Dear Editor,
Choosing to kill oneself can happen to anyone: young or old, poor or rich, educated or illiterate, doctors and dock workers, Indian-African-Amerindian, male or female. It can happen in a flash or over a long time. The Guyanese statistics show that death from suicide shows no favourites; they give some clues as to who is more likely. This is done by looking back, not looking forward.
It seems to me that there is really no good way to predict who will actually kill themselves. If one listens to survivors, friends and family of the deceased, a major theme is one of surprise, “I never thought they would kill themselves.” So what is the average person supposed to do? Talk to everyone? Care about everyone? My easy answer would be, “Yes.”
There are many persons who are depressed, live in abusive relationships, have the love of our life dump us, live a lonely existence, have had a long season in their lives where nothing is going right, experience an unwanted pregnancy, lose all one’s savings by gambling, and they do not go on to kill themselves or even attempt to kill themselves.
If we knew they were going to kill themselves, we would connect, communicate and care. The difficulty is that we don’t know who will go on and kill themselves, as not everyone who says they may kill themselves goes on to do it. We need to start the story of suicide prevention when it really hasn’t even begun.
So do we care about ‘everyone’? No, there are not too many Mother Theresas around and even she stayed in one city. I might suggest everyone we see, everyone we come in contact with daily or weekly. It is no good waiting for those who are sad or depressed to reach out to us; it is one more burden that is just too much for them. It is a continuation of blaming the victim: “They are responsible for not reaching out and connecting and communicating and caring”. No, it is up to us who feel pretty good most days to reach out to the others we see having a more difficult day, week or month than we are.
Even this would not necessarily work because we are not that good at observing others. Those contemplating suicide hide well behind fake smiles, or just plain hiding. So we might want to act as if everyone we encounter might be suicidal. But where is the glamour or prestige in saving someone’s life. We would all love to be a hero, but those star situations don’t come by often. Our world needs a lot more just nice people who have a friendly word or a thoughtful deed for someone else. Everyone needs these connecting gestures whether we are suicidal or not. And maybe if more of us did those communicating actions more often, then those who might have let sadness and loneliness and disappointment lead to suicidal thoughts would never get that far down the path to self-destruction.
I once knew a pretty wise woman who did pretty well raising her children. She would constantly say, “Be kind; be kind. And you will be a saint.” As I remember it was probably while there was a fight of some description going on. Life is way too complicated to have any one slogan cover everything, but kindness is a good place to start. I agree with M Jane Cahill.
Yours faithfully,
John O’Connor
Visiting Faculty
School of Nursing
St Joseph Mercy Hospital
