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
