Zero Suicide

Zero Suicide

For most of the day, I have been reading on Twitter, “Zero Suicide”. While I believe in decreasing the suicide rate, I don’t ever think there will be zero suicide in any population, in any country of the world. In the words of the father of suicidology, Edwin Shneidman, he stated before his death, “well how many suicides do you want, and I say I don’t want any, but I want there to be the freedom to do it. So there is a morality. I study suicide but I am not pro-suicide. I am for suicide prevention”. That to me, sums up the notion there can never be zero suicide. To think that one day there can be, is just foolish. Now to prevent suicide, that is another ball game. I believe that there should be every effort to prevent a suicide from happening. But to do that, you will have to do quite a few things. Suicide must be talked about like cancer is talked about. Cancer was once considered taboo. People thought if you talked about it, you could get it. So it is with suicide, that talking about it will lead to someone taking their life. This is a myth. The next is that if you are suicidal, you will be forever. As Shneidman has explained, suicide is a time limited event. It doesn’t last forever. You might, like me, have lingering thoughts of suicide or once your mental pain has decreased, you no longer think about taking your life.

It just angers me when people talk about “zero suicides”. I get the sentiments but I just think it is foolish without serious interventions and preventions out there. Increasing hotlines or having your family doc talk openly about it. All that is needed is usually an open ear. Increasing services rather than taking them away. Decrease wait times for call back services or for psychiatric crisis teams. If there were more people who actually had help that was available to them rather than waiting months for an appointment, there definitely will be less suicides, possibly. This has to be more than words on a sheet of paper. I once heard of a case in the UK that a woman was waiting desperately for a callback from their crisis team, for days. She was begging them for hospitalization. They denied it or there wasn’t a bed available so she ended up killing herself. Her daughter was left to deal with the aftermath. I know things like this happen in the US as well. My friend’s daughter was once in the ER for days before there was a bed available at a psych hospital/unit.

I just think that if more mental health professionals dealt with suicidal people rather than pawn them off to hospitals, there might be less suicides. I am not saying that is the answer to every case, but if outpatient services are afraid of suicide, how is the client supposed to trust them?