World Suicide Prevention Day
This story might be triggering. Proceed with care.
Saturday was World Suicide Prevention Day and I want to share my story with you.
If you are struggling right now and need to seek immediate help rather than read this, please call emergency services for your country or click here for a link to mental health hotlines in countries all over the world.
This essay includes talk of suicide, death, child abuse, and self-harm.
When I was eight, my third grade teacher at a very small private religious school died by suicide. She’d been behaving very strangely and talked openly in our class about self harm and ending her life, and then would instruct us not to tell anyone, extracting promises from each of us that we wouldn’t talk about it. It went on for several weeks before she ultimately took her own life.
After her death, there was no trauma counseling, no note sent home to parents, no support for the students at all. She was quietly replaced and very quickly the adults in charge decided this was something secretive, not something we would be allowed to discuss in class or amongst ourselves. I was filled with questions, fears, and no understanding of what happened or how to process it.
When I finally blurted out the story to my parents, filled with guilt for breaking the promise of silence, they immediately moved us to another school. My Mama made space and time for me to talk and talk and talk while she would listen and affirm that I’d done the right thing to speak up, and that I was continuing to do the right thing by talking about it. Nothing was off limits. Being able to share everything on my mind from a young age set us up for a very close relationship that served me well into adulthood.
Studies show that discussion of suicide does not increase the risk of suicide. It can actually make space for honesty, compassion, and the possibility of help to exist.1
When I was in middle school, a good friend tried to end his life, but was thankfully taken to the hospital in time to preserve his physical health. He then entered an inpatient treatment facility to work on his mental health. Instead of telling me to stay away when I asked if I could visit him, my Mama drove an hour so I could see my friend. I could only talk to him for thirty minutes, but it meant everything to be able to look him in the eyes and tell him how happy I was he was still in this world. It wasn’t until much later that I would realize just how rare my mother’s reaction was.
Fifteen years later, I myself fell off a cliff into deep depression. I had no idea what was happening to me or why. Despite a happy marriage, two miracle children, and having just spent a year living the dream abroad, at my core I wished I could snap my fingers and simply not exist. It was so strange and uncomfortable. A lifelong insomniac, I found myself sleeping twenty hours a day just to disappear from reality.
Thankfully my husband dragged me to a doctor to get help, where we learned together what depression is and how it can hit anyone unexpectedly.
700,000 people die by suicide each year. It claims more lives than war, murder, and natural disasters combined. Suicide impacts us all, and it does not discriminate.2
Medication, therapy, and a very supportive partner saved me, but the stigma of openly admitting my struggle with depression nearly killed me.
It isolated me in a way I had never experienced before. When I began to feel relief from the suffocating darkness, I was very open about how the medication I was taking made such an extraordinary difference. Instead of support, I got stunned, shocked silence.
Close friends backed away and made excuses to no longer see me. Parents of my sons’ playmates didn’t want me around their children anymore. People who used to regularly bring dinner if I was sick disappeared when we most could have used support. Those in my same faith said I’d brought this on myself, cast me as a pariah, and excluded me from places I was previously welcome. The way I was treated was equally as bad as the depression.
As I grew stronger, healthier, and learned how to live a full life while in treatment for depression, I discovered it was something to keep quiet about. As life went on and I made new friends, there was always a moment where I had to catch myself from sharing too much about my mental health struggles. Every single day brought a new lesson in the stigma surrounding it, teaching me it was something shameful and dark, better kept a quiet secret.
But… who was being helped by my secret? I continued to lose people I loved from death by suicide. Beloved people we didn’t even know were battling with their mental health. My silence about my own struggle helped me in the short term, but was it deadly for others? Would it end up being deadly for me, too? What example was I setting for my own children by staying quiet about something that had so deeply and profoundly affected my life from the time I was eight years old?
This realization led me to a crossroad, one where I had two options.
First option: I could remain silent, building a fortress of silence around me and my family, allowing the shame to stifle my voice as I struggled without anyone knowing what was happening. On the surface this seemed like the easiest choice because I knew what it was like to lose friends over something I couldn’t control when I desperately needed help. And it would keep my kids from being hurt by others when they pulled away or never came around to begin with.
Second option: I could speak out, open up, use my voice, my platform, and my influence to battle the global stigma surrounding mental illness, all while continuing the more personal fight for my own mental health. The risk of adding more pain, the continued ostracism, losing more friends, followers, and my readers was very real. There would be no way to control anyone’s reaction, and it would most certainly leave me feeling raw along with my closest family members who would be doubly affected — both by my depression and the world’s reaction to it.
A difficult choice indeed.
One day an older man who shares my faith quietly pulled me aside. As he spoke to me, he began to cry. He told me he’d been diagnosed with a debilitating mental illness years before and had been secretly in treatment, taking medication for it since then. He had kept it completely private, hidden from everyone in his life, including his wife and children. When I asked why he hadn’t told them, he said he was terrified he would be treated with the same disdain and shame I had received. He didn’t want to lose the respect of the people who looked up to him, or put his place in the community in jeopardy.
I didn’t know what to say in the moment, but even then I couldn’t imagine surviving even the shortest struggle with depression without my husband and close family members surrounding me tightly. Right then the difficult choice of what to do next became much easier.
You know which option I chose, because you’re reading this. I’m still here, using my influence and platform to speak about it.
And I won’t stop until talking about mental health until it becomes as commonplace and casual as talking about the weather.
The current global pandemic has pushed mental health challenges into daily conversation, something I did not have when I first began my public battle with depression. We have lost thirteen precious friends and colleagues due to direct complications from the Covid-19 virus. But we have also grieved for three others who died indirectly from the virus, when the pain of this world grew to be too much and they chose to end their lives in the last year.
One in four young people have contemplated suicide during the pandemic. In one study, more than 50% of respondents who identified as essential workers reported some kind of adverse mental health or behavioral health condition related to the Covid-19 emergency.3
It’s hard to know what to say, or what questions to ask, when we are all seeing less of each other and have less to talk about. And because everyone is struggling with something right now, how do we know if it’s an emergency?
I’d like to give you a few questions which might help us all gently navigate and normalize conversations about mental health. Pick a question, pick a friend, and text, call, email, or Facetime for the answer:
•What’s something you need to hear right now?
•What’s something you need to say or share?
•What makes you excited to get out of bed?
Instead of saying, “are you okay right now?” which is usually answered with a yes and a quick end to the convo, these are open ended, non-confrontational questions which invite a deeper level of conversation and give a peek into the mental state of those around you. When we feel seen and heard, we form healthy attachments to our families and friends, we discover safe people and places to share when things aren’t going so good.
But what if there seems to be something serious going on? An organization I’ve supported for years has an annual campaign for World Suicide Prevention Day. This year’s theme is Another Day With You. Part of the materials for the campaign included common warning signs and the hard questions to ask when it seems like someone might be contemplating ending their life.
Suicide warning signs include talking about feeling hopeless, wanting to die or to kill oneself, being in unbearable pain, having no purpose, being a burden to other. Behaviors might include researching ways to die, increased use of substances, being anxious, agitated, or reckless, sleeping too little or too much, extreme mood swings, or withdrawing from loved ones.4
No one thing causes suicide, but rather the culmination of life stressors and experiences can create a feeling of hopelessness so grave it causes someone to consider suicide.
If you’re concerned about someone, or they are showing some of the warning signs, please know it’s okay to ask the question: “Are you thinking about suicide?” or “Are you thinking of hurting yourself?”
Asking can feel uncomfortable and even a little scary, but being direct with the person you’re concerned about and listening to them is important.
If someone shares they are considering suicide or have a plan, it’s important to reach out for help immediately—whether that involves going to the nearest mental health center or emergency room (if the situation requires this immediacy), or picking up the phone and calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK for America, or the 24-hour Samaritans hotline at 2896-0000 for Hong Kong, or check out this link for a list of hotlines around the world.
There is hope. There is help.
And a final note, for those left behind when someone dies by suicide.
It is never your fault.
Never.
The loss is so great. The grief will hit differently. You may spend years asking if there was anything you could have done to have changed the outcome, if there was some magical combination of words or actions that would have made a difference. You may struggle with finding someone to talk to who will understand and not add to the stigma.
In the same way that I would guide someone struggling with their mental health to get help, I would gently suggest you find help as well. If you don’t get help for the traumatic death of someone you love right away, it may come out much later in unexpected ways. A grief counselor can help you process it and help you heal. With 700,000 deaths by suicide around the world each year, you are not alone in experiencing this kind of loss.
Some organizations which provide support for survivors are SAVE and Alliance of Hope. Both websites have resources and information on how to find support after a loss.
As the theme of this year’s World Suicide Prevention Day states: I want another day with you. And I want you to have another day with all the people you care about. I want you to be around for all the great things still to come, and the incredible people you’ve yet to meet.
You are far too loved for me to just let go. If you need to talk, I’m here.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/impact-of-screening-for-risk-of-suicide-randomised-controlled-trial/C13EF2D1B4FC19F0867838D5D4106CDD
https://www.who.int/news/item/17-06-2021-one-in-100-deaths-is-by-suicide
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/13/cdc-mental-health-pandemic-394832
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/13/cdc-mental-health-pandemic-394832
https://twloha.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=site-hero&utm_campaign=WSPD2021#2021-day-1
I’m glad I get all the days with you.
I love being in a world with your courageous caring! Thank you for sharing your experience and breaking silence.