An 18 year old girl was admitted to the medical ICU at a well-known hospital in Cape Town due to para-suicide on anti-psychotics which is her brother’s prescription medication, with the cause of this event currently being unknown. She was admitted to ICU as she required airway protection due to her decreased level of consciousness post para-suicide. After five days of medical and physiotherapy management, she was transferred from the ICU to the high care, and thereafter to the general ward before she was discharged home.

After much interest and concern driving her motivation to commit suicide at the age of eighteen, I made the decision to follow up on her as I developed a sympathy towards her. many would assume that my great interest in her event could be in line of being intrusive, but nobody would know that my real reason was being able to relate to her incident in some way, but not entirely. Many years ago, at the age of 13, I found myself in a rather disheartening and disappointing situation where my primary school crush had taken advantage of me in our classroom. To my understanding, he was informed of my feelings for him, even though I was well aware of his casanova ways. It triggered thoughts and emotions within me that made me question a lot of things regarding my worth as a woman, my overall existence, and many more. I was fortunate enough to have parents that were able to afford to send me to receive the necessary help. Ten years later, even after all the counselling that I had received, it remains something that creeps into my thoughts and triggers a state of depression.  After the social history which I was able to gather about this girl, I made the assumption that her mother (who is a single parent) would not be able to afford to send her to receive good psychological therapy from the public sector.

when she was transferred to the general ward, I tried to get some sort of feedback from her physiotherapist with any further updates on the girl that was in her medical folder. The social worker’s report provided a detailed documentation about how the girl had been raped by a boy in her class whom she has been attracted to and considered pursuing a romantic relationship with. Hence why I felt drawn to this girls current situation. In my personal opinion, I’ve felt that those that have studied how to assess and treat an individual’s mind after a traumatic event, don’t necessarily understand all the hidden emotions in an incident of this nature as we sometimes walk around with some feelings of being embarrassed and humiliated. Furthermore, my colleague mentioned that the report stated that this comes from a catholic home where the option and act of abortion is against their religious beliefs (Dr. Szelewa, 2016). Saddened by the fact that this eighteen year old woman attempted to commit suicide on the grounds of her family and friends in church that would be unaccepting of a teenage pregnancy, especially as the result of being raped, along with the various types and degrees of trauma which she has endured, fearing feeling humiliated in front of her class mates and lastly, not having the available finances to afford an illegal abortion which she considered as she would then be able to keep her situation a secret.

Induced abortions are common, and women who have them experience various types and degrees of stigma and literature states that this stigma has the potential to impair women’s and abortion care-providers’ well-being (Hanschmidt, 2016). There is a lot of controversy, more so lately, regarding the  act of abortion that although the mother has the right to decide what happens to her body, but who is the voice of the unborn baby who had not asked to the result of rape. Killing another individual who is a non-aggressor is referred to as immoral as it is another person which develops from a newly fertilized ovum, thereafter the pre-embryo, embryo, foetus, new born baby to a matured unambiguous person with morals and a sense of right from wrong (insert reference).
By following up on this situation, I did not have the intention of involving myself in her recovery process, but rather from an angle of concern for a girl whom I can relate to, but was unable to receive the necessary treatment. she is currently seeing her social worker and psychologist regularly to help her gain the necessary tools to overcome her emotions, she has also dropped out of school and is now a cashier at a well-known convenience store near to her home with hope to some day complete grade 12.

List of references

Dr. Szelewa, D. (2016, December 30). Killing ‘Unborn Children’? The Catholic Church and Abortion Law in Poland Since 1989. SAGE publications.

Hanschmidt, F. L.-H. (2016, March 31). Abortion Stigma: A Systematic Review: Perspectives On Sexual and Reproductive Health . Wiley Online Library, 48(4).