Mental Health | Suicide Prevention
Should I ditch toxic people in my life — or help them?
Will you save your friend suffering from mental illness or put the last nail in the coffin?
If you find a friend in the middle of the road with a broken leg, you will do something. You will find a way to prevent traffic from running him over. You will call 911. You will probably visit him at the hospital. And you will do all of that even if it is not convenient for you — even if you have other pressing matters to deal with.
That’s what a friend does.
In fact, we say…
When tough times come, you know who your true friends are.
If you ever went through tough times, you probably realized you had fewer friends than you thought you did — but you most likely had some. Friends or helpful family members. Someone was there for you.
What happens when ‘tough times’ are not due to a broken leg but to mental illness?
If you went through mental health issues, was there anybody around to help you? Or did everybody run for the hills?
If you were lucky, somebody was still there, by your side, during your mental illness. But chances are that you ended up alone. And that is most likely due to two main reasons:
- Mental illnesses are still taboo. There are still many people who think that mental illnesses are simply a matter of weak willpower. You can snap out of it! (Next time you have a broken leg, I’ll tell you to just snap it back in place!)
- There are plenty of articles telling people to ditch these people!
You don’t see articles telling people to run from a person with a broken leg. But the idea that people with mental health issues should radically be cut out of your life is widely promoted.
If your own belly button is the only thing you care about, it makes sense. People with mental illnesses are… An issue! They can be toxic. They will slow you down. They will make your life more difficult — just like taking care of your friend with a broken leg made your life more difficult, for a while.
The question is… Are you a real friend? Or simply somebody who was there to take advantage of that ‘friend’ while it was advantageous for you?
When I went through a deep depression and a suicide attempt, I ended up alone. Totally alone. Even my regular family doctor wanted to transfer my file to another doctor after discovering I had tried to kill myself.
The thing is… I don’t blame these lost friends or these family members who don’t want to see me anymore. They didn’t know what to do. I had mental health issues; therefore, they should protect themselves from me…
I made it through because I was lucky enough to connect with an outstanding psychiatrist. She’s the one who played the role of a friend on top of helping me fix my mental health imbalances as a doctor. She went beyond the call of duty. I wonder where I would be if it weren’t for her because there was nobody else.
The Fallacy of a Support System for Mental Health Illnesses
Humans used to live in packs, clans, groups, and families — whether on a farm or in a castle. People supported one another. If one was down, others picked up the slack and gave more. If one was sick, others shared the additional work burden. Old family members stayed with the family who took care of them.
Then, what?
Modern society killed clans by making people mobile. Families are now spread all over the place, often apart from one another. Even at the immediate family level, technology broke interpersonal skills — first with television in the living room, whereby family members no longer talked to each other, all the way to mobile telephones, whereby people sit around a table and totally ignore each other.
And then… The big daddy welfare government encouraged people to think, “I don’t need to give a sh*t — the government will take care of my father, or cousin, or sister.”
Finally, in the past few decades, it’s been the culture of ‘my personal rights — my personal rights — my personal rights’ with nothing said about corresponding responsibilities that come with those rights. A very self-centered education system, self-centered culture, and especially self-centered technology applied the last nail in the coffin of humanity. Humanity is dead, along with politeness, courtesy, and compassion; long live selfishness.
At the same time, you see suicides on the rise worldwide, from among young people who are totally ill-equipped to face the real demands and pressures of the real world, with no human support, all the way to elderlies who are sooooo alone.
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, the suicide rate in the U.S.A. increased by 35% from 1999 to 2018.
35%…!
The self-centered culture has to be part of the reasons why people don’t know how to react to people who are in mental difficulty. There is no concept of brotherly love, shared humanity, or communal responsibility in this self-centered, egotistic world.
Thinking that there is a friend or family support system for mental health is putting one’s head in the sand.
Who is picking up the slack to provide support to people suffering from mental illnesses?
It’s convenient to think that the healthcare system is there for people with mental health illnesses. It is not.
When I was in the deepest part of my depression, I knew I needed help. I wanted to seek help. Where was it?
Was I supposed to walk into an emergency room to let them know I’m a nut job and I’d like to see a psychiatric doctor? I wasn’t gonna do that. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, my regular family doctor didn’t want to hear anything about that. The suicide prevention helplines were out of the question for reasons I explained in a prior article. So, where was the help?
Even after my suicide attempt that gave me a 10-day adventure at the hospital, it was hard to find help.
Is it toxicity or mental illness?
Recently, in a Mental Floss article about eliminating toxic people from your life, I read the following:
“It’s worth noting that there is a difference between people who are truly toxic to your well-being and people who have a negative outlook because they struggle with depression.”
Well… With all due respect… How do you expect people to see this “difference” when they can barely recognize mental illness to start with?
I’m no shrink, but I would think that toxic people have a certain level of mental health issues.
“Toxicity in people isn’t considered a mental disorder. But there could be underlying mental problems that cause someone to act in toxic ways, including a personality disorder.” ~WebMD
Of course, you should be protecting yourself, but it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing situation. We’ll come back to this.
How can we better help people with mental health illnesses?
Since the problem is two-fold, the solution should be two-fold — and one part of it is in our own hands.
- There has to be better awareness and understanding of mental illnesses — how to spot them and how to help.
- We all need to be a better friend or family member. It’s that simple! And crucial.
On this second point, I no longer have friends, and there’s only one family member talking to me at the moment. But as I rebuild my life, I promise to be a much better friend than I was in my pre-depression, self-centered, egotistical life. I hope you will, too.
On the first point, I think we should spend more money educating ‘everybody’ than trying to convince people with mental health issues to call a helpline. We can all contribute to better mental health awareness and the fight against age-old taboos. I hope this article is part of it.
On top of that, these awareness and training campaigns would probably help a lot of people affected by mental illnesses but denying it to themselves.
Throughout my depression and subsequent suicide attempt, I had the feeling that those who were the quickest and most drastic at cutting me off were the ones with the most signs of mental health illness themselves. Perhaps the taboo around mental illness is closely related to how many people suffer from it but try to ignore it. Were they projecting?
“Many people are still turned off by seeking help for a mental health concern, like depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, an eating issue, or anxiety. While a man will think nothing nowadays of asking his doctor for a prescription of Viagra to help him sexually perform better, that same man will often turn to alcohol or denial to deal with his depression. A woman will go for her annual pap smear to guard against cancer, but refuses to acknowledge that eating has become an emotional issue rather than just about nutrition.” ~PsychCentral
How much toxicity is too much?
I strongly believe and hope that we all can and must do better in dealing with mental health illnesses affecting a growing number of people all around us.
But there has to be a line somewhere.
For instance, if your friend is abusing your kids, you need to cut that tie immediately. Of course! But I would think most mental illnesses do not reach such extremes, especially if they are addressed early on.
And even in these extreme cases, cutting the cord is not a complete solution. That person needs help! And everybody needs to be protected from that person. We still cannot simply “wash our hands and move on” if we are concerned about the well-being of the whole clan.
More about my journey with depression and a suicide attempt.
Related articles:
- Lessons from ‘A Star Is Born’ Compared to My Own Suicide Attempt. Words matter. Words have consequences.
- I Attempted Suicide. Common misconceptions about suicide.
Today, let’s reach out to at least one friend to check out on them before it’s too late.
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“A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” ~James Keller
I published this story in A Windy Life, a publication on Medium.
