Learning About a Taboo Topic: Suicide

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a four-part series looking at depression, mental illness, religion and suicide, rising out of an upcoming documentary on Hallmark Channel, Aug. 22 for which Ms. Davis served as lead writer.For the past two years my office colleagues and I have been on a challenging journey, one we didn’t really choose.We have been dealing with a topic that no one wants to think, talk, or learn about—until they have to, and that is the topic of suicide.

The organization I primarily work for, Mennonite Media, has been producing a TV documentary on the aftermath of suicide. It doesn’t really deal with prevention—there are many other films, videos and documentaries dealing with that important topic. There are far fewer resources dealing with the aftermath—what happens to survivors—the friends and families left behind? There are even fewer resources from a faith perspective: what happens when a person of faith takes their life? What happens to them—or their soul?

The documentary,Fierce Goodbye: Living in the Shadow of Suicide,is scheduled to air in the U.S. on Hallmark Channel (Sunday August 22, 12 noon ET/PT and 11:00 a.m. CT). My next four columns will explore various aspects related to depression, mental illness, and suicide out of interviews for the documentary: courageous people who bared their souls on an extremely difficult and personal topic.

Suicide is something that touches almost every one, every family, in one way or another. Everyone, it seems, unfortunately, knows someone who has ended his or her life by suicide. Which brings me to the first thing I learned when I first began researching this topic: we really need to stop using the phrase, “committed suicide,” as though suicide were a crime, like committing larceny. That term is very painful for survivors. It is less painful to hear “died by suicide” or “ended their life by suicide” or other phrases which don’t use the word “commit.”

Statistically, there are about 31,000 people who end their life by suicide every year in the U.S. If you figure that each person has 20 people closely affected by their death (close family, friends, classmates or co-workers) then there are 620,000 new people closely affected by suicide every year. Many times close family members are affected to the point of taking their own life. So learning about and studying the effects of suicide among survivors is a very real preventive among a group at increased risk.

Learning about the tenacity of survivors to cope with so great a loss and go on to help others avoid the devastating, rippling out effects of suicide is a very hopeful thing. The people who participated in the documentary were all, in one way or another, reaching out beyond their own pain to help others, and thereby find a measure of healing.

Dr. Kay Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.), says that depression, schizophrenia, and manic-depressive illness are three of the top five mental illnesses that lead to 90-95 percent of all suicides. The good news is that all of these diseases are very treatable. The bad news is that you have to stay on the medication, which can take counseling. Other complicating factors include reactions to medications, doctors prescribing medications too quickly and not monitoring side effects—such as suicidal tendencies. Dr. Jamison, herself, is manic-depressive and once tried to take her own life. She believes strongly that people can and should get help for illnesses that often remain hidden and undiagnosed. Sometimes people fear the branding that happens when people hear someone has or had an illness of the brain. As the mother of one young man who ended his life said, “When somebody has cancer, we don’t blame them for becoming ill. But for some reason it’s easier to blame someone when they have a mental illness.” Next time we’ll look at some stories of families who struggle with the aftermath of suicide. For more on this topic visit the website prepared for the documentary at www.fiercegoodbye.com

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Contributed by Melodie Davis from her weekly columnANOTHER WAY (http://www.thirdway.com/aw/).For information on using Another Way in a local newspaper, contact:ANOTHER WAY, 1251 Virginia Ave., Harrisonburg, VA 22801-2497; or call1-800-999-3534; fax at 540-434-5556; or email me at:Melodie@mennomedia.org