Suicidal behavior:
With very few exceptions, suicide is
present in every culture. There are those who perceive their existence as so
frustrating, unrewarding and meaningless that they are induced to “fall by
their own hand”. In most cases their reasoning is flawed, the product of an
emotionally troubled mind. If we want to avoid the irreparable, we need to
interfere with this process as soon as possible. Very frequently, the subject
themselves perform this operation; sometimes their proxies (a partner or
friends) intervene; on other occasions general practitioners or counselors do
so. Crisis intervention is a key concept in suicide prevention: it assumes that
acute suicidality lasts for a maximum of several hours, or a few days. Once the
crisis is overcome, subjects may regain control of their lives. Unfortunately,
sometimes nobody intervenes, despite the fact that most suicidal people
communicate, more or less directly, their intention to die. In approximately
half of all suicides, the victims have consulted their GP in the months prior
to death.[1]
Hypothetically, if we were able to stop the
suffering, whatever its origin, very few people would ever contemplate suicide.
Death is just the medium to avoid the continuation of the unbearable.
Present-day society considers the choice of dying to be acceptable in only very
few situations. For example, it can be acceptable to sacrifice one’s own life
to save the life of others, or to die for one’s own country.[2]
The more suicidal behavior is adopted as a
problem-solving strategy in crisis situations, the more this ‘solution’ is
imitated. For example, if a mother attempts suicide in a moment of personal
difficulties, the probably of a child following her example is very high, far
bigger than in a family without such an experience.[3]
The suicide attempters:
Trevor, one of the suicide attempters described
by De Leo, seemed to lack premeditation or preparation for the fatal moment. He
was heading to a disco and going home just for a quick change of clothes, and
then suddenly decided to pull the gun on himself. This is the way many suicides
do actually happen. Most probably the idea of suicide was in Trevor’s mind for
quite some time, ready for enacting in a particular moment of despair. De Leo
learn from those who survived their suicide attempt that such ideation can
become operational in the space of a few minutes, even seconds. The ambivalence
that Trevor describes during his suicide attempt is typical of most suicidal
acts: he prepares to die but would like to be rescued by his friends.[4]
We also see inspiring stories of women who were
sexually abused by multiple close perpetrators, who actually became counsellors
and great healers to others after they overcame their crisis.[5]
Sergio, one of the suicide attempters
described by De Leo, described the following feeling as he was preparing to
jump off his tallest silo, “Life has nothing to say and nothing to give to me
anymore. I had no curiosity for anything, anymore. All I had was emptiness,
darkness, and total disconnection.”[6]
Then something incredible happened when he jumped off, “I immediately thought
that I did not want to die… And then it came to my mind, all the energy and
effort that I put into that property during my entire life… That property was
everything to me and, honestly, was not bad at all. Maybe I could be useful
again. In that precise moment I wanted live, with all of my being. But to die,
I began my fall face down. Now I had to try to redirect my body. If I
succeeded, I thought that, maybe by landing on my feet, I could eventually
survive.”[7]
Compared to women, men lack the capacity to
cope with a lonely life, a life where they are often separated from their children
and living in financial constraints. Australian statistics provide chilling
evidence that separation from an intimate is the most frequent life event in
the year preceding suicide. Men are not protected by the network of social
relationships that characterizes the female world. Men are mostly alone; and
even if they have a few good mates, they talk very little with them, and
certainly not about those things that are torturing their hearts. Thus, their instinct
is to ‘isolate’: they don’t like to show vulnerabilities or defeats. Research
shows that men often think that their peers would not understand their private
suffering; and that, if confessed, this could make them seem weak – a ‘loser’.
They already feel ashamed and their self-esteem has taken a battering.[8]
In many of the cases described, the suicide
attempt actually gave a dramatic shift in thinking and they are happy to be
alive[9].
Maria, one of the suicide attempters, does
not know if she really wanted to die; probably not. What she knows for sure is
that she wanted to stop suffering, to escape from an unbearable situation,
where her anxiety was ‘like a devil that bites you inside, that squeezes your
lungs’. This is a term coined by famous American psychologist, Edwin Shneidman,
as “egression”, the desire to get rid of suffocating feelings and ‘psychic pain’.
Shneidman explained that in many cases suicidal subjects do not want to die but
rather to stop their psychological pain.[10]
Those left behind:
Life of those left behind will never be the
same. Their narratives are characterized by disbelief, resentment, insomnia,
irritability, anxiety, depression, anger and feelings of guilt. Equally painful
is the stigmatization by other people: when a suicide occurs the entire family is
assumed to be ‘contaminated’ and can spread dangerous suicide-inducing germs.
Diane, a survivor left behind by her mother, describes a life lacking a ‘limb’,
and she demonstrates an amputee’s adaptation, as she says, like someone who has
been deprived of an important part of him/herself. She can still achieve, but
her life requires extra effort, extra resilience. Her legacy is that ‘the
sorrow remains and will always remain’, together with ‘a profound sense of
misfortune and sterility’.[11]
Francesca, a mother left behind by her son, describes that “When you deeply
love someone, a piece of you is inside that person. And if this person goes
away, that piece is lost forever. It is not with you anymore. You don’t own it
anymore”.[12]
De Leo, Diego. Turning points: an extraordinary journey into the suicidal mind, Queensland:
Australian Academic Press, 2010.
[1] Diego De Leo, Turning points:
an extraordinary journey into the suicidal mind, (Queensland: Australian
Academic Press, 2010), 10.
[2] De Leo, Turning points,
12.
[3] De Leo, Turning points,
14.
[4] De Leo, Turning points,
60.
[5] De Leo, Turning points, 47,70.
[6] De Leo, Turning points,
89.
[7] De Leo, Turning points,
94-95.
[8] De Leo, Turning points,
106.
[9] De Leo, Turning points, 88,
97, 116.
[10] De Leo, Turning points,
149.
[11] De Leo, Turning points,
157.
[12] De Leo, Turning points,
173.
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