SPNAC

Please Stop Saying, “Suicide is a permanent solution …”

In Opinion, Prevention on March 5, 2010 at 10:11 am

PeopleTalking

By Franklin Cook, SPNAC Editor

I have worked in suicide prevention and suicide grief support for a little more than a decade, and for the past year and a half (since the SPNAC blog was launched), I’ve scanned hundreds of articles on this tragic subject. In the course of my encounters with what is said and written in communities across the country and on the Internet, I have been subjected about a thousand times to the declaration “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” and I cannot hear it one more time without crying out: Please stop saying that!

I know that it must seem like a clever and even a helpful thing to say (or else why would people have kept saying it, right up to the point where it has become nothing less than a cliche but with the power, I’m afraid, of an axiom). The declaration seems clever, I suppose, because it has the pleasant sing-song rhythm of an advertising jingle, like “I am stuck on Band-Aid, ’cause a Band-Aid’s stuck on me.” And it seems helpful because, of course, it is true: Indeed, suicide is a permanent solution.

But here’s why I argue that we should stop saying it:

The statement violates the age-old principle that what we communicate ought to be designed specifically with a focus on the audience for whom the particular communication is intended. “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem” might strike someone who is not suicidal as a clever statement, and it might be a helpful thing to hear from the point of view of someone who already believes (or is likely to be convinced) that his or her problem is temporary. But the audience for this anti-suicide ditty is, of course, people who are suicidal.

As Edwin Shneidman points out in his Ten Commonalities of Suicide, “The common purpose of suicide is to seek a solution.” So emphasizing to a suicidal person that suicide is a permananet solution is as likely to be unhelpful — or even harmful or dangerous — as it is to be helpful.

The problem a suicidal person is trying to solve, according to Shneidman, is how to escape from psychache, which Shneidman defines as “intolerable emotion, unbearable pain, unacceptable anguish … [that] cannot be abated by means that were previously successful” (emphasis added). In other words, from the point of view of someone who is earnestly considering killing himself or herself, the pain from which suicide would provide escape is not temporary.

Even though the perception that the pain is permanent is not accurate, the strategy of trying to convince a suicidal person that his or her pain is temporary is as likely to be counter-productive as it is to be productive.

Read more here …

Links to Suicide Grief Stories: February 11, 2010

In Grief, Grief Stories Series on February 11, 2010 at 8:28 am

David Alexander and daughter

[Editor's note: "Links to Suicide Grief Stories ..." is a SPNAC series featuring stories of survivors of suicide loss -- about the effect their loved one's suicide has had on them and how they are coping with their grief. FJC]

In “Pedaling for Preventionin the Charleton County [Georgia] Herald, we learn about David Alexander, whose 17-year-old daughter Angela died by suicide in 2007. He has “logged 6,457 miles on his bicycle” since May 7 of last year because, he says, “‘I wanted to do something to give her life meaning. I didn’t want another child to die the way she had.’”

During his journey, Alexander … has carried journals in which some of the countless people he has met … have expressed their innermost thoughts after hearing his story and others have praised him for his courage in the face of his own pain.

“David, I think you must be an angel,” reads one entry written by a mother of a young daughter.

In another, a 16-year-old girl in California writes that she had planned to kill herself the night she met Alexander. Instead, he gave her the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and waited with her until social workers arrived. (Charleton County Herald)

In “Suicide’s Aftermath: Families Turn to Support Groups,” reporter John Grant Emeigh writes about Charlotte Macdonald, whose son Scott ended his life more than 20 years ago when he was 22 years old. Afterward, Charlotte found healing in an informal support group where people who had lost a loved one to suicide could be together and help one another.

In 1984, a friend … introduced MacDonald to other women who lost family members to suicide … The relief she experienced at these meetings was like a giant weight lifted from her shoulders.

“It was a safe place to unload your feelings and thoughts,” she said.

MacDonald’s suicide support group met for seven years.

“By the time it was over, I had a sense of peace and that I had come to terms with my son’s suicide,” she said. (The Montana Standard)

[Editor's note: Anyone interested in attending a suicide survivor support group can find one in an online directory maintained by Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE).]

Read more here …

SPNAC Content Available as Editor Begins New Ventures

In Announcements on February 11, 2012 at 12:26 pm

SPNAC (Suicide Prevention News and Comment) was edited and updated regularly from October 2008 to March 2010 by Franklin Cook of Unified Community Solutions. Now — even though new posts are no longer being added — the blog’s content is still available because a number of stories continue to attract readers and comments. For a time, approval of comments being made was “on hold,” but comments are once again being moderated.

Franklin blogs about his current endeavors — especially on topics related to suicide bereavement and helping survivors of suicide loss — at personalgriefcoach.info. You may contact Franklin by email for more information.

The two posts at left will remain on SPNAC’s front page for the time being:

  • “Please Stop Saying, ‘Suicide is a permanent solution …’” is SPNAC’s most-visited post and has garnered more comments than any other post in the blog’s history; and people continue to read the post and share their ideas about it.
  • The February 11, 2010 entry from the Links to Suicide Grief Stories series is representative of SPNAC’s focus on topics of interest to survivors of suicide loss. All of SPNAC posts about grief are archived here.

Listed below are the top dozen most-read posts from SPNAC:

  1. “Please Stop Saying, ‘Suicide is a permanent solution …’”: bit.ly/permanentsolution
  2. “Youth Suicide among Native Americans Linked to Colonialism”: bit.ly/suicidecolonialism
  3. “‘Cyberbullying not epidemic … not killing our children’”: bit.ly/bullyingnot
  4. “The Last Word on the Financial Crisis and Suicide Prevention”: bit.ly/suicidefinancial
  5. “Edwin Shneidman’s Meditations on Death Are Full of Life”: bit.ly/edshneidman
  6. “Culture of Stigma Is a Key Cause of Military, Veteran Suicides”: bit.ly/culturestigma
  7. “‘Seven Pounds’” Is Guilty of Irresponsibility with Suicide”: bit.ly/poundsguilty
  8. “Dylan Klebold’s Mom Is a Survivor of Suicide Loss”: bit.ly/kleboldmom
  9. “Links to Suicide Grief Stories: May 4, 2009″: bit.ly/grief050409
  10. “Links to Suicide Grief Stories: March 8, 2010″: bit.ly/grief030810
  11. “‘Badge of Life’ Works To Counter Police Trauma, Suicide”: bit.ly/badgeoflife
  12. “Military Widow: After Suicide, ‘The family is chastised, too’”: bit.ly/militarywidow

All of the content on SPNAC will continue to be made available as long as there is an interest in some of the posts and WordPress continues to provide this basic service for free.

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