Why we must talk about suicide

It's the last taboo. It really is. You can talk about your job, your relationship, your piles, or even your periods (we're getting a bit better at this one – at least in the West), but if you express so much as a whiff of a suggestion that you might be struggling to find many, if any, cogent reasons to remain on earth, you will be instantly shut down.

"Don't say such things."

"Don't do anything silly."

"Don't even think about it."

"Don't be so dramatic."

"Think of your family."

"It's not that bad."

With regard to the last one, the bald truth is that if a person is actually contemplating offing themselves, then it definitely IS that bad, and frankly, no matter how uncomfortable it may be for anyone else to hear, such persons really do need to be allowed to talk about it.

I once had the privilege of working as PA to a Chartered Psychologist. She was about five feet nothing, and worked with addicts - mainly on narcotics. I frankly feared for her safety sometimes, and would often stay late to make sure there was someone else around when she took her last appointments of the day at around 7pm. I was ready to use my rusty Shaolin Kung-fu skills, or at least my 999 dialling finger, if anything got out of hand. It never did. Most of her patients, even the ones who carried razor blades to slash themselves, were just people in immense mental pain.

My boss mainly dealt with serious addiction, but plenty of her patients were simply exhibiting depression and anxiety, and were 'at risk' of suicide – or they had at least admitted to their GP that they did not wish to carry on living. I had the opportunity to chat a little with some of her patients before they were called into the office. Most just sat quietly, leafing through the magazines on offer in the cosy waiting room, but some would stop to chat to me.

Most were embarrassed, and would tell me that I must think their problems very silly (most were immensely wealthy), but I would always parrot my boss and say that what I thought about it was not as important as what they thought about it, and if their issues were making them feel like doing away with themselves, then there was nothing silly about any of it.

In fact, far from being silly, or an emotion that we must all quickly sweep up and tip into the negativity sin bin, I would actually suggest that every last one of us has had moments in our lives where we no longer wished to go on.

With something this important, we must listen. Yet we're discouraged from any kind of negative thought under a barrage of daily inspirational sayings on social media. Cod philosophy is set to pictures of sunrises and idyllic beaches telling us that if we don't live in a state of perpetual gratitude for the gift of life, we are bad people in need of correction.

I find myself wondering: why are we allowed to express only positivity? Isn't that against the laws of nature? For every positive, there is a negative, for every up there is a down, and for every high there is a low. Are they not all part of the overall picture?

Besides fear of censure for the crime of negativity, other popular reasons for keeping any feelings of hopelessness to yourself include:

Making other people feel uncomfortable

Making other people question their own existence

Making other people feel they ought to be able to help you (Part 1)

Making other people angry with you because feel they ought to be able to help you (Part 2)

Making God angry because He bestowed the 'gift' of life upon you

Of course, that last one is a few thousand years of religion poking its nose into human affairs. It does that a lot. The others are all about other people, and not the person in distress.

Life can be exceptionally hard for some people, and a walk in the park for others. No two people's life experience is the same, that's why it would appear to make sense not to generalise on anyone else's situation and their attitude towards it. Money helps, although there are those who constantly and smugly assert that "money can't buy you happiness". This may be true for certain aspects of life, such as the attainment of satisfying and requited human love, but it can certainly buy housing, security, and the occasional treat to take the edge off things, even if the emotional garden isn't all roses. For those living hand to mouth, whose poverty is literally killing them, it really doesn't help to be told this.

Neither does it help to be urged to think of all the things they have going for them. Perhaps they have a gift for entertaining others (Robin Williams springs to mind), or animals like their company, or they're living in a nice part of the world, or they have an enviable figure and are universally admired by both sexes. If a depressed state is preventing them from seeing these as sufficient motivation to keep on breathing, force-feeding them reasons to be cheerful isn't going to change their minds.

Neither will antidepressants – which have a habit of making patients taking them put on weight, which tends to depress people even more. All pills can do is rearrange a few chemicals in the brain to enable a person to keep on doing the things that are making them miserable, only more cheerfully and efficiently.

In some cases, pills can alter outlook sufficiently to enable a person to make changes that may give them more options. They can help to put someone in the right frame of mind to do the housework that may have been building up for months, or email out a few more job applications with a less desperate tone to them. I will not deny there are one or two benefits to be had.

What a suicidal depressive needs more than pills however, is to be able to talk about it. To vocalise their belief that life would be easier if they were no longer obliged to live it, and to express the euphoria and relief they envisage when they imagine that white light moving towards them as they move to the next dimension and leave all the grief and pain behind. Hard as it may be for others to listen to, especially if they are struggling themselves, such thoughts must be permitted to be expressed without fear of rebuke.

Of course, professional psychiatrists are more than equipped to provide such services. However, here again is where the wealthy but unhappy win out over the impoverished. They can pay for people like my old boss to listen to them in a comfortable Chelsea consulting room any time of the day they choose. For the less well off, counselling is only available on the NHS if you're prepared to hang tight and sit on a waiting list for a few months to years, and then only if your work is sufficiently understanding to permit you to attend appointments during the working week - which is why many working depressives never make it to counselling.

The poor do have the wonderful Samaritans service to call upon, and they're only a 'phone call away. However, I maintain that nobody with any serious intent to kill themselves will call them, as they will not wish to be talked out of it. Only those who actually wish to be saved will dial that number. When I voiced this to my GP during a discussion about depression and suicide, he said in some surprise: "that's very rational", to which I replied, "yes, watch out for the rational ones."

And we must. Most suicides tend to come as a complete surprise to families and friends. The funny chum who keeps everyone in stitches, who is always there for everyone else, and who is found hanging in their garage. We must not be surprised. We must be vigilant. There are always signs. More than the occasional reference to the past, and how lovely it all was, romanticised pictures on social media of Ophelia floating down the river covered in flowers but without any accompanying description or context, that sort of thing.

Keep a watchful eye, and bite your tongue when they finally start to speak, because shutting them up with a mealy-mouthed meme or a platitude might just shut them up forever.

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2016