The year 2020 has seen a spike in suicide cases by celebrities/successful people in India in addition to COVID that has hit the headlines. Due to the stigma attached to depression, or seeking help during troubled times such people often keep thoughts of suicide to themselves. On the contrary, history is replete with examples of some of the most successful people committing suicide, both in Eastern and Western societies. There is a widely prevalent myth that “Successful people don’t commit suicide”. The tragic death of Cafe Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha who made us believe that “A lot can happen over coffee” and the deaths of Robin Williams, Chester Bennington, Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade in the West are high-profile examples of the fact that success and happiness are not synonymous. Is success synonymous with happiness? If that was so, why would the rich, talented, admired, and successful people, whom we regard as heroes, die by suicide? It is difficult for us to believe that such popular and successful people cannot have a happy life. Role of media in preventing suicide and measures for preventing suicide by successful people has been discussed. How do we prevent a young life from extinguishing? How do we identify suicidal behavior among successful people and help those around? The present chapter covers the possible reasons why successful people commit suicide. Happiness is not merely something that can be quantified with how much success and failure one has because such metric is very much subjective. The quality of one’s happiness depends on one’s priorities in life. Each one of us has different ways of measuring happiness. Happiness has been viewed in two ways: as concerning the well-being of a person, and as the opposite of depression. In the same way we should not let success be our main goal in life and get discouraged by failure. Although we are motivated to be successful in life, it should not become our main gauge of happiness. What prompted them to do so? Modern society today highlights the importance of success over failure. In the recent past, people have been left clueless when celebrities and successful people ended their lives despite appearing overtly happy. Studies have found that the risk of suicide increases with decreasing happiness. There are three feelings that prompt a person to take their life: hopelessness, helplessness and worthlessness.
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