Depression and Suicide in no Original Terms- or maybe its about judgment

I wanted to seperate this from my previous point (about the blog traffic this week).

Yesterday my classmate committed suicide in her bathroom.  I didn’t know her well.  I don’t “hang out” with anybody because, admittedly, I have developed a very bad attitude over the past year or so.  I did know her, however.  I had talked to her a few times, had her in a couple of classes last semester (and this), walked with her in the million degree heat last summer at orientation when we had to wear suits and walk around downtown.  She was very pleasant and adorable.  When I try to picture her now I see a very small girl with a huge smile.  She was, as my friend said, such a sweet girl.  From my distance, and maybe to most people, there was no indication of depression.

People said she was stressed about school, that her grades weren’t great, that she was planning to drop out.  Honestly, I have no idea why she did it.  What I do know is that I had been thinking about doing the exact same thing for a couple of months prior to yesterday.  I had been thinking about how aimless my life had become and still seems to be since I did not have a very good (okay, horrible) semester last year and will probably at least take some time off after this go round, if I don’t all-out quit.  About how pointless I was and how things would be better for my husband and my parents because my debt would be cancelled and my family wouldn’t have to help me out anymore.  Needless to say, I was in complete shock (and remain) when I found out about this girl.

Why was it her and not me?  She was so young, free, she would have had so much opportunity even if she’d quit law school this week.  Unfortunately, suicides among law students and attorneys is not terribly uncommon.  Why doesn’t somebody fix whatever’s wrong with the system?  Why isn’t there any means of weeding out or at least providing a little more insultation for those of us with- for lack of a good descriptive term- delicate psyches?  Why didn’t this girl have some aspect of her life- some relationship or situation- strong enough to keep her alive?  A million questions have gone through my head regarding this and I’ve come across a disturbing answer in asking them aloud.

People are disgusted by suicide victims. 

I call them victims because something else is at fault.  I know exactly how it feels to want to die, but more than that, to see no other option.  I had an, erm, intentionally failed pregnancy a couple of years ago.  On top of the burden of the guilt- and I was certainly guilty, I made my own choices no matter how much blame I have wanted to put on others (but that’s irrelevant)- something in my brain chemistry was altered for about six months.  I wanted to kill myself.  Even when I wasn’t consciously depressed or thinking about it, I wanted to die.  I thought I should die, and I constantly thought about dying.  I was afraid of myself because at the times when I thought about dying my mind could not bring forth any reason not to.  Basically, I was convinced that it was the absolute best thing to do and that eventually I was going to do it.  (Obviously I managed not to and then the physical aspect passed and the depression receded.)

I say all this to address some now apparent misconceptions about suicide.  People believe that suicide is “taking the easy way out”.  There is next to no way that people who say this could ever have experienced the misery associated with truly wanting to kill oneself.  Saying that a suicide victim took the easy way out by dying is akin to saying that the starving person took the easy way out by eating.  At that point in time, death seems absolutely necessary.  Life seems absolutely worthless.  It is illogical to expect a person to want to continue living under those circumstances and cruel to expect them to.

People seem to believe that suicide is impulsive and almost accidental.  Maybe that is the case sometimes, but as mentioned above, I know from experience that it can haunt you for months or years, looming ominously over you much like any “real” physical threat- like being stalked.  Most people give indication that they are wanting to die (that they are in trouble) for long periods before they finally do kill themselves.  They want to be helped.  Every single one of us will come to a point somewhere in our lives where we need help outside of ourselves.  These people want somebody to take the threat away, to make their minds or their lives okay.

People are angered by suicide because it seems selfish and almost always leaves grieving, and sometimes traumatized survivors.  This is understandable if you carry the above view.  If you view suicide as a poor irresponsible choice on the part of the deceased that they had some real power to not make, then anger and disgust make perfect sense.  However, if you consider the obvious pain and whatever factoring circumstances the victim was dealing with it would also seem unfair to require them to live.

That is not to say that death is the answer.  Things can always get better.  Depression can pass, life can and at some point, will become worth living again.  Until that point, though, people need help and support- not the anger and disdain that they either get or expect to get because of these incorrect beliefs.

There is a lot of self righteousness apparent in attitudes toward mental health issues.  It is likely that these words will fall on either deaf ears or the choir and make no difference at all, but I wish that we would set aside judgment and realize that depression is an illness, that it is curable, and that suicide is what happens when one dies from that illness.  It may not have helped this girl specifically, but the stigma needs to go.  It is certainly not helping anyone.

---