When is a suicide not a suicide?

rmnrgn

Forgive me for being cryptic but I can't give out too much detail for fear of identifying anyone.
A young man was found hanging by his mother recently, resuscitation by the emergency services was successful in retrieving a pulse and he was transported to hospital. However he never regained consciousness and died earlier this week. A tragic loss of life especially in one so young and similar to the hundreds of lost lives in Ireland every year.
Grief is such an intensely personal and diverse emotion that individuals and families deal with it in their own way but this young mans death took an unusual twist when the family let it be known that he had in fact died in an accident.
The coronors court will have to determine the cause of death but ligature marks and toxicology results do not tally with the "accident"
Is this an unusual manifestation of grief? Is there something else? Stigma? Why would the family pursue this belief when the truth will inevitable emerge in the coming months? There have high profile cases of suicide in the past few weeks and months, which I think is raising the profile of the problem nationally. Its no longer the dark secret that haunts society yet I see no rationale for denying what happened to this young man.
Help me see what I am missing here.

banie01

For a Coroner to record a verdict of suicide in Ireland, There has to be clear and incontrovertible proof that the deceased intended to end their own life.
There is a legal preumption against suicide in Irish law and it must be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Without this clear and unambiguous proof, a verdict of Suicide cannot be recorded.

Usually a note will suffice but in the absence of a note, text messages, recounting of conversations where the deceased expressed suicidal thoughts(Though in normal proceedings it would be discounted), Medical evidence of pattern of suicidal behaviour, a pattern of established behaviour and other circumstances can be considered as evidence of suicide....
But, this being Ireland.....
Here is a link to a recent coroners court findings in similar circumstances
Without a clear note or message expressing the deceased's wish to die, any case I've encountered such as this has been recorded as ''Misadventure'' or ''Open'' and the above cases are among the 1st I'm aware of where a coroner found suicide as cause of death without a note or similar.

This type of reporting does the mental health and suicide prevention campaigns in this country a massive disservice!
According to official figures Suicide accounts for @500 deaths a year in Ireland, but anecdotally this figure is really an order of magnitude higher!
Since 2002 I know of at least 35 people all under the age of 35 whom I would consider friends, acquaintances or colleagues that have taken their own lives.
Of this number 4 were recorded as suicides!
4 were recorded as suicide, the other 31 were attributed to ''Misadventure'' or ''Open''

According to HSE figures @70000 people a year attend A+E dept's for incidents of Self-harm and we are supposed to accept that the suicide rate in our country is on par with the road death rate!(And look at the money spent on prevention of road deaths!)
There is a fairly good thread on suicide reporting and accidental death in TGC forum....
The statistics really are quite unsettling, especially considering the fact that 70% of accidental deaths/suicides are young men....
Its an epidimic that is not only being actively ignored and suppressed in how it is reported....
But one that is still taking a massive toll on those affected.

rmnrgn

Thanks for the observations and indeed the clarification. I think that this case will be recorded as a misadventure given the circumstances. However I'm still confused as to the mindset of the family in advertising the death as an accident when the physical evidence shows otherwise.
Sudden traumatic death of some one close and dear causes raw emotional damage and the loss of a loved one by suicide can heighten that pain as families ask themselves the inevitable questions "Could I have done something?" "Why didn't I see this coming?" "Why didn't he feel he could talk to me?" etc, but it still does not explain the family's actions or indeed why they had to make any public pronouncements in the first instance.

banie01

rmnrgn wrote: »

Thanks for the observations and indeed the clarification. I think that this case will be recorded as a misadventure given the circumstances. However I'm still confused as to the mindset of the family in advertising the death as an accident when the physical evidence shows otherwise.
Sudden traumatic death of some one close and dear causes raw emotional damage and the loss of a loved one by suicide can heighten that pain as families ask themselves the inevitable questions "Could I have done something?" "Why didn't I see this coming?" "Why didn't he feel he could talk to me?" etc, but it still does not explain the family's actions or indeed why they had to make any public pronouncements in the first instance.

Its early days for the family yet.
Its hard enough for a family to come to terms with any type of bereavement, let alone being bereaved by suicide.
The whole 5 stages of grief are in play, and while they may have accepted the fact that their loved one is dead....
Denying that it was a deliberately self inflicted act is a perfectly normal reaction in the early stages of grief.

You seem to be expecting too much ''acceptance'' too soon.
A suicide leaves those left behind questioning their motives, asking those ''what if?'' questions and all too often blaming themselves for missing the signs and ''allowing'' it to happen.
The feelings of guilt left to the family of a suicide all to often lead to a period of denial out of a sense of misplaced guilt.
As for why they are claiming an accident....
When people are grieving, rational decisions are often hard to come by and perhaps they are of the frame of mind that believes he shouts loudest and shouts 1st will be the one who's ''story'' is believed....
That maybe they see ''an accident'' as a way to ensure focus and rememberence for how he lived, rather than how he died?

If I'm quite honest, I feel this is a topic more suited to humanities or a similar sub-forum(Not that I'm a mod or that my opinion even matters really ).
But people tend to use this particular forum for help and advice in dealing with their own grief and overcoming issues that arise from that.
And without meaning to sound harsh, you seem more focused on discussing the rights and wrongs of why somebody else's grief is affecting them the way it is, and why their reactions are right or wrong....
Rather than how this is affecting you, or how it impacts you emotionally, or indeed on what you can do to help those folks who are dealing with this loss.

Don't get me wrong, I do feel it is a valid topic and one that needs to be dealt with more openly in society.
But this particular forum is used by those for whom the grief is often raw, recent and intensely personal and viewing a dissection of the aftermath of such a bereavement in the place they come to for solace and advice is not the best place for it.....
Just my 2cents....

Neyite

I'm locking this as according to the Charter:

"The remit of this forum is to provide a supportive space for those who have suffered a bereavement, to share their experiences and to find helpful links and information"

Op, if this is a bereavement that you yourself have suffered and wish to discuss how you feel about it, I'll re-open if you PM, but as a generic discussions about suicide, this is not the place for it, or for judging why people say what they do when a loved one commits suicide.

rmnrgn

Thanks to Neyite for moving this thread.
I hope it can stimulate some reflection on how we view and discuss suicide in this country.

The Corinthian

rmnrgn wrote: »

However I'm still confused as to the mindset of the family in advertising the death as an accident when the physical evidence shows otherwise.

I knew a case where someone I knew very slightly fell off a bridge and died. I don't believe it was a suicide; from what I was told shortly afterwords, this person was pissed as a fart, decided to do a tightrope routine on the bridge railing (metal, approx. 1.5m tall, approx. 0.1m wide), fell and landed on their head.

Now the point; this person's family also seemed to be in denial about the circumstances of the death, in that they circulated a story that this person had simply been crossing the bridge when they were hit by a gust of wind which blew them off - physically impossible given the aforementioned railing and lack of hurricanes.

I suspect loss often causes people to construct fantasies, so that they can better deal with their grief; it was an blameless accident, not suicide or an accident which was prompted by irresponsible behaviour, or everyone might claim to remember the deceased warmly - even though half of the same people reminiscing may well have despised them.

I suspect most of these fantasies are dissipated some time after - once the family has come to terms with the loss, and they begin to more openly accept the true circumstances of the death. Parents are often the last to do so.

Of course, in the case of suicide, one cannot ignore also the social stigma attached too. It wasn't so long ago that one would be refused a Christian burial if they were a suicide.

This may not be pertinent to the OP, but I have read that auto-erotic asphyxiation can often look like suicide by hanging if it goes awfully wrong.

Peregrinus

There's been a case in the newspapers recently which is, um, very simlar to the case described in the OP.

In the newspaper case, it's now acknlowledged that the death was in fact a suicide. It's been said that the reason, or one of the reasons, for initially attributing it to accident was the hope that the young man would survive, and the thought that it would be easier for him to face and come to terms with his issues if the fact of suicide attempt was not publicly known.

Whether that's a reasonable or a realistic thought is not really the issue; it seems to me that it's the kind of thought a shocked family might very well have, and it would explain their initial decision to conceal the suicide attempt.

On the wider issue of our failure to acknowledge the reality of suicide, yes, of course greater honesty and openness would be better. But it's a lot to ask the shocked and grieving relatives of a recent suicide victim immediately to accept responsibillity for changing Irish societal attitudes to suicide. They have more personal and more pressing needs to attend to.