MIND MOVES:Hopelessness can turn any crisis into a suicidal crisis
CARL O'BRIEN'S six Stories of Suicidebrought us very close to the distress that precedes and follows suicide. They were presented in a calm and deeply personal way. The people closest to the experience are to be commended for the way they shared with all of us the sorrow, the questions and the insights that their distress provoked. Their openness brought light to a darkness that many of us find too frightening to consider.
These stories all concerned men and boys. Four of the five deaths involved people under 24 years old. This reflects recent suicide trends in Ireland. The vast majority of such deaths have been males and the most dramatic rise in suicide in the past 10 years has been in the 15-24 age group.
While every suicide story was personal and unique, there were some features common to most of them: Michael, Sean, Shane, Damian and Joseph were each in extreme psychological distress and could see no way out.
Damian, who came “back from the brink”, articulated the sense of being trapped very clearly: “When I was suicidal, I couldn’t see any options. You’re blinded to them; I just thought, ‘I’m a loser’, ‘I’m a waster’ – I’d be better off if I was out of everyone’s hair.”
Hopelessness can turn any crisis into a suicidal crisis. A person becomes convinced that nothing will change for them in the future. “Lethal suicide attempts and completed suicide”, in the words of Prof Mark Williams, a leading researcher on suicide, “represent the ‘cry of pain’ from a person who feels completely defeated, with no escape routes, and no possibility of rescue at all”.
Stephen, whose death appears to have been impulsive rather than the outcome of protracted distress, was the exception. His experience reveals how careful we need to be in attempting to explain suicide and how much we have yet to learn.
The majority of people who die by suicide have never had contact with professional services of any kind. A key aim of raising awareness in recent years has been to encourage people to seek help and remove the stigma that prevents them from doing so.
What was disturbing about these stories was the way in which four of the six families who did engage professional help were badly let down by the system. The only exception was Damian: intervention by his neighbour, John Quinn, and very intensive counselling from Pieta House saved his life.
But for Shane D’Alton, a young man known to be at risk and hospitalised for depression, the outcome was different. He was in hospital barely a week when he was sent home on weekend leave without having seen a consultant or being offered any kind of psychological intervention. He died a day later. His father’s account of Shane’s admission was grim.
Service providers claim they are over-stretched and under-resourced and doing the best they can with what they have. But hopefully those who oversaw Shane’s care have reflected long and hard to see how the tragedy of a similar death might be prevented in the future.
There is an old adage that our worst enemy can become our best teacher. These stories were written to provoke thoughtful discussion about what we can learn from them. They raise questions that urgently require our attention. How can we look after one another and be more responsive to people around us whose lives are filled with anguish? How can we ensure that innovative services like Pieta House and Console are adequately supported and not viewed as an optional “add-on” in a small number of communities? How do we handle the impact of teenage suicides on their peers who may view the behaviour of the deceased as giving implicit permission to them to do likewise? How do we address the root problems in our communities that cause depression and alcohol abuse and fuel suicidal behaviours?
The people who were interviewed described how they were now actively working to support people in crisis in different ways. Each of the six highlighted the single most important insight their pain had revealed to them. We need to talk to each other. Minding our mental health means turning our inner conflicts into conversations, so that we can find a way through them rather than allow them to get the better of us.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (headstrong.ie)
tbates@irishtimes.com