The 'S' Word:
A documentary I highly recommend watching
"As human beings, we're terrified of death. And people who are suicidal remind us of that thing we want to forget."
~"the S Word" documentary
I finished the documentary, the ‘S’ Word, and appreciated the attention that it is giving to suicide survivors, those who have attempted suicide and also those who have lost someone to suicide.
The above quote reminded me of why we don’t talk enough about suicide, the taboo nature of it, the stigmatization of it all.
Another point that gave me pause and I thought was so true was—
“There are about 112 people who die by suicide each day. That’s a plane full of people. If a plane was falling out of the sky each day we would care and want to figure out how we could prevent this from happening.”
And yet, yet—
We don’t. It is perhaps the stigma involved. Perhaps it is the culpability factor, in that we can rightfully blame the airline rather than the individual. After all, those people then didn’t mean to die or want to die, but do we think those who die by suicide chose this? I get that they did, technically, but did they really? Weren’t they ill? Died from depression? Died by mental illness? Died due to addiction?
I agree that it is not a fun subject, suicide, and that we don’t want to talk about it. We often look away and yet, as the documentary also says:
“At this point, it is criminal to do nothing about this.”
