Recession Depression And Suicide
Oct 1st, 2008 by zania
What Do You Feel About Someone Who Commits Suicide?
So the US banks have been bailed out and people all over the Internet are discussing what this could mean - for the economy (US and Worldwide) and, of course, for themselves and their families.
And amongst all this chaos and double (quadruple?) talk, more and more people are getting depressed…Big Time.
Some people are ‘bailing out’ altogether, with their lives.
My partner was telling me about a guy who committed suicide by throwing himself in the path of an oncoming train, because the finance business he was responsible for was in ruins.
My partner is not an unkind man, but he had no sympathy for the guy. As far as he is concerned, the guy should have thought about the consequences of his actions; for his family, his colleagues, and, most of all, for the poor bastard driving the train, who will most likely spend months, if not years, having therapy to help him cope with the undeniable fact that, although there was absolutely nothing he could do to prevent it, the train he was driving had crushed someone to pieces.
My thoughts on this?
Yes, I see where my partner is coming from (and that is honestly not a cliche). My mum (would you believe?) worked on the trains for some time a few years ago and so I know what the effects of being at the scene of a ‘fatal incident’ can be like.
But when someone is suffering from depression, from whatever cause, they are not thinking straight. Their whole mind is full of darkness. It is almost impossible to see beyond this to thoughts of family, friends, work and any other matters they may have to deal with. Because to go down this route takes with it the darkness itself. The future, as well as the present, seems totally dark. It is immensely scary.
Someone suffering from depression can be termed ’selfish’, in that they literally can only see the World as it surrounds them.
That is the best way I can explain this. And for someone who has never suffered from depression, I guess that’s not really enough…
All I can say is this. These are hard times financially. In all likelehood things will get harder before they get any better. There will be casualties.
But please do not dismiss anyone as a selfish bastard, simply because they were suffering from depression so badly that they found the only way out was to commit suicide.
What they needed was help, in whatever form it came, but it either wasn’t there, or they didn’t know where to ask for it.
There is no blame to be attached here (well… apart from to the ‘free market’, but that would be a whole other post….).
That’s enough said on this issue (for now at least…) But maybe someone will read this and have second thoughts about apportioning blame to someone who was so obviously depressed…
Zania, I think this is one of those controversial issues that will remain controversial for a very long time. Even simply being harmless depressed is controversial if a person doesn’t function “normally.” After seeing this article for a second time tonight, you’ve forced me into ending my cycle of procrastination and posting some old comments I had laying about regarding suicide. That post, Suicide Isn’t Always Selfish, is now live on my site. It doesn’t, however, touch upon the situation you’ve mentioned where a person committing suicide endangers the lives of others. I wonder if I can plead no comment, I wonder also if wordpress even has a “no comment” or “plead the fifth” option. Will I be a coward if I don’t have an opinion? Must I always have an opinion on everything?
(j/k)
I’ll give it more thought and if I form an opinion you’ll be the first to know. Wordpress does, coincidentally have a “form an opinion link” but the script runs on a server that’s really slow — sometimes takes days, or even weeks, to execute the “form an opinion” script.
Thanks Andy for the ‘no comment’ comment
I have just read your post and I agree with everything you say and I do hope that POHA does ‘get it’ if she is gong to be working with patients suffering from depression.
The ‘incident’ I referred to above and the relating of this to something which happened to my mum when she worked on the trains… I used this, because I remember very vividly how this affected her. She was the train guard, so she had to ‘take charge’ until the emergency services arrived. It is (rightly) always assumed that the train driver will not be able to cope with dealing with this him/herself.
Although both she and the train driver spent months in therapy after this, neither of them blamed the suicide. You see, they both knew that, because of his choice of suicide, the person really intended to kill himself - it was not one of the proverbial ‘cries for help’ we sometimes accuse people of making.
And therefore for this (and for other reasons too gruesome to elaborate here), they knew he wasn’t thinking rationally or caring about anything in this world at all, includig himself.
In my first comment when I said
, I apologize for typing so fast. That is not what happened, as you pointed out in your reply.
I don’t believe much in the “cries for help without meaning it” stuff. First of all, if a person is in that dire need of attention, then it’s highly probable they are suffering one way or another. Without being too general, my opinion is that in most cases, a person who says something like that has at least thought of suicide.
Unfortunately, because of the widespread belief that a person is just looking for attention when they talk about suicide, I stopped telling anyone (except for one lone, very close friend). I could see where that decision might cause a problem at some point, at least for those who I potentially leave behind. The latter statement I may say lightly, however, I’m fully aware of the devastation my death would cause. I very frequently think about that, as I always try to be a considerate and thoughtful person. Now I ask you, Zania, how selfish would I be to commit suicide when I’m separated from family and friends 95% of the time simply because I don’t have a car? Shall I stay alive to make the 2% happy, because people need a doormat, or a free computer technician?
Naturally I don’t want to be narcissistic and must concede to the possibility that there really must be something wrong with me and my personality to be so unneeded and unwanted most of the time. Clarification, many times I prefer isolation, but many times I don’t. And despite that, I have made much effort in maintaining contact and establishing new relationships. Spinning my wheels…
Besides the “stigma” that goes with “crying for help,” another reason I stopped telling anyone is because it makes them feel bad, helpless to help me. Usually I don’t feel any better after talking about it, so it seems like there’s no good that comes from it. And it doesn’t ever result in anyone bothering to call me any more frequently, despite the fact I’ve been on two separate 72-hour holds for suicidal ideation. People generally can’t comprehend it could or would happen. And then after it happens, and then people say, “I can’t believe he did that. I wonder why he killed himself. It’s so shocking I can’t believe it.”
It’s causes me distress of course that I rarely get a family member to call up just to ask how I am. Now here is an example of “feeling sorry for myself.” If in a time of depression, sadness, and loneliness, I say, “No one calls me,” many people might accuse me of feeling sorry for myself. (Of course this can happen to many people, not just me, and that’s whey I’m mentioning it.) In actuality, I’m in much emotional pain, so I would have every right to feel sad about feeling neglected. It doesn’t really have anything to do with self-pity. It’s a very narrow-minded view someone takes to say that it’s self-pity. It shows closed-mindedness and lack of sensitivity as a person, and there’s not thought to walking a mile in another’s moccasins.
It’s good that you agree with me on my conversation with POHA. When people see things the way I see them, it indicates a high level of intelligence. (wink, smile)
I’m glad I could make you smile with my “no comment” comment.
Hi Andy,
I think most people say “How are you?” without really wanting the true answer. Just now and again, I would like to reply, “Well actually I feel like crap,” and go into great detail about it, but I know that would horrify them, so I say “I’m fine” (which any therapist will tell you means ‘f***ed up, insecure, neurotic and emotional’).
And yes, I deliberately said ‘we accuse people of’ in relation to the ‘cry for help’ as I know that really isn’t a true representation of what that person is feeling.
I see your Mother and other members of your family have been commenting on your blog and that your mum is very proud of you. I don’t know your situation, so I cannot say what that means in deeper terms, but it seems to me that your family is keeping track on you, so they definitely care. But I wouldn’t even try to say what this means to you and the way you feel about no one actually calling you.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I see a lot of love there, even if it may not be said in so many words. I don’t know.
But there again, being far away from family and close friends is hurtful, there’s no doubt. When you need someone close at hand to share your thoughts with, whatever they are. Or just to feel close, and they are not there. Then yes, that hurts…
And as you said, your death would cause much devastation. I must admit, at times I have thought of these things too and it has been thoughts of loved ones which have held me back. This is how I can understand some of what POHA feels about suicides ‘being selfish’. But it just isn’t like that when you get inside the mind of someone suffering from major depression. Sometimes the darkness gets too much.
I have been lucky, I guess, in that people have kept a close eye on me when I have been feeling this way, but I hated their ’surveilance’ at the time, I must admit.
Perhaps, if you are a sufferer from depression for a number of years, all that thinking about what life means and what death means leads to some sort of uneasy balance. I don’t know.
But I would guess that for someone who has never suffered from depression before and is in the middle of a deep crisis and has major depression, they will not have that experience to draw on and so, well, they commit suicide.
But that’s only my rather muddled thinking on this.
For now anyhow
Take care
Zania
My mother and one other member of my family, and one is a good friend.
Yes, that’s true.
I kind of hoped some of my other friends or relatives might stop by and/or comment. Three is kind of a disproportionately low number. Maybe my expectations are too high again, or my realism too low.
I happen to like your thinking and only find it muddled when I haven’t slept for 20 hours. I like your writing, it has a lot of substance in relation to other “blogs.” I added your arse feed to my site yesterday, in fact.
You have an option for email subscriptions to new entries. Have you thought about offering email subscriptions to comments as well? I can tick the box below, but otherwise I would have to manually tick the box on every post to get all new comments.
I’m being nice again–I wasn’t mentioning it for myself, I subscribe to Fraying Edges entries and comments by rss.
Can you believe, Zania, I forgot to give you more recommendations! Each related to this article:
The No Reply Blues
Fortune Cookie will Probably Advise against Suicide
Suicidal Thoughts Bring about Social Confusion
And one other thing I forgot to tell you: I have the problem of being honest when asked “How are you doing?” Usually I’ll answer “fine” but sometimes if I’m feeling unusually more depressed, I’ll add a run-on sentence to quickly describe in vague detail about something troubling me (of course there are exceptions and depends on who I’m speaking with). It’s only recently that I started working on just answering, “Good.” But you know how it is: it’s a lie so it’s hard to say, therefore I sometimes catch myself saying, “Good…. Good…..pretty good.”
I like the way you write, this is in fact my second time commenting here, though the first was for the ‘The Loneliness Of The Depression Blogger’ post which was too long ago I think for my comment to be noticed. Your thoughts mirror my own on the suicide issue, there’s been a fair bit of discussion on the topic here in the UK recently actually, I wonder if this may be because of the economic woes the west is heading for (though I’ve yet to hear anything about suicide placing cause on this yet). I recently heard a piece on BBC radio about a woman named Ziggy who decided to take her life by hanging at 23 but was discovered by her family and saved but with massive brain damage. The segment was immensely disturbing not least because of Ziggy’s participation with her now destroyed memory of the incident and significantly reduced capacity and articulateness. I might add that I thought it was an act of cruelty in fact to force Ziggy to continue living in this state after she’d clearly decided to take her life and was now trapped in a condition where she could no longer express her own wishes or make her own decisions, but that’s a whole other topic for discussion. I have to say that I too take the position that whilst suicide is an immensely selfish act to resort to, that is the whole point. Things have gotten to the stage for the person where they can no longer consider others as they might have done if they were healthy, when the choice is all but removed. Whilst not claiming that there comes a time where free will and responsibility is completely diminished by depression, I do understand that it completely eclipses one’s whole life view, I know this because like most who comment here I’m going through depression myself.
The problem is that the mindset of depression becomes a filter through which all events are interpreted, even with conscious awareness of this filter, there is still no choice but to perceive through it. It occurred to me recently that if I were to receive terrible news from a friend who needed counsel from me, I’d be hard pressed to provide it because I know I’d end up comparing their sorrow to my own, no matter what I made of that comparison it’d only bring me down further. If I believed I was worse off, I’d be unable to appreciate, as fully as I otherwise might have: their plight, and if I thought their situation worse, I’d feel guilty and depressed for being so selfish of a person as to have put my own problems ahead of those with greater needs. Of course either viewpoint is completely moot because that’s not what my friend would need, they’d need me to understand and to help with THEIR problems but my capacity to do so, thanks to this omnipresent dysfunction of my mind, I won’t be able to effectively. There’s no way around it, similarly with regard to suicide, one can reason, and rationally think that it would be unfair to the train driver, unfair to friends and unfair to family but even if this occurs to the depressed person, it will only drag them down further into the darkness that was so unbearable as to necessitate suicide in the first place. It’s a recurring, infinite loop with no way to logically reason around it, it’s not that empathy and selflessness has disappeared from the sufferer’s mind; it’s that it has become so dark and so hidden by the blinding effects of the filter by which the world is now related to; that it is out of grasp.
I don’t think that I am going through a problem as bad as Ziggy, or the man in charge of the finance company because, by my own analysis; I am not suicidal, but I can definitely see how the idea can be contemplated, when there is nothing else in all the universe but the depression. When everyone else and everything else you see, speak to, listen to and interact with are merely different aspects of your depression, it can seem that there is no other option left but to take down the darkness, even if it means taking everything hidden within its shadow with you.
@James,
Hi and thanks so much for your comment. As to your other comment, I will go back and have a look at it in a moment - I have frequent ISP problems and keeping up with the comments on Fraying Edges recently is something I find difficult to do among ‘breaks in internet communication’ (I would put a ‘head banging ’smiley’ in at this point if I knew how to do it…).
As to what you said here…
“if I were to receive terrible news from a friend who needed counsel from me, I’d be hard pressed to provide it because I know I’d end up comparing their sorrow to my own,”
I think you are being too hard on yourself (but then we always are aren’t we?).
Personally, I really believe there is no such thing as a completely unselfish person. We can only see others in relation to ourselves, our feelings, and our own experiences, because we are ‘inside ourselves’ and most of us are not mind readers. We can put ourselves in others’ shoes, it’s true, but the only way we can relate to their experiences is to relate it to something we know ourselves, otherwise it makes no sense to us at all.
Yes, our friends may ask us for help in dealing with their own problems, and yes, they want an answer which relates to them personally. But in all honesty, if we cannot relate our answer to something we know, I think we are clutching at straws trying to help them.
When we feel depressed, we blame ourselves for thinking this way, but when we can be more ‘rational’ (although I hate that word, it seems to fit in here…), we realise that our experience is valuable and can be helpful to others.
But as I said, that is my opinion only…
I hadn’t heard about Ziggy (keeping up with UK news is also difficult when the internet is dodgy), so I do not know the whole story (not that the media would give it anyway…), but from what you say, I agree with you. She wanted to die, but instead they ’saved her’…to a life where her ability to make her own decisions has been destroyed. I know if I had been Ziggy, I would not have been at all happy about that. But then again, I guess there may be something better to come from all this, although what that is (and if it does occur) only the future will decide. But even to me that reads like a cliche…
I’m glad you have not got so down that you feel suicidal and I don’t think it’s a bad thing to contemplate whether or not you do feel this way. Pretending the ‘thought’ does not exist is (again in my opinion) not the best way to deal with it.
But I’m rambling on here a little….
So thanks so much for posting your comment James. It was very much appreciated.
@Andy,
I’ve just seen my feed has been added to your blog as you said. Thanks. I had better make a new post here soon I think After I’ve read those of yours…
You said:
“I kind of hoped some of my other friends or relatives might stop by and/or comment. Three is kind of a disproportionately low number. Maybe my expectations are too high again, or my realism too low.”
Does everyone actually know about your blog(s)? Or are you expecting those who know about it to tell others? Silly question to make to an intelligent blogger, I know, but I thought I would ask it anyhow.
The other reason, I guess, is that there are many people (the majority) who read but never comment. We enjoy writing, but many people find it a pain in the proverbial. Just a thought…
As to the ’subscribe to all coments’ idea. It’s a good one. I have the ’subscribe to comments’ plugin on this blog (I think… better check), but as you say, it only works for entries you have subscribed to. And I know that the ‘comments link’ at the top of the blog needs adjusting. It’s one of many things I never got around to when setting up this blog. So I need to look at that too soon…
I’ll go search for another plugin
You don’t necessarily need a plugin for adding a subscription to all comments. Just add your comment feed to feedburner, the same way you have email subscription for new posts.
I’m going to keep my comments short for now; I see you, like me, are playing catch-up.