We have a problem with suicide in Ireland

Very good thread eddy. A bit of substance on an issue that forces you to think about things a little more carefully.

For me, as someone who definitely knows the feeling, the headspace - the 'wall' as I call it - , I came to the conclusion that it is endemic and it is more a reflection of the society rather than lack of help services or the individual. Don't get me wrong, there is a lack in the services. There is also imo a lack of understanding about how to deal with it.

It is all well and good to say 'talk to someone, go to your GP' but it's just that IMO that is easy to say. It is easy to say 'the first step is the hardest', it is NOT. When you go to the GP or look for help there is some amount of hope that THIS could be the turning point. But when you have done everything, sought all the help you can, take meds, ring samaritans etc. when you've done that and you are still the same person as when you started, I'm asking, what do you do?

On a societal level the loss of community and technological changes are going to make this problem even worse. Human culture/society in developed countries is BEYOND ****ed up. Even the things you think are perfectly normal and harmless are part of a mindless, harmful way for humans to live. Don't get me started on corporate culture and the working life, it is ****ing sick. No two ways about it.

To end on a personal note, I mentioned 'the wall' earlier. To explain it, just imagine your standing an inch from a flat concrete wall, can't move away, can't look another way, just you have to stare at it forever. Theoretically, if you were in that position, knowing you are going to be just looking at this wall from an inch away for the rest of your life, if that was on the cards, you'd want to kill yourself. Knowing nobody CAN even come get you. KNOWING you can talk but nothing will change.

I don't even know if I will die by suicide, I think I will, but it will not be for lack of trying. I know this to be the case for every human because its not within our control. We will try to survive, we will try and try and try and try. If someone commits suicide I know for a fact they did absolutely everything they could.

The problem with our approach to suicide thus far is any national strategies tend to have been pigeon holing suicide into very simplistic categories. Some people have written excellent blogs on this so I'm not going to repeat what they said for words space. Did Suicide exist in the 50s? We don't know. Many Families did everything to cover it up. Even today they still do and if there's any uncertainty, death by misadventure or accidental death is usually the determined cause. Our suicide rates are probably grossly underestimated. There are some big factors today societal wise that weren't really as influential back then, Media, longevity and adoration of success to name but a few.

In rural areas especially, if someone commits suicide just about everyone in the county or province hears about it. Talking about it is good but it's also possibly a double edged sword. It may also be normalising suicidal behaviour. Though, there is no real definite way of testing such a hypothesis. We are exposed more than ever to high profile suicides, suspected suicides and tales and speculations as to why these people committed suicide.

Media also takes away personalisation of content. People on the internet behave the same way they do when in a mob wearing masks : deindividuation. As a result, it's far easier to be less empathic towards people. It also doesn't help that media today is optimised towards showing people stories they like to hear. Filter bubbles that will reinforce their preconceptions. Facebook and google are less likely to show you web pages they think you'll disagree with. Urbanisation of society is another problem. In a rural community, people knew everyone. They knew who was struggling. In a city, people of the same income tend to live in the same area, socialise with their own type and in general are even less aware of the plight of their neighbours. Worse yet, they've almost no direct connection to the demographics outside their immediate neighbourhood. This ok for the first generation as they still have their personal experiences at the back of their heads, but for subsequent generations there's even more of a disconnect. The contrast with rural areas is quite startling. The city folks will likely within a generation or so be less empathetic towards those in other social demographics to them. By this I mean, that rich people will invariably think poor people are lazy and get hand-outs for nothing and poor people will invariably tend into the belief that rich people have nothing they should be allowed to complain about. Poorer classes will tend to have less free time and ability on their hands for organising lobbies and so will be far less influential when it comes to campaigning for their basic needs. I could go on here, but hopefully the mechanism by which urbanisation creates it own set of empathy related problems is illustrated a bit.

Another factor in increasing suicides that cannot be ignored is the fact that people are far less likely to die from other stuff. Even in ideal conditions suicide would have become more prominent anyway. Go back 500 years and all those people with burst appendices likely ended up dead. Today, folks in that category have the potential for committing suicide or contracting another illness. Another factor that cannot be overlooked is medication. People get serious illness, and for every small proportions of people affected by these illness the medications have psychiatric side effects. If 1 million people take a common flu pill, about 10,000 of these will experience psychiatric side effects to some extent. Just a proportional estimate but one that illustrates the knock effects of other products e.g alcohol, drugs, gluttony of various foods. Even medical professionals can be woefully ignorant of this. Even more startling when according to the Lancet doctors are one the of the highest risks professions for suicide.

Adoration of success is a probably a huge problem. We always as a society focus on the people who succeed and we ADORE them for it - that's where we want to be. Not everyone can be a success though. We know that. It's an interesting observation that this a very recent phenomenon. In the 18th century failure was a word almost exclusively used for businesses and commerce. Now it's a personal thing. People can be personal failures. Success means we should feel good and failure means we should feel bad. The thing is, not everything that makes you feel good is always good for you. Not everything that makes you feel bad is bad for you. But we're not really wired to think this way. Many affluent people would rather die a success than live to be what they perceive as being a failure. Perception of being a failure can paralyse some people in our society. How prevalent this attitude is in general society is unknown. But there is undoubtedly a cultural element to it. It's been reported by anthropologists that some cultures aren't even aware of the concept of the suicide. One such tribe, the Pirahã, couldn't even fathom the concept when it was being explained to them it literally made no sense to them! There is the caveat of course that suicide was such a cultural stigma there that they simply denied it existed to the researchers. But what if it's true? What if a hefty part of the environment that contributes towards suicidal behaviour is a cultural thing? It's isn't the only thing obviously but if it was a cultural thing we could certainly work to alleviate that influence.

Studies, done on brains that survived suicides showed distinct markers suggesting certain people are at higher risk of suicide itself than others.
We know that depression can run in families. If a twin has depression then odds are 50% that the other twin will have it. We have screening programs for various physical illness, why not start screening for those with higher dispositions towards mental illness and targeting support and education towards them. It still seems we take a very reactive approach to mental health. We need to have people trained in advance with ways of coping with whatever hits. Not waiting until the problem suckerpunchs them and then have to try to pull them out of a giant black hole of negativity.

Christ this went wayyyyy longer than expected. Probably haven't said everything I wanted to say either, I'm sure I've waffled in places and left out important stuff too.

I've suffered depression in the past and tried to talk to two people about it. I got these responses:

Person 1: "You have to remember that there are people a lot worse off than you are, you have to try and appreciate how fortunate you are"

Person 2: "I know things can get hard but you just have to get on with things and work through the tough times"

I think these are valid points people in life need to know in general, BUT depression is an ILLNESS.
Not enough people in this country don't realise this and think is just a period of sadness or a rut. No it kills people because they feel like they have no-one to talk to. They feel like no one understands their thoughts. All a depressed person wants is someone to understand them and say yes you are allowed to feel like this, it is normal and it does happen to people. But it can be treated and it does get better.

The reason I have such strong views on this is because I went to school in England until I was 15 and it is taken a lot more seriously over there. The people I tried to talk to were Irish, living in Ireland and I was shocked by the "you have to get on with it" mentality. The amount of people here in Ireland that need to see a counselor but never have is astounding, some many that were raped as children and the like that had to just get on with it.

People need to be educated properly about the brain not producing enough serotonin, and reasons why it can happen. They also need to encourage people who went through traumatic experiences such as rape/loss of a parent as a child the list could go on to talk to someone. Then this might reduce the amount of alcoholics who turn to drink to deal with problems and forget the pain. I've seen people do this, it is heartbreaking.

We need to get rid of this stigma and make it normal to need help at times in our life. There is nothing wrong with it.

Yes the difference is that it is an inherently different type of problem than any circumstantial stuff no matter how bad imo. the process in the mind is not the same.

I do think there is room for someone 'with' depression to be complete free from it given the right approach (discipline and meditation) but that presupposes a lot of things.