Suicide & only 24 years old...Could it have been prevented?

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This past Monday night I just happened to read a post on my Brother in law's Facebook. It read that he just found out that his younger brother had died. I had to read it twice because I wasn't sure if I read it correctly. I immediately called my sister to find out what happened. Apparently his brother was very depressed & didn't mention this to anyone in his family. He simply went home, laid on his bed, put a gun beneath his chin & pulled the trigger. It was his Mother who came home & found him. I literally felt sick to my stomach when I heard this. I only met him a few times. He was always very quiet & hardly spoke at all even when spoken to, but I just assumed he was extremely shy. I never really got to know him & yet his death effected me just the same. I couldn't help thinking what or if anyone could have done something to prevent this from happening. Apparently no one in his family even knew he was depressed. My BIL spoke to his younger brother every night on the phone, but he never said a word to him about how he was feeling. Later on afterward my BIL went to some of the websites his brother used to go on & on one site he found post after post of what his brother was feeling & planning to do. It was a site that my BIL also used, but not for some time. People on that site knew they were brothers & yet no one tried to contact my BIL to warn him what his younger brother was going to do. I can't understand this. How could they just read & respond to his brother's posts & not try to contact a member of his family so that they could have got him the help he so obviously needed? He was only 24 years old & now he is gone leaving behind a family that is devastated & grieving. The worse part is the unanswered questions: Why did he feel that this was the only way to stop the hurt he must have obviously been feeling? Why didn't any of his online friends try to contact someone in his family so that this could have been prevented? Why did he not turn to his family & was there anything anyone could have done to keep him from doing what he did? My heart hurts for this family & I grieve along with them. I know what it feels like to lose someone you love, maybe not in this way, but the grief is still the same. How will his Mother ever get the imagine out of her mind of how she found her son? No one in his family will ever be the same again. They say time eases all pain & it does, but it never heals. It never goes away & once death has knocked on your door it keeps coming back. I know this from past experience. I would never wish this pain & grief on anyone & yet that's exactly what this poor family has to deal with. I pray that God gives them the strength they need to deal with his death & I also pray that anyone who reads this pays close attention to those around them or even someone they meet online. If you even think for a second that someone might be serious about killing themselves, please do what ever you can to contact someone in their family or maybe a close friend. Get involved. Don't just sit back & do nothing thinking that maybe they are just joking because there is a good chance that they're not.