This is a piece, roughly translated it and edited to point out this part, of a news article that appeared in a newspaper in my country:

In an alarming number of suicides committed by youngsters between 9 and 16 in Dominican Republic one raises the eyebrows. As Jiménez Páez, director of the National Institute of Forensic Pathology puts it. Several of this happenings have struck him very hard, as the one of this 9 year old that kill himself after arriving home from an evangelical mass (or cult as they prefer to call it) where the main subject was how is life in heaven.

“The case is very peculiar, because this kid took his backpack and fill it with his school uniform and other personal belongings and proceed to hang himself from a tree to go to a better life with the lord". said Jiménez Páez.

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This hit me hard and, in my opinion, shows the danger of religion, or more specifically, the danger of the belief in a better life after death. While believers claim that this belief is reassuring, that it provides hope to those that lose a loved one, that it could somehow minimize fear of death, it is also alluring to those that find life miserable, to those that wish to be release from it in hope of bliss, a better world, a better afterlife.

There are many questions that this tragedy arises, but one thing i can be certain of is that that child would be alive if he had never heard of heaven.

Fin

Sources: Online news article (Spanish): http://www.elcaribe.com.do/2012/07/24/este-ano-han-suicidado-mas-20...