Suicide

If you have troubles with feeling suicidal please contact one of the contact places on the RESOURCES page and get some help. If you are in Australia and need urgent assistance, please call 000.

A few times lately I've gone to write about different topics and then I get a bit stuck. I don't quite know how to approach the topic I want to write about. But today something happened and I know what I want to write about. Today I had went with a family member to find out the results of a neuropsychological exam that she had had about a month ago. Back in 1997 she and I had a major car accident which resulted in an acquired brain for her. It was never properly checked or tested or followed up and this was the follow up, 15 years later. The neuropsych came back with good news, she was achieving average levels in all but two areas and those two areas made sense...so that's fantastic right? Well, no, actually. It left her feeling vulnerable and stressed and like nothing would change, that the depression she felt would remain with her, that she would continue to experience a tumultuous lifestyle that HURTS. I was watching her and saw the tears start and I interrupted. She managed to spit out that she was feeling the most suicidal she has ever felt (and trust me, she's had some near misses in her life).

After some discussion and some time, we managed to get her to talk to psych triage, which is basically a funded mental health service that deals with crisis management. That was positive. The poor neuropsych didn't really deal with suicidal people like this and was upset by the situation also (although she did a great job at remaining professional). But it is a wake up call. People can be hurting so badly on the inside and no one on the outside will necessarily know about it.

This family member is facing homelessness, extremely tight financial situations and has had to deal with abuse for almost 30 years of her now ended marriage. The mental health professional pointed out that she probably has PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) after all the years of abuse. There are so many causes for why people want to suicide. Some people have been or are being abused (or have witnessed abuse which is often as deterimental as experiencing abuse), some people feel pushed to be perfect and there is no room for error, other people experience a depression so deep that all they want to do is go to sleep and never wake up, people with eating disorders have a high rate of suicide (approximately 11 times higher than the average) often from the constant nagging and push pull of the eating disorder, people in pain are THIRTY (30) times more likely to attempt suicide! Being in constant pain is horrible, it never ends and often is relatively unresponsive to pain medication. Can you imagine being constantly haunted by the horribleness of life? Wouldn't YOU want to attempt suicide too?

I want to write a few posts about this topic because its important I think. I think its soo easy to get angry with someone who is suicidal without really understanding the desperation behind the act. One thing I have learnt both from myself (I have attempted suicide 8 times so far in my life, starting at age 8, and planned it out or started to try many more times then that...) and as a mental health professional is that very few people really want to die. They tend to want one or two things...they want to know that things can CHANGE, that the horribleness they are experiencing is not going to continue...sometimes they don't even need to know when, they just need to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it will change. The other thing many people want to know is that they're IMPORTANT. They're valuable and loved. Many people reach a point where they feel that society is better off without them, particularly those people that experience chronic illness (including mental illness) and chronic loneliness...they need to know that they are really truly loved and valued, that people would HONESTLY miss them if they died. They desperately need to know that it would make a major impact on the environment around them.

With suicide, we often only ever see the tip of the iceberg. Like my family member, she doesn't cry in front of people and its unlikely that other then my imploring to the neuropsych of the seriousness of the situation, that she would not have realised how serious it all was. People are good at hiding and if they've spent a life time being abused or trying to meet perfection or answering to the voices in their head, they tend to be good at sliding along the walls where they are easily missed and people assume they're okay. So I want to say, don't be afraid to ask. It is extremely unlikely that you'll place the idea of suicide into someone's head, but you might just give them the opportunity to open up and maybe just maybe, get some more help so that things can change for them and so they know that someone, you, care about them enough to ask them the serious questions of life.

Please, if you're feeling lonely or suicidal, reach out for help. I will continue to work on my resource page but if you need anything in the interim, please do not hesitate to email me and I will try and find someone to refer you onto. Please contact emergency services if you are about to or in the process of suicide. Your life is worth something, even if you can't see it right now!