The 48 Hour Window

The recent deaths of Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell, both of which took their own life, really drove something home for me. There are still certain rules in place for large scale discussion of suicide, mental health and mental wellness within the general public. The rules are as follows.

  1. There must be a catalyst. That catalyst will normally be a high profile suicide.
  2. The person who took their own life must be a sympathetic character.
  3. Discussion will peak after 24 hours and have stopped after 48.

That’s it. Them’s the rules. You will adhere to the rules.

When you live with mental health issues they do not exist and impact you on such a timeline. They are a daily thing that you deal with while you attempt to live your life and go about your business. I don’t want to sit here and claim that the surge of interest and discussion around suicide when these things happen is grotesque, it is entirely understandable. People often feel like they KNOW the people in question. They may have enjoyed that persons work and art and effort for years, the loss will often be keenly felt by millions.

That said, this is one of those awkward moments where we need to have a conversation ABOUT the conversation. We gotta talk about how we improve public discourse around this thing, how we break down stigma and perhaps most importantly WHO should be doing the talking. Here are my rules for public discussion of mental health issues.

  1. Don’t wait until someone famous takes their own life to talk about mental health and suicide. It’s okay to just randomly drop the numbers to various helplines and charities in your social media feeds from time to time. The people who are suffering but haven’t told you will appreciate it. It implies a tacit support for them during their struggle and that can mean a lot. Sometimes the indication that someone out there cares is enough to have a positive impact. Don’t be shy.
  2. It doesn’t always have to be a serious conversation. This is a tough one, and people who don’t suffer from mental health issues gotta watch their ass when it comes to punching-down but it is okay to joke about things, or present your point in a funny way. As with all comedy sometimes you are gonna miss the mark but humour is a powerful tool. I think (or at least hope) that a good example is when I made a joke about doing a convention for my fellow agoraphobia sufferers. Hell, we wouldn’t even need to organise a venue because nobody would show up. Why say stuff like this? Because it helps to put people at ease when it comes to conversation…sure, this stuff CAN be life and death but it isn’t ALWAYS life and death. The golden rule here is that if your efforts land poorly then learn your lesson, don’t double down.
  3. Don’t expect people who deal with mental health issues to have 100% of the conversation for you. This stuff is vitally important to us but guess what, we’re tired. Every. Damn. Day. We are trying to balance everything you do with stuff you don’t…and you get tired right? This stuff impacts us but it doesn’t DEFINE us, and expecting us to publicly define ourselves by our illness and circumstances is just wrong. We don’t always want to be the person bringing it up, starting the conversation much the same way as PoC writers don’t always want to focus on the theme of slavery, disabled artists don’t always want to be showing you what they have overcome etc. We are people, with varied thoughts and interests. Don’t expect us to just jump in and carry these conversations for you, it’s perfectly fine to run through your thoughts on these issues without someone affected by them being there to hold your hand and tell you what a good person you are.
  4. Intersectionality. Thank you so much Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw for this beautiful word. If you like to think intersectionally then don’t forget about us. Believe me, this happens all the time. Just an hour ago I read a massive chain of tweets about diversity, tokenism and representation and it was amazing, each one a truthful hammerblow. Do you know who wasn’t mentioned, not even once? The mentally ill. This happens all the time, even though we are everywhere. Every race, every nationality, every sexuality, every gender…we are you and you are us. We are in YOUR communities, suffering the same issues you are and our own on top. Please don’t forget about us. Include us in your conversations, it could save lives.
  5. Watch your language. There has been an unfortunate rise in the use of loaded mental health terms as insults of late, including the habit people have of trying to imply anyone who thinks or acts in ways that they don’t like must be mentally ill. Gotta be. No other possible explanation for it beyond maybe straight up normal person assholery. STOP. DOING. THIS. I don’t care if you lean left or right politically, it’s a gross habit that says a whole lot more about you than it says about your targets.
  6. Have the conversation every day. There are enough of us that we don’t need to be bound to tragedy to spur us into talking about how to make things better and it doesn’t need to be the same voices talking all the time.

That’s it. All I have got. All I want to do is move beyond this 48 hour window I have noticed, if we can get that done in my life time I will call it a victory. Fuck that window.

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