Suicide Stigmas

Watching what we say...

“Suicide is not selfish

Suicide, is, normally, death

caused by the

illness of depression. It

is the final symptom. A

final collapse under

unbearable weight.

Suicide is a tragedy. If

you have never been

close to that edge try

not to judge what you

can’t understand. Stigma

doesn’t help prevention”

~mattzhai

I have heard it. I have read it. Often:

“I just don’t understand how someone could do that?”

“How could they be so selfish?

“How could they inflict this pain on me?”

“How could he leave his daughter?”

“I’ve been sad but I’d never do that!”

What all of these comments do is work to further stigmatize mental illness, depression and suicide.

However unintentionally. Maybe that is not what the speaker meant. I have no doubt that most of the time, it is not said with malice or ill-intent.

And the poem is absolutely right—such off-the cuff statements, they are shot around so willy-nilly, by those who don’t understand.

But they don’t help prevent suicide or work to de-stigmatize mental illness, suicide attempts and suicide ideation. It compounds it, it exacerbates it.

And the thing is—it’s even more harmful for the family members and friends, the suicide survivors. Because we’re the ones left to deal with the aftermath…

To have to hear these comments.

We may be the ones who can’t readily admit how our family members died because to do would be to associate ourselves with an illness that has yet to be readily accepted.

Because we still think of depression as synonymous with depressed.

Because too often we think of suicide from our own frame of reference, but it doesn’t exist in the same way:

Those who have suicide ideation or who may attempt suicide come from a different body and mind, and ultimately, from a different physiology.

The work we have to do to end the stigma surrounding mental illnesses involves monitoring our language and being careful with these harmful statements that we toss out—

Even if they come from a good place.

Let us listen to understand first, and imagine what it must be like to have an illness so dark that the only out is to take our own lives.