Suicide Prevention Awareness

Reminder: Suicide Slights

In honor of September Suicide Prevention Awareness Month:

Let's talk about something that I sometimes call the microaggressions of suicide or 'suicide slights':

Ie--

"That ---- makes me want to kill myself."

"I could never do that [suicide] because I'm a God-fearing (or a faithful) person."

"That's so selfish. How could they do that?"

People say really dumb and insensitive shit in the face of deaths of others, period. But it's worse with suicide.

As it is still so heavily stigmatized, be mindful of the effect of your words, in how you represent death at your hands--who/the type of person who does it, your insinuations/what it says about the character of the person who does it, even a cavalier joke about not wanting to do something and a flippant comment about rather wanting to end your own life

Those with depression, who have idealized suicide or attempted it, and certainly the survivors of suicide, we notice it.

It hits hard. It hits differently.

These--and many many more--are the endless and unpredictable slights, the million paper cuts, of suicide slights for survivors.