Popular Jamaican Social Media Influencer Commits Suicide

Mental illness is rarely explored, explained, and understood in Jamaica. To many, “health” refers to your physical attribute, but rarely even that. Healthy, to many people including and apart from Jamaicans, is having the ability to walk from one destination to the next; to be able to use all 5 senses. Once you are able to see, hear, feel, taste and touch, you are healthy. It is ironic that during school, we are made to study the scientific definition of health as described by the World Health Organization (WHO). That definition being “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Pay attention to those terms.

Physical

Mental

Social

Yet, we focus all our attention on the first, and still fail to do it to experience total physical health.

That is something to be discussed in more detail later, however, I urge you to narrow your focus on mental health for the remainder of this article.

There are many mental illnesses floating around out there. Some of the widely known ones include Anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Depression.

Depression is one of the most common mental disorders, and is unfortunately faced by at least 280 million people worldwide. Sadly, not many people understand the severity of this mood disorder. To attempt to make this information more widespread, an article will be coming shortly to attempt to describe it to those who have not experienced it. But for now, I want to discuss the self-inflicted death of a 20-year-old teen in St. Catherine, Jamaica.

Shauna-Kay Gayle, popular 20-year-old social media influencer who was more popularly known as Legendary Lasco, was found dead in the apartment of a female lawyer in New Kingston, St. Andrew, over the Independence weekend. It is believed that she committed suicide sometime between the hours of 8:00pm on August 6th, and 8:00am on August 7th, 2022.

Reports claim that Gayle was left at the lawyer’s home, and her body was later discovered surrounded by a bottle of rum, pills, and a piece of electrical cord tied around her neck.

Investigations are being done to determine the exact cause of death.

No matter the reason for suicide, that is, if it really was suicide, it is sad to see someone so unhappy that they managed to build enough strength to take their own life. This means that Gayle, or anyone else who has committed suicide, is so unhappy with their lives that the pain of doing it themselves is better than completing their time on earth.