Taboo status of suicide

denhaagenite · 09-10-2015 05:08PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

With all due respect, unless you're a mind reader, you don't know how much he, or any other young person, knows about suicide, and if you aren't prepared to listen to what they are actually saying, then you're only making it very difficult on yourself first of all to understand their point of view from their perspective (not your perspective, but their perspective), then you're only going to make it more difficult for young people to talk about how they are actually feeling, before you write them off as 'emotional' because of what you think may be the most obvious reason they are... 'emotional'. If you listen to them, you'll gain a better understanding of where they're coming from, rather than expect they should understand where you're coming from instead.

I'm 38 years of age, and it takes listening to a 16 year old to help me articulate my own thoughts in my own head, better than listening to any amount of adults who spent years talking over my head because they thought they knew my own mind and they knew me better than I know myself, and so they weren't prepared to listen and didn't want to listen, and that IMO, needs to stop. We need to start listening to young people instead of telling them what we think they do, or don't know, about themselves.

I don't care if he was 16, 66, 116. I don't know how many times I have to say this. I also don't particularly care what his opinion was. I just don't think it should have been used as a public health campaign, because it is contrary to expert advice.

Boring username · 09-10-2015 05:22PM

OneOfThem wrote: »

How about if it stopped one person from committing suicide and helps nudge 2 people towards doing it?

And what if it doesn't? We can go round and round all day on this subject. You've just got to settle on what you think is going to do the least harm I suppose.

One eyed Jack · 09-10-2015 05:29PM

seamus wrote: »

What people need to hear varies from person to person.

But often it's a simple acknowledgement of the person themselves, of their feelings and their existence.

"Your mother will never recover if you kill yourself", is not acknowledging the person themselves. You're defining their mother's feelings as being more important than the suicidal person's existence. Rather than worrying about the suicidal person, you're worrying about their mother. Effectively confirming their belief that nobody cares about them at all and their feelings don't matter.

Imagine a student being told, "Your mother will be very disappointed if you do arts rather than law". They don't hear, "Your mother loves you and wants what's best for you". They hear, "Put your mother's feelings above your own and make her happy even if it makes you unhappy".

That's exactly what a suicidal person hears when you tell them that their death will make other people sad; "Cop onto yourself and think of others".

The rest of what you wrote there though, contradicts your first statement in bold. I agree with what you wrote in bold btw, but IMO the rest is far more nuanced than that.

The cultural stigma is a factor in preventing people from choosing to take their own lives (for whatever reasons, including ill mental health or physical illness or ailment), and that's acknowledged in the literature I linked to earlier, and in the WHO report from which some of that literature is drawing from. It may not be a palatable opinion for some people, but nevertheless it is a fact.

There are, but depression is one of the few things we know to be strongly linked to suicide and suicidal ideation. So it makes sense to start there.

The whole area is still very underresearched for various reasons, not least because you can't ask a dead person what was going through their mind when they killed themselves.

That's true obviously, but there's also research being carried out now into the concept of suicidal ideation and suicidal thoughts and motivations for suicide and self-harm, independently of the common association with ill mental health and depression, and researchers are able to talk to these people, and they're talking to these people at a much younger age and discovering motivations besides those motivations that were previously taken as a given for an adult who took their own life.

Whitewinged · 09-10-2015 05:45PM

denhaagenite wrote: »

I don't care if he was 16, 66, 116. I don't know how many times I have to say this. I also don't particularly care what his opinion was. I just don't think it should have been used as a public health campaign, because it is contrary to expert advice.

He wrote an open letter by himself but as far as I know everything else he did or said, he was advised on. The HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention reviewed his message and developed a short online video aimed at 15-19 year olds using footage from his interviews.

Tarzana2 · 09-10-2015 06:46PM

Whitewinged wrote: »

He wrote an open letter by himself but as far as I know everything else he did or said, he was advised on. The HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention reviewed his message and developed a short online video aimed at 15-19 year olds using footage from his interviews.

An official government health agency supported the "Shur, what have you got to be depressed about, snap out of it" line of thinking. Thoroughly depressing stuff. So retrograde.

Whitewinged · 09-10-2015 07:14PM

Tarzana2 wrote: »

An official government health agency supported the "Shur, what have you got to be depressed about, snap out of it" line of thinking. Thoroughly depressing stuff. So retrograde.

Op placed the importance on the experts. Im not saying the boys opinion is right or wrong. Personally I can see what he was trying to say and the message he was trying to give however i agree that not everyone would percieve it the same way but op said his issue was with the boy giving his opinion as a capaign and that it was against expert advice.

denhaagenite · 09-10-2015 09:29PM

Tarzana2 wrote: »

An official government health agency supported the "Shur, what have you got to be depressed about, snap out of it" line of thinking. Thoroughly depressing stuff. So retrograde.

Same health service that have placed a third generation of addicts on methadone, so hardly surprising really. "Let's sweep the problem under the rug" seems to be the motto.

Whitewinged · 09-10-2015 10:09PM

denhaagenite wrote: »

Same health service that have placed a third generation of addicts on methadone, so hardly surprising really. "Let's sweep the problem under the rug" seems to be the motto.

But denhaagenite your critisizing Donal Walsh for speaking out because it was "contrary to expert advice". Now your critisizing expert advice?

Its difficult to understand your point because you say that it should not be taboo but then you condemn anyone who does try to make a difference and talk about it as wrong or say they dont know what they are talking about.

Im not saying Donal Walsh is right or wrong because I dont know the answer. But your dismissing his opinion as wrong because you "dont particulary care what his opinion was". Now that you realise he was backed up by National Office of Suicide Prevention, you are dismissing the health service as wrong by using what you believe are past mistakes as examples whereas in a previous post you placed importance of expert advice.

qo2cj1dsne8y4k · 09-10-2015 10:22PM

Donal walshe was a poor kid with a horrible terminal illness. He had every right to have an opinion on people throwing what he perceived to be a perfectly fine life away. I cannot even begin to imagine how awful that must hav been for him, fighting so hard, being pumped full of poison just to stay with the ones he loved for a little bit longer.

However,
However tragic his story was, does not make him an expert on mental health. It's not something people tend to snap out of it. Yeah, he had it worse than the majority of people, but there's always someone worse off. Everyone has their own problems, however small and insignificant they are to others, they might be a giant burden on the person they belong to.
Depression can be just as deadly as a terminal illness too. You can lose your life to depression, it can be the reason people die. Just because it's not a physical illness doesn't mean that it isn't very real.

Donal clearly had no experience of what it must be like to battle that every single day, feel isolated/awful/lonely/nothing every single minute of every single day. He had his illness, he was cheated out of a life, he would have appreciated not being sick - but it was never his place to become the voice of reason for suicidal people. And rte and whatever other platforms enabled him to spout his opinion was to blame, not him.

dreamers75 · 09-10-2015 10:29PM

denhaagenite wrote: »

Was just reading the news and came across this:

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/hundreds-expected-at-removal-of-cathriona-white-in-tipperary-tonight-699860.html

So despite the fact that in all of the campaigns we're urged to talk about it, a suicide as high profile and widely reported as this is written off as a "sudden death"?? This is completely outrageous. How can we expect people to not be ashamed of this if it can't even be commented on publicly?

Family members.....

Mate of mine was a suicide counsellor and killed himself, he did tireless work for Pieta house and his family did not want cause of death to be known or any donations to Pieta house.

You need to think of those people to understand. Hopefully you will never properly understand it.

Azalea · 10-10-2015 12:03AM

They're harsh phrases - "suicide", "took their own life", "killed themselves". I think the press just doesn't want to be using that kind of brutal language, as a mark of respect to the loved ones left behind. I don't think there's a stigma at all anymore.

Taboo status of suicide

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