Suicide

[Dancing David]

Lots of things kill people.
People kill people.
Generally, other people.
But not always.

If murder is linked to aggression, why must we suppose self-murder is linked to depression? Given the person most responsible for the failures in your life is generally yourself, why should you not feel aggressive towards that person?

Um, if you actually interviewed people, you would know.

Almost all people who are having suicidal ideation (and make a plan) meet the criteria ofr depression. Yes some have reactive anger, but very few.

Usually those people do assault other people. Very few people with 'anger permissin issues' end up terminating themselves.

 

[The Atheist]

Well, a three year engagement ended, a situation with some friends got very peculiar, and while they sound small in text they felt bigger to me.

That's always one of the things that annoys me is when people say, "Well that's no reason to kill yourself." Obviously, but, at the time, in that particular mindframe, it was a reason. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Thanks & thanks for coming back. You can't get more from the horse's mouth than from someone who had a go and I'm sure it's easier to talk online than off.

Your honesty and openness is pretty damned outstanding, if I may say so.

Personally my reasoning was, "I'm too ****ing smart to have to go to other people for help, I should be able to deal with this on my own." Which is false, and in turn only made it worse, because I felt like a moron and a general sense of uselessness that I couldn't find my own solutions. It's a pride thing, I guess you could say.

Well, you can't pick a bigger fall.

I wouldn't say one is the cause of the other, though they certainly don't help each other out. It's always felt like as a male you're just supposed to go deal with things, nothing is supposed to bother you or such. Lose your leg in an accident? Legs are for sissies. Real men hop on one leg. It goes back to a pride issue, I suppose, your manhood (not that manhood) is based on your ability to deal with ****.

It's almost like a cocktail of things from where I look at it - a depressive personality intersects with a dud relationship, backed up by childhood prejudices.

Bingo!

Hey, at least it's an area where failure is the biggest success you can have.

And potentially the people who become obese will develop low self esteem and......dear FSM, become suicidal!

Many a word spoken in jest and all that, but you do raise a point.

Fat kids are usually the easiest to pick on the "lack of self-esteem" stakes. Do more or fewer fat kids top themselves? The weight of evidence would suggest they would, wouldn't it?

I must find that out.

The only thing I cant think of as a vague catch-all is that most people who attempt or commit suicide do so because they're in a great deal of pain and they want that pain to stop.

Yet you just denied there was a common thread...

I do, however, find your comment interesting because it raises another question; this one regarding "pain".

The picture I have of suicide is mental pain, not the physical type, and I'd bet that's what you mean. However, some people do live with chronic pain, but not from terminal illness - I think it's important that self-euthanasia by terminally-ill patients isn't counted as "suicide"

How many people in chronic pain top themselves compared to everyone else?

It would seem to me that people in constant, severe physical pain would be a lot more likely to commit suicide than everyone else. Pain's in the brain, right? I suspect the facts are that very few people who live with chronic pain commit suicide, which makes an interesting question of "why is physical pain easier to bear than mental anguish?".

It's of no surprise that NZ's suicide rate is quite high. There is an undeniable dark streak through our culture. You can see it in all of the art we produce, in our films and music, in many, many aspects of our national psyche. I don't entirely know what the cause of that is - there's a saying that the settlers who came to NZ fled Europe to escape history, and were overwhelmed by geography. There's certainly something incredibly dark and ancient about the New Zealand landscape that would have been truly overwhelming to early settlers. The isolation must have been almost unbearable. That sort of environment creates cultural features that are then passed down through generations and filter into the cultural psyche.

Sheesh! Have you spent too long as a Lifeline counsellor or something?

Where do you get these odd ideas?

If we live in such a dark, forbidding, remote area that is part of our high suicide rate, why then do these following countries fall directly within the same range as ours?

Seychelles, Austria, Poland, Uruguay, Switzerland & France.

Oh no, wait; those countries all have a higher rate than NZ, yet apart from Seychelles and isolation & maybe Switzerland/forbidding, your description doesn't fit any of them in any way.

The suicide rate amongst middle aged men, is perhaps a greater national disgrace, and something that is seldom ever looked at.

This one is right - the statistic is largely ignored desite the numbers being the worst age group.

I think the explanations for this are probably easier to grasp.

I agree with that.

But not this:

New Zealand men are discouraged from talking about feelings or showing weakness.
...

Add the stress of a high work load and insufficient income (New Zealand income levels are shockingly below other "modern" countries) to those bottled emotions and you're cooking a disaster.

Again, the figures from around the world show that these things are common to all - male suicide is generally a lot higher then female and the odds aren't that different anywhere else. Nothing unique to us, though.

A monthly breakdown of the figures might be interesting, as I'd assume the amount and quality of the daylight was more of a factor than the temperature.

More nights = more toppers?

Could be. Given that it's colder during the shorter days, I don't see this too easy to figure.

Is depression worse during the night?

 

[fuelair]

What is with this subject?

Is there any nonc-onflicting data on what causes teenagers to commit suicide? Some cases have obvious causes, but a recent case here highlighted that there sometimes isn't a ready or even rational answer.

I've heard many suicide prevention campaigners argue that discussion of the subject itself can lead to young people topping themselves. Meanwhile, other campaigners try to raise awareness of it and skeptics organise pretend suicide attempts to use the media to focus on a different subject entirely.

One of my boy's ex-girlfriends came from a home where three family members had committed suicide. They were a decile 1 family with a history of teenage pregnancy - my son's girlfriend's grandparents were several years younger than me!

I'm also led to believe that while there's a huge focus on teenage suicide, men in the 45-54 age group are actually the most likely to find pull the plug. This age also contributes to many deaths which are suicide but not listed as such - blokes who hop in their car and drive it into a 40 tonne truck or a train/off a cilff.

Take suicide "warning signs", from the same site:

I think most people in the population fit one or more of those signs a lot of the time, but most of us aren't suicidal.

Why is female suicide down 43% from its peak while men are only down 16% from the peak rate? Given that any media-based attempts at lowering suicide rates are not gender-specific, what have chicks done that blokes haven't?

NZ has a particularly bad suicide rate among OECD countries, while living in the Caribbean seems to be a reasonably effective antidote to it. Maybe smoking ganja lowers the desire to top yourself?

Or the great food - with no offense, I have never heard New Zealand on any list of great cuisines. The Carribean is quite the otherwise.

For teens, I have heard some antidepressants increase the risk - and similar for drugs to improve attention.

 

[The Atheist]

Or the great food - with no offense, I have never heard New Zealand on any list of great cuisines.

Unlike Britain?

At least our lamb, dairy products and wines are pretty sought after.

And you forget the greatest culinary invention of all time - pavlova.

 

[gumboot]

Yet you just denied there was a common thread...

Ya. My "common thread" is so vague as to be meaningless, IMHO.

The picture I have of suicide is mental pain, not the physical type, and I'd bet that's what you mean. However, some people do live with chronic pain, but not from terminal illness - I think it's important that self-euthanasia by terminally-ill patients isn't counted as "suicide"

How many people in chronic pain top themselves compared to everyone else?

It would seem to me that people in constant, severe physical pain would be a lot more likely to commit suicide than everyone else. Pain's in the brain, right? I suspect the facts are that very few people who live with chronic pain commit suicide, which makes an interesting question of "why is physical pain easier to bear than mental anguish?".

Actually, even in instances of physical pain, it's the emotion pain that the sufferer invests in that physical pain that causes so much problems. That's why animals will continue to function as well as physically possible with even quite severe physical pain - it's nothing something they invest in emotionally.

Humans, on the other hand, suffer a physical injury and immediately invest enormous amounts of emotion into their response, and that emotional response can be incredibly debilitating.

Sheesh! Have you spent too long as a Lifeline counsellor or something?

I've never been a Lifeline counsellor.

If we live in such a dark, forbidding, remote area that is part of our high suicide rate, why then do these following countries fall directly within the same range as ours?

Seychelles, Austria, Poland, Uruguay, Switzerland & France.

Oh no, wait; those countries all have a higher rate than NZ, yet apart from Seychelles and isolation & maybe Switzerland/forbidding, your description doesn't fit any of them in any way.

Just because something causes suicide in one place doesn't mean it must cause it everywhere else.

Also, be careful with your statistics. Seychelles' data, for example, is from 1998 and New Zealand's is from 2008. Our suicide rate has been in steady decline for several decades.

This one is right - the statistic is largely ignored desite the numbers being the worst age group.

I agree with that.

Have a breather...

But not this:

Again, the figures from around the world show that these things are common to all - male suicide is generally a lot higher then female and the odds aren't that different anywhere else. Nothing unique to us, though.

I probably wasn't clear; I wasn't trying to suggest the phenomenon I was explaining only occurred in New Zealand. Having said that, it's of note that despite a strong decrease in New Zealand's overall suicide rate, our rates for 25-44 year old males continue to climb, and are some of the worst in the world.

 

[gumboot]

Or the great food - with no offense, I have never heard New Zealand on any list of great cuisines. The Carribean is quite the otherwise.

Actually I think you'll be surprised at where you'll find yourself eating New Zealand food.

 

[Cobalt]

Thanks & thanks for coming back. You can't get more from the horse's mouth than from someone who had a go and I'm sure it's easier to talk online than off.

Very much so. Feel free to ask anything, I'll probably answer it for you if I can.

Your honesty and openness is pretty damned outstanding, if I may say so.

The more you know, etc. Maybe me yammering on the 'net might help someone sometime.

It's almost like a cocktail of things from where I look at it - a depressive personality intersects with a dud relationship, backed up by childhood prejudices.

It kind of is, really. The thing that I noticed was that the circular argument that you have with yourself is a very big part of it. Based solely on the people I met in the crisis center I was at, I wasn't the only one who had that pattern occur, though with varying wording. It goes sort of like this, for example:
Bob thinks he's stupid -> Bob becomes depressed -> Bob does something against his better judgment -> Bob says to himself, "Damn, that was stupid."

Rinse, repeat.

Hey, at least it's an area where failure is the biggest success you can have.

Oddly enough, at one point I did think to myself, "Wow, I'm such a failure I can't even kill myself."

Many a word spoken in jest and all that, but you do raise a point.

Fat kids are usually the easiest to pick on the "lack of self-esteem" stakes. Do more or fewer fat kids top themselves? The weight of evidence would suggest they would, wouldn't it?

I must find that out.

Honestly, I'm not sure. I met a pretty interesting range of people, so I can't tell from experience.

Is depression worse during the night?

I find it's worse when I'm fatigued. And a common symptom of depression is a change in sleeping habits, more or less.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Um, if you actually interviewed people, you would know.

Almost all people who are having suicidal ideation (and make a plan) meet the criteria ofr depression. Yes some have reactive anger, but very few.

Usually those people do assault other people. Very few people with 'anger permissin issues' end up terminating themselves.

I find interviewing people who have committed suicide unproductive.

And therein lies my point. We have no idea why people kill themselves, but we are strongly tempted, by the law and by our nature, to assign a reason to their behaviour. Surely many suicides will have shown signs of deppression, but so do vastly larger numbers of people who do not suicide. I'm not convinced the correlation implies causation.

I agree that few people kill themselves while carefree and happy- but how many people are carefree and happy?

I have always been puzzled by western attitudes to suicide, which seem to have a strongly Judaeo-Christian bias, even among atheists. We have no choice about when or how we enter life, I see nothing at all wrong with picking our own time and method of leaving it. So far as I am concerned, the decision to end your own life is one of the few decisions that absolutely nobody but yourself should have any say in.
The assumption that suicide occurs "when the balance of the mind was disturbed" strikes me as self evident sanctimonious nonsense- a hangover from the days when a suicide would be buried in unhallowed ground and his spirit left to wander in Limbo.
Stone age twizzle.

 

[Dancing David]

Or the great food - with no offense, I have never heard New Zealand on any list of great cuisines. The Carribean is quite the otherwise.

For teens, I have heard some antidepressants increase the risk - and similar for drugs to improve attention.

Well there are some wierd things there.

The risk of anti-depressants increasing the chance of successful termination is an old one. If you are very depressed you are less likely to follow through, you start treatment and now you have motivation again.

But the black box warning is bogus, there was no data smaple to support the conclusion because all they have is anecdotal evidence, there was no record review to support the contention. It is sad but many of the parents who say "But my child was never suicidal or violent." are in denial or outright deceitful, but mental health records are confidential, as are juvenile criminal cases so you can't do a retrospective study on the effects of ADs instigating teen suicide.

 

[Dancing David]

Sorry Sam I have interviewed many people who tried to terminate thier lives, some with lots of blood and cuts, some with ligature bruises on their necks, others with the charcoal stains on their lips from a lavage. One woman i worked with had a gun shot wound to the chest.

You really don't seem to know what you are talking about, I suppose you just don't know and are taking this philosophical stance. Maybe you should read some artilcles in the Journal of Suicidology or something.

Actually, there are many here is one called Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior

 

[Soapy Sam]

DD-
You have not interviewed any who committed suicide, unless you claim psychic abilities, which I doubt. (Though they may have tried again subsequently, I appreciate.)
"People who tried to terminate their lives" is by definition (in the context of the thread) synonymous with people who failed in the attempt. Some of those were probably less than 100% committed in the first place, some failed inadvertently, some were making a plea for help. While I'm certain you have learned much of interest about those people, I'm not convinced what you have learned can automatically be extended to everyone who actually succeeds.

For a start, it's possible there has for centuries been systematic under-reporting of suicide , maybe on a huge scale- in earlier years by relatives wishing to avoid stigma falling on families -and in recent times due to doctors doing likewise for their own reasons.

(I once sat in on an interesting (if drunken) discussion involving 2 GPs, a coroner ( He was something big cheeselike in the English coroners system, though I didn't know exactly what he did) and a hospital staff doctor who made it clear that they and their colleagues regularly recorded suspected suicides as being due to medical complications. (I was actually naive enough to be shocked. This was on a Kenyan Safari and I was the sole sober and non-medical participant). I understand the verdict of "suicide" is issued by a coroner or judge, not a doctor, but they go on the data they are given by medics.

One of the GPs was of the opinion that only about 25% of suicides were ever reported as such (in Britain- this would be early 1980s).

Now I'm not seriously equating this campfire anecdote with the extensive interviews you mention, but it certainly gave me pause then and has coloured my views since.

I knew three middle aged men to die in the following half dozen years, of supposedly stress related cardiovascular events. One, for reasons too bizarre to explain, I know almost beyond doubt to have been suicide. The other two I found deeply suspicious. All three (if they all were suicides) were done neatly enough to fool all concerned unless they were actually implicated. The reasons? I don't know, but business failures would be a good guess. I think they did it as they did to ensure their dependants got insurance money. It made me wonder if this was the tip of a big iceberg.



I admit this is all anecdote, but you'll pardon me if I say it seems to hint that motivation may be less straightforward, at least among older men, than some might think.

With respect, I don't believe anybody knows what they are talking about when they tell me why someone else chose to kill himself, unless said individual left a detailed explanation. (And if the "balance of his mind was disturbed" - how honest is that explanation likely to be?)

Of course it's easy to guess that the likeliest causes of suicide among younger men would be hormones and social pressure , but that's the likely cause, at some level, of practically any behaviour among young men.

 

[MatildaGage]

I know a bloke who tried to top himself tying a curtain cord around his neck to hang from which would have broken under 20 kg of pull. Was that a "suicide attempt" or just a plain old call for help?

Once he's stable and lucid his clinicians will probably try to assess that.

Depends on the state of mind. Due to IQ, young age, level of mental functioning, or knowledge, some people do make what they think is a very serious attempt to kill themselves....but they fail because they didn't know what they were doing.

Ex--a nurse takes 10 Tylenol --> probably self harm

a 5 yr old takes 10 Tylenol --> if he believes that is a deadly dose, it was a suicide attempt

I think prescription drugs have had somewhat better controls put on them, which has probably helped. If someone is serious, though, surely they will actually manage it regardless? There are plenty of bridges to jump off.

Eventually, may take some time to get the guts to do it effectively.

 

[Cain]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY

TED talk. His discussion leads up to suicide at the 7:30 mark. He says suicide rates are highest in industrialized, individualistic countries where there's a sense that society functions as a meritocracy. So if you're rich, it's the result of hard-work/native endowments, but if you're poor it's because you're a loser. Looooooooooou-ser. OK, I'm paraphrasing, but it sounds intuitively plausible.

 

[jayh]

...
I have always been puzzled by western attitudes to suicide, which seem to have a strongly Judaeo-Christian bias, even among atheists. We have no choice about when or how we enter life, I see nothing at all wrong with picking our own time and method of leaving it. So far as I am concerned, the decision to end your own life is one of the few decisions that absolutely nobody but yourself should have any say in.....

Indeed suicide can be a means, perhaps the ONLY means, of taking control of your own inevitable death. People's health often gets to the point where they realize it's NOT going to get better, and ultimately will get worse. Much worse. Is it not better to die while you still are alive and relatively vibrant, rather than at a time you're body and mind have become a hollow shell of the person you were?

The late middle age man thing should not be surprising. My wife knew one man who killed himself when it became apparent that he was slipping into Alzheimers. He had to move quickly because there would probably only be a small window before he would be incapable of taking steps to avoid that hell (for himself and for others). I have seen what heart attacks (with brain damage), strokes, and Alzheimers have done to people... it is a fate far worse than death for themselves and for their families.

 

[Dancing David]

DD-
You have not interviewed any who committed suicide, unless you claim psychic abilities, which I doubt. (Though they may have tried again subsequently, I appreciate.)
"People who tried to terminate their lives" is by definition (in the context of the thread) synonymous with people who failed in the attempt. Some of those were probably less than 100% committed in the first place, some failed inadvertently, some were making a plea for help. While I'm certain you have learned much of interest about those people, I'm not convinced what you have learned can automatically be extended to everyone who actually succeeds.

You are way wrong.

What is the difference between someone who tries and someone who succedes. Lethality of method and luck.

You are off base and have no point to make.

This is standard accepted practice and methodology in people who study suicide.

While all you have is a philosophical point.

The people who get lavaged are often unconscious, as was the person who hung himself when he was cut down. Two of the people who I saw lay on the floor after they cut themselves and were also almost dead when found. The person with the gunshot wound missed their heart by an inch.

But please ignore the FACT that I STATED the primary causes of suicide is pain. That is why people commit suicide and the fact that you ignored it doesn't change it.

But please continue with the philosophy.

For a start, it's possible there has for centuries been systematic under-reporting of suicide , maybe on a huge scale- in earlier years by relatives wishing to avoid stigma falling on families -and in recent times due to doctors doing likewise for their own reasons.

Duh. Please keep telling me what I already know.

(I once sat in on an interesting (if drunken) discussion involving 2 GPs, a coroner ( He was something big cheeselike in the English coroners system, though I didn't know exactly what he did) and a hospital staff doctor who made it clear that they and their colleagues regularly recorded suspected suicides as being due to medical complications. (I was actually naive enough to be shocked. This was on a Kenyan Safari and I was the sole sober and non-medical participant). I understand the verdict of "suicide" is issued by a coroner or judge, not a doctor, but they go on the data they are given by medics.

One of the GPs was of the opinion that only about 25% of suicides were ever reported as such (in Britain- this would be early 1980s).

Now I'm not seriously equating this campfire anecdote with the extensive interviews you mention, but it certainly gave me pause then and has coloured my views since.

Maybe you should read some research, this is old hat. A certain percentage of drunk driving accidents are also considered suicides.

I knew three middle aged men to die in the following half dozen years, of supposedly stress related cardiovascular events. One, for reasons too bizarre to explain, I know almost beyond doubt to have been suicide. The other two I found deeply suspicious. All three (if they all were suicides) were done neatly enough to fool all concerned unless they were actually implicated. The reasons? I don't know, but business failures would be a good guess. I think they did it as they did to ensure their dependants got insurance money. It made me wonder if this was the tip of a big iceberg.

Maybe you should do soem reading.

I admit this is all anecdote, but you'll pardon me if I say it seems to hint that motivation may be less straightforward, at least among older men, than some might think.

With respect, I don't believe anybody knows what they are talking about when they tell me why someone else chose to kill himself, unless said individual left a detailed explanation. (And if the "balance of his mind was disturbed" - how honest is that explanation likely to be?)

Of course it's easy to guess that the likeliest causes of suicide among younger men would be hormones and social pressure , but that's the likely cause, at some level, of practically any behaviour among young men.

You really don't get it do you?

But please feel free to continue.

People feel pain, they feel that it will not end, they choose a violent way to deal with it.

The big three again:
-impulse control
-judgement
-lack of insight

 

[The Atheist]

Very much so. Feel free to ask anything, I'll probably answer it for you if I can.

The more you know, etc. Maybe me yammering on the 'net might help someone sometime.

Could do! We just have no idea really, but it seems to me that discussing cannot be a bad thing of itself.

It kind of is, really. The thing that I noticed was that the circular argument that you have with yourself is a very big part of it. Based solely on the people I met in the crisis center I was at, I wasn't the only one who had that pattern occur, though with varying wording. It goes sort of like this, for example:
Bob thinks he's stupid -> Bob becomes depressed -> Bob does something against his better judgment -> Bob says to himself, "Damn, that was stupid."

Rinse, repeat.

Like a fatal earworm.

Oddly enough, at one point I did think to myself, "Wow, I'm such a failure I can't even kill myself."

That shows how ****ed up your mind is at that stage.

I find it's worse when I'm fatigued. And a common symptom of depression is a change in sleeping habits, more or less.

That's quite widely known. I believe insomniacs are highly likely to attempt/commit suicide; lack of sleep is hard work.

I have always been puzzled by western attitudes to suicide, which seem to have a strongly Judaeo-Christian bias, even among atheists. We have no choice about when or how we enter life, I see nothing at all wrong with picking our own time and method of leaving it. So far as I am concerned, the decision to end your own life is one of the few decisions that absolutely nobody but yourself should have any say in.
The assumption that suicide occurs "when the balance of the mind was disturbed" strikes me as self evident sanctimonious nonsense- a hangover from the days when a suicide would be buried in unhallowed ground and his spirit left to wander in Limbo.
Stone age twizzle.

I understand what you're saying, but it seems to much like "Oh, you have a deadly disease, we're going to let nature take its course" instead of prescribing antibiotics which will kill the bacteria causing the infection.

Wouldn't it be far more Stone Age to do nothing when we're dealing with people with mental illness?

I'm not saying all suicide results from mental illness, but it's unquestionable that many people who are mentally ill top themselves.

a 5 yr old takes 10 Tylenol --> if he believes that is a deadly dose, it was a suicide attempt.

Ain't that funny? If a 5 yo took an overdose, I'd probably think "accidental" long before suicide.

TED talk. His discussion leads up to suicide at the 7:30 mark. He says suicide rates are highest in industrialized, individualistic countries where there's a sense that society functions as a meritocracy. So if you're rich, it's the result of hard-work/native endowments, but if you're poor it's because you're a loser. Looooooooooou-ser. OK, I'm paraphrasing, but it sounds intuitively plausible.

Certaibnly fits the older male suicide, and it's noteworthy that the more industrialised nations fit at the top of the list by country.

Indeed suicide can be a means, perhaps the ONLY means, of taking control of your own inevitable death. People's health often gets to the point where they realize it's NOT going to get better, and ultimately will get worse. Much worse. Is it not better to die while you still are alive and relatively vibrant, rather than at a time you're body and mind have become a hollow shell of the person you were?

You seem to be talking about euthanasia, which I'd like to leave out of this discussion.

The late middle age man thing should not be surprising. My wife knew one man who killed himself when it became apparent that he was slipping into Alzheimers. He had to move quickly because there would probably only be a small window before he would be incapable of taking steps to avoid that hell (for himself and for others). I have seen what heart attacks (with brain damage), strokes, and Alzheimers have done to people... it is a fate far worse than death for themselves and for their families.

I can't agree on the fate worse than death for the Alzheimer patient since they generally don't know which way is up, let alone that they're suffering from anything.

The families? No question.

 

[jayh]

You seem to be talking about euthanasia, which I'd like to leave out of this discussion.
...

Unfortunately, in most of the world, suicide is the only viable form of voluntary euthanasia, so they cannot fully be unlinked.

We desparately need a clean, painless, medical option for people.

 

[The Atheist]

Unfortunately, in most of the world, suicide is the only viable form of voluntary euthanasia, so they cannot fully be unlinked.

Well, that might apply in many places, but this is a discussion forum and we can leave it out by simply leaving unlinking it from the discussion.

Piece of cake.

We desparately need a clean, painless, medical option for people.

Oh, I think there are loads of them about.

What we need is a legal option. But it's a different thread, which I will gladly participate in, if you'd like to discuss it.

 

[calebprime]

...
People feel pain, they feel that it will not end, they choose a violent way to deal with it.

The big three again:
-impulse control
-judgement
-lack of insight

While I support the abstract right to commit suicide, there's an image or two from The Bridge (the movie) and the New Yorker article about the Golden Gate Bridge jumpers that have stayed with me.

Some of the jumpers are spurned lovers. Given some time, most of these would recover and change their minds--if it weren't too late.

A few people survived the jump, and many? most? of these few survivors said that they regretted it when they let go. I call this the "Oh ******" moment--when you've let go, but wish you hadn't.

Others said that if someone had shown them some kindness on their walk to the bridge, they wouldn't have tried to jump.

However, I have no idea what percentage of the total jumpers, or people talked down from the edge, these are.

Some people are just really lonely or angry.

Some people must feel themselves torn between several unattainable goals.

Sometimes, to me, it's felt certain that things would never be as good as they were before, but later I realize that it's a mistake to compare the future with the past. The past is past, and there's still some gumption left--why not try to carry on?

The fellow musician I knew who killed himself could have recovered from his depression with rest, a change of scene, the right meds. He was talented enough that the work would have still been there when he got back.

 

[Dancing David]

I believe soundly in intervention, one part of which is "Get help."

Crisis Lines are crucial. As would be more publicity on the educational aspect. As discussed there is huge institutional denial of suicide.

The only current plan is to educate people to get help, and then to provide it. I have worked with many people who are gald that they did not die. I regret the ones I could not help, it is always sad when someone successfully terminates.( I miss Andy, he should not have died. But he moved away and found out about Tylenol.) Especially over something that could change.