Suicide has been a cause of concern in most societies for a long time. The classical Greeks, for example, required people who wanted to kill themselves to get permission from the senate. While this law is not without humor by today' s standards, it clearly shows an awareness of the problem in times gone by.
In today' s society, suicide is much more prevalent than we want to admit. Why do people try to take their own lives?
The motives for suicide can be categorized into areas such as a failure, wrath（暴怒）, the needfor attention, stress, and so on. However, the qualities of a person who wants to take his own life change from person to person, making it difficult to depict（描写）the typical victim. To make the problem even more confusing, people will often camouflage（掩盖）their true feelings, thus causing their friends to disregard problems that should be viewed as serious.
In the United States, a network of centers has been created to attempt to prevent suicides.People who are bitter, worded, or depressed are encouraged to contact workers at these centers. These workers, often trained volunteers, offer benevolent advice to the callers, trying to help the callers to see that suicide as a solutions to problems is an illusion. The accomplishments of these centers, insofar（到这个程度）as their effectiveness to reduce suicide is concerned, are minimal However, they have helped a lot of people with a wide variety of problems.So, in the somewhat amorphous（难以名状的）area of man helping his fellow man, they are certainly a success.