A well-used life saver (h/t GarySmith70)
When otherwise healthy people get the flu, they are miserable for a couple of days while their bodies fight off the disease, then things improve and they’re fine. If someone has a compromised immune system, however, an otherwise mild virus can become deadly.
Now shift from physical conditions to mental ones.
When otherwise mentally healthy people get laid off, see their savings spiraling down the tubes, have banks threatening to repossess their homes, or get otherwise personally caught up in our national economic crises, they are miserable while trying to figure out what to do in response and how to come to terms with their new reality. When people with underlying mental health issues (clinical depression, PTSD, substance abuse, etc.) find themselves in these circumstances, however, it becomes exponentially harder for them to cope with the exterior economic stresses.
This is where the situation becomes dangerous.
From Miles Moffeit in the Business Section of the Denver Post:
The phone calls usually come in the evening after the machinery goes silent on farms across the country. The callers speak of dwindling cash flows, crumbling marriages. Some admit they’re holding a loaded gun.
Across a wide swath of rural America, increasing numbers of farmers are considering taking their lives.
The nation’s largest network of crisis hotlines for agricultural workers reports a spike of 2,000 calls through May compared with the same period last year — a 20 percent increase.
You can replace "farmers in rural America" with financial industry folks in NYC, automakers/dealers/parts suppliers in Detroit, real estate folks in California, or any number of other occupations and locales. The economic crisis is putting heavy psychological pressure on people, and medical examiners are not liking what they are seeing.
In a society that (sadly) often measures the worth of a person by their wealth and the importance of a person by their job title, the loss of a job, a home, and a career can be devastating. Feelings of failure, isolation, loneliness, and being adrift can turn into feelings of powerlessness, worthlessness, and despair . . . and this is the path toward suicide.
As a pastor, I’ve helped talk people out of suicide, and I’ve also failed at talking people out of suicide. I’ve presided at the funerals of people who committed suicide, and sat with loved ones long after the funeral was over. I’m not a psychologist, but what is clear to me in my dealings with suicide is this: it is not an individual problem, but a communal one. Obviously, the person who attempts suicide is affected by it, but it also affects that person’s family, friends, neighbors, and community. The solution to suicide, similarly, is communal.
Or, in more simple language: We are each other’s keepers.
Especially when times are tough.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has lots of helpful information for those who are concerned about this issue, including warning signs of suicide and knowing how to respond to them.
If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). It’s free, confidential, and they’ve got a national network of 130 crisis centers to help. If that’s too much to remember, just call 911.
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The son of one of my very good friends took his own life a few years ago. I’ve never talked with such a broken man. He almost fell to the same end as a result of his son’s actions.
My problem is this. Who are we to say “You must bear this pressure?” At some point, suicide can be a rational solution.
When I was 10 my favorite aunt committed suicide but we were told she died in her sleep. I didn’t find out for another 15 years and boy, was I shocked and angry.
These last three years have been the hardest of my life, the first time I’ve ever been unemployed. We’ve exhausted savings and made some big life changes. Add to that pre-menopausal hormone swings and I have to be honest and say I’ve had suicidal thoughts though I like to say I would never act on those thoughts.
My point is there isn’t one person who knows me that would believe I’ve had thoughts like that. So look around you. The people you think are the most together are often at the highest risk.
I was shocked when I saw the CDC figures for suicide. For white males over 45 it is only behind coronary/heart disease and all forms of cancer combined as the leading cause of death. That suicide rate is twenty times that of non-white males, five times that of white females over 45, and is proportionally much higher than the homicide rate for young black males. But there is virtual silence about that. For anyone near that point the suffering is incredible.
Make no mistake, suicide is an exercise in evil that leaves devastation in it’s wake. For the dead the pain is finally gone, that’s why they do it. For the living it is only beginning. That’s the bitter harvest from suicide.
My late husband committed suicide when our son was 5, followed by a 5 year will contest against me by the his grown sons of a former marriage. It was their way of dealing with the completely unexpected event. What a soap opera.
I went to a support group for survivors a couple of times. Many in the group were 5 or more years after the fact, but still consumed with it.
Yes, the suicides get off easy. It’s the ones they leave behind who must cope (or not). But I doubt that a suicide hotline could impress that on the suicider, judging from my one experience.
“an exercise in evil” – how can you call someone evil who has simply reached the end of what they can bear. I have had 3 members of my family commit suicide and a childhood friend. You might want to bone up on your compassion.
It has gone down to the high School level here in the Bay Area! # HS kids have stepped in front of CalTrans Trains killing themselves in the past month alone.
All this pain and suffering caused by the greedy at the top which caused our economy to fall on it’s collective face!!! Those responsible must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
My 2 cents
I also had a research assistant who was suicidal. It turned out he was severely depressed. In that case, I contacted our confidential employee help service, and they took it from there. He left my employ a couple of months later and went to live with his parents on the other coast, being unable to cope by himself. I don’t know what happened after that.
Um, yeah. Evil’s definitely not the word. Sorry to hear of those deaths in your family.
Among young people, there’s a kind of contagion that attends certain behaviors: once one person breaks the taboo, others follow. So there are pockets of suiciders, like the one you describe. It’s terrible when it happens.
Off again. Be well.
Please do not misunderstand me. My terms are not a condemantion of the dead. My first suicide attempt was at age 4, I drank gasoline. I’m now 48 and the fight goes on every day. My treatment program that combines med’s and therapy is very effective and I will never, never, never, give in.
Evil is a good word for it. The misunderstood pain of the first victim is the start of it. The devastation for the living makes them a chain of victims out into time. Evil is not very well understood by us humans and it finds any place it can to exploit and thrive.
I live in the area of these latest high school suicides, just miles from Stanford. Very heavy academic pressure in this area as well as financial expectations. Don’t know if this played a factor but Gunn HS (public) is considered one of the best academic schools in the country.
Suicide is often related to PTSD types of syndromes. One does not have to been in warfare or exposed to violence to have PTSD.
For many who are dealing with suicidal thoughts there are not too many stretches in your day when a suicidal thought does not occur. It is a disease but not yet fully understood.
Basic kindness and reaching out to the one who is afflicted will almost always be of some help.
From somewone who has been there.
My first husband’s father killed himself. He was a “high functioning”, self medicating, bi-sexual M.D. He was, I am sure, taking speed to cope with working every other night. His three children were crushed by the experience. They all acted as if it had not happened but all of them became drug addicts. My husband died of viral encephalitis induced by extreme drug addiction. His brother, who is sixty now, just lost his medical license. His sister has an eating disorder and used speed. She is a scientist. I haven’t seen either of the siblings in 20 years since Bill died. They were all gifted. They were all unhappy. Bill’s mother also used. Over the years she actively smoked herself to death. Of course, this effected my children.
You’re right, basic kindess is the best place to come from to help.
Rushbo has gone on and on about the the suicide rate of some country like Denmark being higher than the US…… check it out….. it is less….
BushCo has defunded suicide hotlines and services either domestic or military….
During the great depression my mother remembers a couple of her playmates whose fathers committed suicide…… she was critical of them because it left a lot of broken lives…….for them to handle life going forward…
My own grandfather worked for the USPS, they would cut their wages, give them 3 weeks furlough to allow others time to work…..
One need only look at the way Limbaugh exploited the suicide of Vince Foster to see the kind of man he is. The pain of the Foster children meant nothing to him except pleasure derived from power.
There is a genetic component that often figures in mental illness. It is in my family, I have cousins who became alcoholic and hard drug addicts, there father was alcoholic, my branch of the famliy has a schizophrenic and some who have dealt with clinical depression and bi-polar.
Part of my work is at a tertiary care hospital with inpatient mental health services. Apart from the constant year round need for treatment of serious mental conditions which most often include suicidal ideation or having just made an attempt, there are meta trends in the histories of people that sometimes emerge over the course of months or years as contributing to their downward spiral. Five years ago, it was meth. Over the past year, undoubtedly it’s been home foreclosure and job loss.
Suicidal ideation can result from many different causes, but the majority of the time it is transient and treatable particularly when there is another person available to listen and understand what they are experiencing. That can be family, spouse, friends, co-workers, pastors, or health care providers, to name a few. Sometimes it takes hospitalization and sometimes medication plays a critical role in helping. Sometimes despite all the best efforts of others, it doesn’t work to save a life. But helping all starts with an awareness of the degree of suffering of others.
Yes. I like the way you put it.
The families I have been involved with through marriage or my own have a tendency to pretend nothing is wrong. Denial of suffering means the person in pain is not heard. Worst thing that can happen.
The scary thing is that so many, at least recently, have killed their families as well as themselves. I don’t know how someone could do that but the pain must be extreme.
There will be many casualties from the housing bubble and financial meltdown both in our country and around the world. There will be deaths, suicides, stunted lives. But those who were most responsible for this damage will get off pretty much scotfree: Jamie Dimon (JPM), Lloyd Blankfein(GS), Hank Paulson (GS/Treasury), Joseph Cassano (AIG), Hank Greenberg (AIG), Mrtin Sullivan (AIG), John Mack (MS), Stanly O’Neal (Merrill), John Thain (Merrill), James Canye (Bear Stearns), Ken Lewis (BoA), John Stumpf (Wells Fargo), Robert Rubin (Citi/Treasury), Larry Summers (Treasury), William Donaldson (SEC), Christopher Cox (SEC), John Snow (Treasury), Bill Gross (PIMCO), and the list goes on and on.
I’m afraid this is just the tip of the iceberg for most of the American people. Things will become increasingly worse and many will simply be faced with situations they are not prepared to deal with on any level – unfortunately this will be the only way out in the eyes of tens of thousands of people if not many more.
Sometime in the middle half of 2010 the Obama/Geittner/Summers propaganda that “the recession is over” will be revealed for what it always was and always has been: a lie foisted on the public “for our own good.” When this occurs the American public will lose whatever trust and confidence they once had in their government, as well as its leaders, elected and appointed.
What was known as simply a “recession” will be revealed as a massive full blown Depression once the so-called stimulus “cure” runs its course and the Bear market rally crumbles and crashes to Earth beginning in October 2009. As 2010 grinds slowly on and on, the process “when belief in the system fades” will reach even more of the country’s population, then the conclusion: “we’ve been lied to” will finally take hold.
Naturally, “Obama & Company” will claim that “this is finally the bottom of the real estate collaspe” and then more borrow-and-spend stimulus packages will begin in 2011. Of course that too will fail for the fundamental reason the first stimulus failed: inflating debt cannot cure over-indebtedness and financial trickery cannot fix financial fraud.
In the first quarter of 2012 the American public will finally “come out of the ether” and get an unvarnished look at the REAL World currently masked by governmental lies, deception and massive injections of propaganda. It won’t be pretty, nor will it be the fantasyland being currently promised – “return to 2006 bubble economy”. Instead what the American people will be faced with is a full-blown financial and social meltdown. However this time, unlike the Great Depression of the 1930’s, this Depression will be so severe and brutal many will question whether the country as they once knew it will even survive at all. Any hope of a better future for the American people’s children will quickly evaporate and no longer exist…
Yes, people suffer and die and others gain wealth and power as a result issues that are sometimes treated as abstract matters of policy. Policies have real-life consequences. Of course if you point that out, you may be accused of advocating empathy.
I’m ao aoeey.
sorry
I advocate empathy! :) The several suicidal people I’ve tried to help in the past were older white men who used to espouse the idea that if you were good with God, nothing bad could happen because they knew that bad things only happen to the unworthy. When their financial security applecart was upset, it told them they were “bad” people. Tough job to convince them that an ideology they embraced for many years was not true.