Suicide Prevention
I Attempted Suicide. Here’s What You Don’t Understand.
Common misconceptions about suicide
Since I attempted to commit suicide a year and a half ago, I am overly sensitive to messages I see about suicide. I notice how suicide is depicted in movies. I hear people talking about suicide. I see advertising for suicide prevention. And I almost always shake my head.
For the most part, what I see and hear doesn’t fit with what I lived.
When you see somebody suffering from a heart attack, you perform CPR until the paramedics show up. When you see somebody on the verge of committing suicide, what do you do? Do you know? Do you have any idea?
When a close friend or family member takes their own life, you are devastated. So why not take the time to understand suicide a bit more and prepare yourself for what you need in order to help your loved ones?
There are billions of pages available on the internet about suicide. There seem to be dozens of governmental and not-for-profit organizations specializing in suicide prevention. Are we making any progress?
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, the suicide rate in the U.S. increased by 35% from 1999 to 2018.
35%!
And it’s accelerating.
“The [suicide] rate increased on average approximately 1% per year from 1999 to 2006 and by 2% per year from 2006 through 2018.” (Source: CDC)
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death for all ages in the U.S. So… Why do I get this feeling that every time we hear about suicide, we react as if it is such an abnormal thing?
Think about this: 48,344 Americans died by suicide in 2018. These are suicide attempts that worked. Now, think about how many people tried to kill themselves. In 2018, that number was 1.4 million.
Suicide is real. It’s everywhere. You’ve already had a friend or relative who tried to kill him/herself — or who will, very soon.
What will you do?
I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a social worker. These specialists are supposed to be the ones telling us what works best.
But I tried to kill myself. I know why. And I can share with you what didn’t work for me. In fact, I can tell you why most suicide prevention messages I see had no impact on me. And I can tell you what you are getting wrong.
I hope you’ll be a good friend to the next suicidal person you meet in your life.
First, let me share with you critical clarifications on a few wrong statements we regularly hear about suicide.
“He didn’t really try to kill himself — he’s still alive.”
With all due respect, this has to be the dumbest statement about suicide.
If your friend ends up in the hospital after a car accident, will you say that it wasn’t really a car accident because he lived?
I always say that I ‘committed’ suicide. I did not ‘attempt’ to. I did it. I had no intention of surviving; I was passed out. It just happened that a friend of mine figured it out and dispatched the police and the paramedics to my location about an hour before I ran out of blood.
I have this feeling that such a statement of denial is related to the fact that you don’t know how to deal with what happened. But you are doing everybody a disservice, including yourself. You are the one who will hurt the most after a friend has died by suicide. He’ll be at peace.
Learn how to deal with suicidal people instead of dismissing the seriousness of it.
“He’s weak. Somebody should have kicked his rear end.”
Interesting approach. I hear it a lot — on various variations of the same theme.
A few days after I woke up in the hospital, my ex-wife told me I was wasting my time at the hospital. I should call a ‘life coach’ to put me on the right track.
Obviously, I was on the wrong track. But let me ask you something.
If you see a guy with two broken legs lying in the middle of the road, what would you do? Would you tell him to stop whining, get up, and go to work? Or would you call an ambulance and find ways to divert traffic? Right. The latter.
Why would that be your choice? It’s because you realize that having broken legs is a severe medical condition.
Well… It’s time you start understanding that being suicidal is a serious medical condition, too. Start acting accordingly if you want your loved ones to stay with you on this planet for a longer period of time.
“It was just a cry for help.”
No, it wasn’t.
Before the day I committed suicide, I sent flares up looking for help. But on the day I tried to kill myself, I didn’t want help anymore. I was convinced there was no help available anymore, anywhere.
Before I did it, I put all my things in order. It was planned and final. I gave away clothes to the poor, I used all the money I had, etc. Once the hospital released me, I was homeless and penniless. I certainly did not plan to live through that. I did not plan on surviving that day.
And who are you to say otherwise?
“Suicide is a selfish act.”
That’s your point of view because you are left with dealing with the consequences of that death.
Don’t project your perception of it.
When I came to the conclusion that my own death was the best path forward, I honestly and totally believed that it would be best for everybody in my life. My kids were gonna get a huge life insurance payout (yes, my policy included coverage for suicide). And everybody else would be free from my issues. In my eyes, there were too many issues — most of them without any solution and not worth fighting.
I had prostate cancer. My last business deal went south, and I had to declare bankruptcy. I lost my job. I went into a depression. My girlfriend left me. My ex-wife was making it hard to see my kids. I was sitting, alone, in a condominium I couldn’t afford, in a nice part of town where I would see beautiful people smiling all the time. I didn’t see any reason for me to smile.
What was there left for me? What was even the point of fighting all this? Just so I can keep on living alone in my condominium? What’s the point of that?
My disappearance from this planet was good for everybody. That is what I truly believed. My kids were to get all the money they needed for Harvard, if they wanted. And the rest of the people… Well, there were no other people in my life! What was the point of me using air and polluting this planet?
If you want to help the suicidal, you have to understand that for them, committing suicide may be an act of generosity. That’s what I thought. If you don’t understand that, you are missing a big piece of the puzzle.
(Update: I further discussed this topic of suicide as a selfish or generous act in Lessons from ‘A Star Is Born’ Compared to My Own Suicide Attempt: Words matter. Words have consequences.)
“There’s nothing I can do.”
I’m sure it makes you feel better to claim you couldn’t do anything. But it isn’t true.
If somebody is having a heart attack next to you and you decide to keep on walking because you think it’s not your problem, you play a major role in his death. You were supposed to call the paramedics and, probably, perform CPR.
The reason you feel OK with ignoring suicidal people is that you are still refusing to recognize it as a medical condition — or you don’t know what to do. It is treatable. It is curable. It doesn’t last forever if it’s taken care of.
You can help somebody who is suicidal just like you can help somebody who is having a heart attack. There is always something you can do.
Today, let’s reach out to at least one friend to check out on them before it’s too late.
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