There are many cases I’ve heard of in which a young person, raised in a good family, suddenly commits suicide. Usually, the parents and friends of the victim do not forsee the event and cannot explain it afterwards. But I think I have an explanation.

The person may still be a teenager raised in an extremely religious family who decides not to follow his or her parents’ faith. Once he decides to leave it, he realizes that he may lose his parents’ love and that is a burden no child should have to endure. This is especially bad if the child is raised in a close knit community where the religious extremism is strongly enforced by nearly everyone in it. The attempts to keep the child’s deconversion a secret while going through the motions of religious life must be a constant source of stress on the child.

Issues like homosexuality, racism, and other forms of prejudice may also be factors, but I naturally think religious bigotry is the most serious one of all.