Intentional Word Choice

Committed Suicide Versus Completed Suicide

I’m a Rhetorician, which essentially means that I pay a lot of attention to word choice, associations and meanings.

After attending a suicide support group H.U.G.S. and through EMDR therapy, they started to use the phrase “completed suicide,” as opposed to “committed suicide,” which is the only phrase that I had heard used throughout the years. (Next to, perhaps, killing yourself.)

As an English Professor and someone who pays a lot of attention to words, this gave me pause. I started to think more about this subtle but important distinction.

Commit implies a crime; it indicates violence.

I do understand that killing oneself certainly could suggest that. But is it the same violence, when you are enacting this upon yourself as when you are being physically violent with another?

To imply suicide as a criminal act could deny self and bodily autonomy. (I’m not advocating for self harm or suicide, but I do think that it exists in a different category.)

And truly, we do have the right claim, to own our bodies. Even when we want to end our lives. Sadly, as my therapist has said, individuals (such as my dad, brother, aunt) have the choice to exit this life.

It reminds me of this Albert Camus and his philosophical pondering in the Life of Sisyphus:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.”

But, I digress.

The point: “Commit” implies a wrongdoing and it further contributes to blaming the victims (double victimization) of depression and those who feel they need a desperate escape through ending one’s own life.

By using “complete,” it also helps us to understand that the act is done, the person is dead. In that way, it distinguishes itself from attempted suicide.

I also think by using “committed,” it gives suicide more power. And we should probably think about the implications for that. Suicide is powerful and harmful, enough, for the survivors.

As I’ve written before, people who die by suicide, though completing the act, are so much more than how they die. Even though cognitively can agree with this statement, and know that is true; is it also the case that we don’t attribute the same value, the same judgment when someone dies of a heart attack or cancer, compared to a self-inflicted death. Hence, mental health stigma.

Thus, language and word choice does indeed matter.

Terminology around suicide is worthy of our consideration, attention, and adjustment.