that might feel ‘inescapable’. The sufferer, responding to these seemingly hopeless conditions with increasingly extreme apathy, then shirks away from life around them to the point that they actually leave the game of Life in its entirety.

Apparently, cases have been tracked as far back as the 1600s, and recent case reports on the deaths of elderly people and hospital patients have borne the condition’s hallmark features.

According to a paper by University of Portsmouth research fellow Dr John Leach, give-up-itis seems to constitute five main phases.

We Had Six Degrees Of Separation. Now, We Learn About The Five Phases Of Death

The first phase would happen to be social withdrawal, and is believed to be frequent in individuals suffering from significant trauma.

“Psychogenic death is real. It isn’t suicide, it isn’t linked to depression, but the act of giving up on life and dying usually within days, is a very real condition often linked to severe trauma,” Leach said in a statement, explaining that people with give-up-itis seem to regard death as the best possible coping mechanism to the unbearable stresses of their situation.

The second stage is that of apathy. Described as a demoralising melancholy of sorts that differs from anger, sadness or frustration, apathy reportedly feels like one is “shut-in profound inertia”. It’s also at this point that individuals often stop to clean themselves.

The third stage is aboulia, and it’s believed to stem from such intensified apathy that a person loses initiative to perform any day-to-day task, often stopping to speak and eat.

“An interesting thing about aboulia is there appears to be an empty mind or a consciousness devoid of content. People at this stage who have recovered describe it as having a mind like mush, or of having no thought whatsoever. In aboulia, the mind is on stand-by and a person has lost the drive for goal directed behaviour.”

In stage four, we have psychic akinesia, a condition characterised by the loss of response to any physical stimuli, including grievous pain.

Should there be no intervention, whether it’s medical treatment or general help, sufferers will progress to the last stage:

Death.

According to Leach, they’re beyond hope by this point.

“…they might be lying in their own excreta and nothing – no warning, no beating, no pleading can make them want to live,” he said.

Is The Condition Incurable?

If you’ve been wondering that, here’s the answer:

According to past observations, death from give-up-itis is not a certainty. People have recovered from states identical to those that preceded death in others, after something or someone successfully pulled them back into reality once again.

In short, give-up-itis is not fatal. It can be cured. However, curing it would involve outside help in some form, as self-curing seems to be all but non-existent.

And so, here’s a plea. If you’ve any friends who’re encountering such symptoms, or fat baby Geezus forbid, you’re facing such problems, please…

Seek help for them, or yourself.

As so many people have reiterated, mental illness is an illness akin to any physical condition. It should not be something you’re ashamed of, or reluctant to face judgement for. In the end, we all want to be happy.

So make that a reality, instead of keeping everything to yourself, alright?

You can click on this link for additional information on the topic.

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