The World Health Organisation has today published its first report on suicide worldwide and its a pretty grim picture with a person taking their own life every 40 seconds. India tops the leader board and generally it is poorer countries that have higher rates of suicide.
The report suggests that there are ways to cut numbers for example by reducing access to things like guns and pesticides, by the media of each country being careful how they report suicide and for each government to have a suicide prevention plan (currently only 28 do). The biggest killer here though is possibly the stigma and shame that surrounds suicide, meaning that people are too scared to talk about it.
Probably pretty commonly my family has the shadow of suicide hanging over it, only in our family it is out in the open, for many suicide has been covered up and history rewritten. My grandfather took his own life, this was blamed on money problems and a son with a heroin addiction but suicide is generally a very complex thing and it could have been a combination of many different factors. The impact it had on my family was immense with years of guilt, regret and anger colouring any fond memories.
Years later, as a teenager my sister took a large overdose of paracetamol, thankfully she lived although ironically this may have had something to do with her eventual death from liver damage 20 years later. However although she was clearly very ill both mentally and physically she was treated with such distain and lack of sympathy from everyone around her, particularly the medical staff and my parents. She was blamed for being so 'silly' and for causing so much trouble. As a family we then had to go to counselling and I remember the resentment oozing out of every pore as we sat there every week trying to paint a picture of the Brady Bunch when in reality we were much more like Shameless. Needless to say as soon as we were discharged it was never mentioned again, nor did anyone think to ask why she had done it.
These experiences as well as hearing of other families situations and of course reading about high profile cases in the media meant that I had a view of suicide as something that only very selfish people did, after all why would you leave others behind you unless you were a really horrible person. Then I had my own experience and everything changed.
My suicidal thought came at a time in my life when I was very ill with (as yet undiagnosed) bi-polar. I had really shocked myself when one day I was crossing a bridge over the Thames when I suddenly had the thought of jumping. This idea became all encompassing, at first just when I was near the river but eventually the thoughts would pop up wherever and whenever. It came to a head one night when I found myself on a bridge seriously thinking about climbing over. Thankfully I had the Samaritan's number in my phone and spent the next hour on the phone to someone who just listened. By the time I finished the call I had decided to seek help and went to A&E where luckily my experience was very positive.
At first I did speak about my experience, with my husband who wondered why I arrived back in the house by taxi early the next day, with my work who needed to know why I wasn't coming in and also with the support workers, social workers and doctors who were all sent to see me. However that was as far as it went, I found myself feeling embarrassed and ashamed about what 'I had done'. I even hid further suicidal thoughts from those around me, not wanting to upset anyone. But it is this very silence that will go on to encourage more to take their own life. Unless we can all start sharing our experiences, getting the subject out in the open and encouraging the media to report suicide in a sensitive and responsible way then the shame and stigma of suicide will drive more to take that decision, no matter where in the world they are.
No comments:
Post a Comment