Not Talking about Suicide is Killing Us

Death, dying, murder, war, ways to die, and the topic of choosing to die through suicide are all subjects that make even the most seasoned extroverts want to back out of a room, crawl into bed, and rock themselves to sleep.  We are not a culture that meets death head on.  Rather, we use words like pass on, took their own life, left this world, and hurt themselves to describe the tragic loss of our loved ones.  In changing language and avoiding the topics of death and suicide, we inadvertently choose to not see a problem.  More importantly, we do not give the person struggling with suicidal thoughts the chance to engage us as fellow human beings for fear of judgement or causing us, as the listeners, to be uncomfortable.  When we get that pit of the stomach feeling that something is horribly wrong with another person, we fear asking a question like “Do you want to kill yourself?” 

Why?  Why do we fear the question?  After years of working with suicidal people as a therapist and veteran I still find myself anxious when I know that the question needs to be asked.  Do I fear the question or do I fear the answer?  If my loved one says “yes” where does that leave me?  If someone can be so low and in so much pain that death seems to be the logical and most rational choice, what keeps the rest of us from going down the same path?  The answer is one that no one wants to hear.  Nothing keeps us safe from suicide, safe from the pain that is around us each day.  Nothing keeps us permanently protected from disease, depression, or that one phone call that will bring us to our knees. 

The tragedy in all of this is that 22 veterans continue to die each day, suicide is one of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States for those of us between the ages of 10 and 64.  Each time that I conduct a training on suicide prevention or intervention I ask each participant to silently mark if he or she has thought about suicide.  Not so shockingly to me, I usually have over 90% of participants that have thought about suicide at least once in their lifetime.  Hell, I have thought about suicide at least once in my lifetime.  The thought did not hang around for more than a moment, but it was there.  So many of us confront thoughts of suicide and no one talks about it. 

Why does this matter?  It matters the same way that not talking about race further lengthens the race divide and not talking about traumas such as rape and domestic violence causes memories and emotions to fester within ourselves causing us to feel alone, isolated, and sometimes out of our minds.  When we talk about a problem, we can work together to fix it.  We create synergy and energy.  When we talk openly about suicide, we give permission for someone to ask for help.  We remove the stigma and fear and we learn to face even our own mortality and fragility.  In essence, we save lives.  So next time you get that pit of the stomach feeling that someone that you know is suffering in silence, ask the question and give him or her permission to talk to you.  You just might save a life.