World Suicide Prevention Day reminds us that suicide is about more than statistics, reflects ANDY HAMILTON SJ.
Suicide is not just about numbers. Even so, we should be concerned that, after some years of decline, the number of people who took their lives have risen this year. It remains the main killer of young people, including young women. Young women, too, form the largest group who have sought help for suicidal thoughts.
World Suicide Prevention Day reminds us that suicide is about more than statistics. Each occasion when someone, and particularly a young person. takes their own life, it is a tragedy not only for themselves but also for their friends and relatives. The realisation that so many young lives with all their possibilities have been cut off, and that the passion for life has been smothered by disadvantage, by despair or by illness, is horrifying and disconcerting.
Every death affects others: parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, friends and acquaintances. The effect on their family and friends of the suicide of a young person is particularly poignant. They can feel great guilt at not doing more to preserve their friend’s life, anger at the person who left them through suicide, and questioning of the value of their own life. Their pain and confusion can easily be neglected after the suicide.
World Suicide Prevention Day invites us both to recognise the loss and pain of all the people whom suicide has touched and to ask how we can help prevent similar deaths in future. It will be necessary to help people to reflect and talk about the deaths of people whom they have loved dearly. In our culture it has been difficult to talk about suicide, and the silence has been very destructive. That taboo may be changing now that we have been made more aware of the risks of suicide and the need to address them. There will certainly be people who feel deep anger and grief but are unable to find someone to talk to.
The difficulty of finding a listener is not surprising. The suicide of someone close to us is so confronting and distressing that we can be tempted to deny it or to shut it out. It breeds silence at many levels. The initial silence of incomprehension that any person would take their own life; the silence of inner confusion in which grief and sympathy are mingled with anger; the eloquent silence saying that we have no words that fit; the silence of shame that suicide should have crept itself into our family and circle; the silence of guilt that we should have anticipated and prevented this death.
The risk of silence is that grief, anger and despair can fester within it. It has led some relatives of suicides to take their own lives. World Suicide Prevention Day invites us to reach out especially to them to encourage them speak about the death of the person whom they loved and about how it has affected them. Our Jesuit Social Services Program, Support After Suicide, has for many years provided a safe environment in which people can break through the silence, fear and shame that so often surround suicide.
Suicide is also often associated with disadvantage. Young people who are disadvantaged through lack of access to education and work, through addiction, poverty and homelessness, poor physical and mental health, family violence, and through their contact with the justice system are also vulnerable to suicide. These are the conditions in which despair and isolation can breed.
To prevent suicide, we must build into our society the resources to help adults engage with society through work and build a sense of belonging. We must also accompany young people as they struggle to work through issues that can breed despair of finding meaning in their lives. Suicide Prevention Day is a time for valuing community as the place in which hope can slowly grow and health be restored by conversation.
