Suicide is a painful subject for many - especially those who have lost partners, children, siblings, and friends. It is the final statement in a relationship - a statement made by the other person, something that you cannot argue with, but something that those who are left behind want to argue with so badly.
Whether the act is impulsive or meticulously and calmly planned, it represents a choice that someone makes. For many it is a logical escape from what is perceived as hopelessness. And however much you and I may want to protest that it cannot be that hopeless, it certainly feels overwhelmingly so for the individual at the time. Their reality is heavily real. The lover who has lost his partner of 40 years and been robbed of a retirement companion sees very little point in carrying on in the months after the death. Psychological pain can be as devastating as any physical wound.
For others, suicide also seems a logical choice in a different sense. If they face a physically or mentally debilitating disease they may decide that they wish to gain some control over their ending. If animals could speak and begged to be put out of misery, we would probably oblige, and I personally cannot condemn humans who wish to end their days with some relief and dignity.
Apart from having friends and family who may occasional open up to us about their despair, and apart from glimpsing those dark times ourselves, some of us may work in professions that expose us to others who may have an above than average interest in killing themselves. I have recently had to very consciously revise my understanding of suicide risk. What I have written below is an aide memoire for myself, but I thought it may also of interest to others.
A note of caution. You may be one of those who are tortured by the phrase, “If only …” “If only I had noticed … if only I had listened … if only I had seen … if only I hadn’t gone … if only … if only …” Human beings are complex creatures capable of skill and cunning and impulse and planning. There is no sure way of predicting suicide. If a person wants to kill him or herself, she or he will do so. Some do so impulsively. Some hide their plans and their intentions very well. Some show no visible signs of distress. Others have a mental illness which means that they are not thinking clearly or rationally and are not behaving according to ‘normal’ rules. Others show signs of distress and talk of death but do not commit the act. You could not have known what they really intended. Even if you had guessed and took them very seriously, they still may have done it.
Factors in Risk of Suicide
- Hopelessness. Many of us feel that the situation is hopeless at times and that there is no way out. However, for most of us, this feeling is not absolute or enduring. How much despair does the person feel? Is it off-white, grey, dark-grey, or pitch black? If pitch black, how long has it been that black? Does that blackness ever go away?
- Barriers. What reasons does the individual have for not committing suicide. Some, who are contemplating death say things like: “I would never go through with it because I couldn’t do that to X …” For others, however, there may by no-one of significance in their lives, or the despair may be so, so great that even their loved ones are no longer a reason to stop them ending their own pain.
- Thinking. How frequent and how intense are the thoughts of suicide? Some people think about it occasionally. Others have moved on to thinking about it more frequently. Others think about it often and are starting to plan how they would do it.
- Planning. Is there a plan? How concrete and developed is the plan? All suicidal plans have the potential to be lethal. There is some evidence that the medical lethality of the plan is related to the seriousness of the intent. Plans involving guns and hanging might be more serious than those involving drugs and cutting wrists.
- Operations. If there is a plan, has the person started taking steps to put it into operation, such as buying any necessary items?
- Intent. Has the person articulated that he or she intends to go through with it?
- Attempts. Have there been previous attempts. Some attempts (not all) may be practice runs. There is some evidence to suggest that those who have attempted once are likely to try again, and that repeated attempts can lead to ’success’.
- Impulsivity. Some people have very impulsive characters. Others develop impulsivity through mental illness and/or drug/alcohol abuse. Impulsivity makes people in despair at a higher risk of suicide than normal.
- Age. Older adults are among the highest risk groups for suicide. The ratio of suicide attempts to ’successes’ is five times higher for older adults than for the general population.
Again, another wonderful piece. Excellent work.
I too was there once. A long time ago. I don’t wish to go in to the details here but had I not been lucky, and I do mean lucky, I would not have met my wife and had the two wonderful daughters that I go home to every night.
Thanks for the thought provoking piece.
Thanks ATM. Very helpful post.
The trouble is sometimes you just cannot help these people that are so depressed.. and not even profesional people can help either.
Before my estranged husband died he had been ill for quite some time…. then he died in a moterbike accident……. imagine how hard it was to answer my boys when they asked me if i thought he had done it on purpose …. its something we shall never know.
It took me a long time to realise that there was no point feeling guilty. The person I knew who committed suicide was only a work colleague, someone I would have long forgotten about if he had not killed himself. But suicide touches everyone who knew the person, because we are brought up to feel that we can help, to feel that anything is possible I suppose. And sometimes there is nothing we can do, we can’t be inside someone else’s head, can’t know. I have no idea how those who lose someone close to them deal with this. I suppose as with everything else in life, you just do.
Until I wrote my own piece on suicide a few months back I had not comprehended the hopelessness thing. I always thought people committed suicide for a reason. But I suppose the opposite is true. It is the fact that there is no reason not to. The comments I got on the piece I wrote, together with the thinking I did as a result, actually finally enabled me to let go of those lingering feelings of failure I had about the person I knew who killed himself.
Great writing as always - I can’t call you atm as that makes you sound like a cash dispenser.
acetuk
Andrew, thanks for your honest response. I am so pleased that you have come through your own darkness and are enjoying life.
Zoe
Thanks for your encouragement.
sally
Thanks for your honest contribution. I agree with you. Some people cannot be helped, and it is (as you know) so, so hard for those who are left behind with the loss, the questions, and the hurt.
Reluctant Blogger
I am glad that you were able to draw a boundary round yourself and accept that there were limits to what you were responsible for. That realism is hard to achieve, and as you suggest, even more so when you are emotionally close to the person who has committed suicide.
I’m glad you don’t think of me as a cash dispenser. I wish my children shared your insight!
I have to say that I have thought of suicide before. But I never made any serious attempts because, even though I don’t have close relationships with my relatives, I still wouldn’t want to set an example for the younger ones. Also, I guess my contempt against the world isn’t big enough to hurt people like that. I suppose that in my darkest hour, I still could understand that some folks would be seriously hurt. For some reason, putting myself out of my misery didn’t feel urgent enough to destroy other people’s lives–which I thought would happen.
It makes me think that, when a person commits suicide, the pain–or the anger–must be unbearable. It has to be.
You say that older adults are a high risk group, and it doesn’t surprise me. I have often thought that, given that I have no children, when I get old enough to be in a nursing home, I may pull the plug. But hey, there may be reasons not to do it even then, like there were in the past.
Very thoughtful piece on a subject most people don’t like to think about much.
I remember seeing a public-service announcement on TV, it must have been decades ago, in which a matronly, older woman intoned, “Remember, someone who attempts suicide is only trying to stop the pain.” And that has been my view of suicide and its victims ever since, plain and simple: one cannot judge someone whose pain is so great.
When someone takes action on their own behalf that ends up hurting others in some way, the response tends to be along the lines of ‘look what that person did to me.’ And yet, people tend not to think about what the alternative reality might have been. In this day and age, one can think that that person could have gotten some kind of help, and gone on to live a better life. But that is a relatively new mindset, and in any case, as we all know, the availability of mental health services lags shamefully behind that for ‘physical’ problems; and in the past, of course, very few people would have been brave enough to seek help from a professional for a problem such as mere depression. Most people just struggled along, dealing with their misery day after day and certainly casting its shadow on everyone around them. Whether many years of this would have been preferable to the terrible act of suicide depends on the individuals involved and can never be known for a certainty; but the choice almost certainly would not be between suicide and a happy life, but between suicide and a very UNhappy life. This element of ambiguity is the case with all forms of pain ‘relief,’ even aspirin: say, I took aspirin but it didn’t seem to help my pain; but the reality is that without the aspirin the pain may have become much worse, as pain is wont to do at times; or, in fact, the aspirin may have been of no help.
I think it’s worth noting too that there seems to be a lot of this pain floating around; people are always shocked to hear that the suicide rate in the U.S. is double to triple the homicide rate; but this indeed appears to be the case. And this only counts the ’successful’ suicides, not those which are only attempted. Perhaps the lesson here is that what upsets people so much about suicide is that it exposes the darker, uncontrollable side of life that we all must live with, and forces us to acknowledge that so much is really beyond our control.
Lorena
I think you are right to point to the unbearable blackness that many people attempting and succeeding in suicide feel. It must be a very heavy burden for them to carry around.
I think older people have perhaps accumulated more pain during life and could have less hope for the future.
the chaplain
Thanks for dropping by.
trailOfcrumbs
Thanks for your contribution. I agree, there is a lot of pain around, and suicide can seem the only way out for some, and I certainly don’t want to judge those that feel they have to take that route. I may want to myself one day. I suppose I feel it is a human right, and wish that it could be more readily acknowledged.
I think if there is so much pain around (and there is), and if this is it (and I think it is), it should inspire us to perhaps make better and richer connections as we cling together before we all die - and I say that positively, not morbidly.
I just wanted to say that was a sensitive and sensible piece. As regards age I would suggest caution, there are people in high risk categories but the danger is that if someone is not in a high risk category, we might think they are less at risk.
The answer to who attempts suicide is anyone could be driven to this point regardless of age etc
Take care
kvdl
Thanks for your note of caution.
Echo the last comment concerning this being a senstively written piece.
I know very little about this subject so this has been a very useful reference piece for me, especially the risk factors.
Having only known one young man who had taken his own life some years ago now, I can say that I do still feel effected by it. He was a work colleaque and student and his death touched us all.
When I visit the town he died in and see the hotel where he took himself to administer a fatal dose of a drug he had obtained, I still feel sadness and disbelief. He was a handsome, dashing and brilliant man who became depressed after his divorce. I can still see his smile and sunny disposition:the important point being made here is he would have been the last person you would have thought of to eventually kill himself.
Suicide feels to me like it is something that can strike without warning to the people who are left behind. As you say, there may be little warning signs.
Suicide is not a cowardly thing. It takes guts and utter desperation to kill yourself. I can not imagine the pain and the hole people must entre when they get to this stage.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and own learning about this subject with us.
And glad to see this has generated a good comment respone from fellow bloggers.
onethoughtfulwoman
Thanks for dropping by. Your example perfectly illustrates the point that suicide prediction is a very, very imperfect ’science’ and that the above points are only, at best, loose pointers to be concerned.
Interesting piece, thinking man.
as someone who lost a loved one,
someone who really had no overwhelming reason to end his life
I wonder about predistination,karma in such matters.
That entry was somewhat of an eye-opener. I’ve always “condemned” suicide but after reading this I realize I have to keep an open mind to the subject. Thank you for an interesting perspective.
Keep on writing….//crewes