By now, everyone who’s learned about the suicide of Kiane Shannon Sophia Cañares, a tourism student of the University of San Carlos, may have researched on similar suicides on Google and somewhere along the way, came across the Netflix show “13 Reasons Why.”
The controversial US show based on a young adult novel of the same title tells the story of Hannah, who committed suicide and in an eerie monotonic monologue, outlined her reasons and identified the persons she blamed for leading her to kill herself.
Cañares may or may not have watched the show, but as to whether she sought professional help for treating her depression, it remains uncertain. If she did, she would have been dissuaded from ending her life prematurely at 21 years of age and in front of her two-year-old daughter at that.
Speculations about the reason for her suicide and her shocking decision to record it on Facebook Live are what the Cebu City police want to quash by launching an investigation into the incident.
While anyone wouldn’t want to blame Cañares for what she did, not a few would likely fault and even condemn her family for failing to act early in helping her deal with depression.
But that’s the thing with depression: no one has a perfect radar sense of what makes a person tick, what makes one happy, sad, angry, spiteful and depressed. Everyone is keyed differently, and Cañares is no exception.
In fact, one of her parents said she was laughing the day before her suicide, but whether the laugh indicated joy or masked her brewing depression, they couldn’t tell.
What was telling was that she tried but failed to commit suicide twice, first in the home of her aunt, who also killed herself. If one is suffering from depression, it is best advised to keep that person away from places and things that can act as a trigger for suicidal tendencies to translate into fatal action.
What drove Cañares to take her life? What drove her to the edge and made her give up on herself, her daughter and the life she could have built for the two of them and the family and friends who continued to care for her even if she may or may not have felt or sensed it?
Again, these are speculations that would hopefully be answered by the police and the people closest to Cañares. The family shut down the video on Cañares’ Facebook page, and there are questions to be asked.
While gruesome, taboo acts like suicide shouldn’t be aired on social media. But what’s to stop one committing the suicide from airing the act live? How can those close to a person know immediately about the suicide in order to stop them from ending their life?
We hope people can find answers to these and more questions to help people like Cañares in finding resolution and peace rather than choosing to die by their own hands.
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