A Choice

There is no doubt that suicide, by definition, is a willful act. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be suicide. It is a choice. That’s why we call it suicide.

 "Suicide: the intentional taking of one’s life".

Many intelligent folks have pointed out that suicide is a choice, but one made by a mind submerged in an unspeakable darkness. Suicide is a choice, but one chosen under great duress. 

If suicide is not a choice, why do we tell people not to do it? Why do we tell them to get help? Why do we try to stop them? Even if they take medicine, they have to choose to take it. If they talk to someone, they must choose to speak. If they seek help at a facility, they must choose to go. In some cases people are committed against their will, but eventually they also must choose.

A cancer patient might be told by her doctor that she has one month to live. She will die, and it can’t be stopped. Is there ever a time to give that diagnosis to a suicidal person? Ever? Even up to the last minute, the last second, the last moment. Would you ever say that another person’s suicide must happen?

Actually, it seems that for a cancer patient we are more willing to tell them to fight, we are more willing to speak of the power of prayer, and we are more willing to talk about their choices, then we are with depression and suicide. How can this be? We say of the cancer survivor that she beat cancer. But if we use this kind of language with depression and suicide, suddenly we are heinous monsters. How does this make any sense?

How can we remove the will from a person — their power — and tell ourselves that we have helped the situation?

If someone is on the ledge about to jump and you cannot get to them in time, what would you do? Would you shout and try to tell them to stop, or would you accept that death is their fate and nothing can be done?

You would shout, wouldn’t you? And if you do, then all you can hope is that they turn back, and if they turn back it’s because they chose to, and if they can choose at all, then they can choose life. They can choose. But even if they don’t choose life, you still shouted, didn’t you? You still tried to get him to turn around, right? You didn’t stand by and accept what was going to happen, did you?

Depression is an insidious disorder

No matter what form it takes or where it comes from depression is an insidious disorder. One of the core components of depression is cognitive distortions. That’s psychobabble for what most people call “lies.” Depression lies to you. It tells you things like, “You suck at everything you do” without any qualification or argument.

It says, “Life will never get any better than this, so you might as well end it.”

But cognitive distortions aren’t reality or a reflection of the truth. They are distortions in your brain caused by the depressive forces residing therein. We can’t tell you why these things happen (yet), but we can tell you that when depression is successfully treated, these distortions go away. We start seeing ourselves and reality for what it is again.

So what kind of choice do you think a person is making when under the influence of these kinds of depression lies? Is it a choice born of free will? Or a choice tied up in emotional turmoil, irrationality, and a feeling of being compelled toward an inevitable fate?

Teenagers and Suicide

Case 1

“For us it all started when my daughter was 15. She had just broken up with her first boyfriend, she was getting bullied by other teenage girls at a nearby school, and she was feeling pressured from school work,” one mum said.

“One night she called me into her room. She was crying and told me she didn’t want to feel this way anymore and wanted to see someone for help. That night she fell asleep in my arms crying.”

A visit to their GP the following day led to a mental health assessment and referral and subsequent meetings with a psychologist. She was later seen by a psychiatrist and placed on medication. But her mother feared her daughter wasn’t improving — “unfortunately I was right”. I noticed something on her arm that was red. When I took a look there were razor cuts all over her arm. There were razor cuts over her entire body. Some were already scars and some were fresh and bleeding. It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen. 

One night he light was off and she was asleep — or so I thought. I went to bed. A few minutes later I heard her crying and her saying ‘Mum I need your help’.

“I looked up and saw her standing in the doorway with a shadow of something running down her arm. 

“I turned on the light and saw blood rushing from her arm. She had cut her arm open. I could no longer be strong and began screaming and curled up into a ball on the floor. My husband woke up and began attending to her. I just remember hearing her yelling ‘I’m so sorry mum, I promise now I’ll get better’.

“I’d been strong in front of her for so long but it was seeing me break down that actually helped her want to live. The next day I was rushed to hospital with what they thought was a heart attack but turned out to be a panic attack from what I’d seen the night before.”

“She was seeing a psychologist and psychiatrist that she felt was helping and a plan was in place. Her high school was contacting her and us while she was in hospital and keeping her spot open for her in school. She was now in Year 12 and she decided she was going to continue with the HSC. It’s been a year-and-a-half since she got out of hospital. She is almost 19 now, she has her dream job, she is studying a degree and has a wonderful boyfriend. She hasn’t self-harmed since. This was something she battled every day for almost four years.

Case 2

“I knew something wasn’t right when he stopped eating dinner with us and would just lock himself in his room,” the teen boy’s mum said.

“He then wouldn’t mow the lawn or wash the car — things he normally loved doing. I kept saying to my husband something’s not right, but when I’d ask my son if he was OK he’d just say ‘yes mum’ and lock himself in his room. One night I called him out of his room and said ‘mate you know you can sit and talk to us about anything’. All he said was ‘yes mum’ and went back to his room. When I spoke to him about it he simply said ‘I want to change schools mum’. When I asked him why, he just blurted out ‘you know mum, I feel like killing myself’.

“That was the day my heart broke. That night I grabbed my mattress and put it on the floor in his room … I just watched him all night. It rips a massive hole in your heart. I was crying all the time. I felt so helpless. When I asked why he felt like killing himself he said he didn’t know, it just came to his head, and when the kids at school fight they tell each other to go and kill themselves.”

It took the suicide of his friend to make her son realise the lifelong consequences of that decision.

“He saw the impact it had on me and turned to me and said ‘I couldn’t do that to you mum. I saw how upset you were for her’.

“He is a 16-year-old and he gives me a lot of attitude. But I would rather him give me attitude than me to organise his funeral.”

A Choice

Out of the mouths of babes comes the decision not to commit suicide. Not to kill themselves. Not to take their own life by choice. And it is a choice.

Sources:

http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/08/13/depression-isnt-choice-suicide-response-critics/2/#RLb2mL57esmow7H8.99

http://m.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/break-the-teen-suicide-taboo-the-parents-fighting-to-keep-their-kids-alive/story-fni0cx12-1227138609414?nk=16f7aeb117cbdd48fc59c1f0b407626f

http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/0002153