Showing posts with label suicide attempts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide attempts. Show all posts

Surviving Suicide - Can Our Stories Help Others?

The worst part of being suicidal isn't that it can kill you. The worst part is that you likely suffer alone.

You don't talk about it with friends and loved ones because it hurts them. And they respond by saying hurtful things.

You don't talk about it with a professional because you fear being subjected to the trauma of forced treatment.

No, that's not right, not always right anyway. Sometimes loved ones know how to listen. Sometimes professionals know how to help.

But still. These skills seem to be rare. And it's all so scary.

Even after you're better, it's scary. Scary for you, scary for them. Especially scary if it got to the point of self-harm, a suicidal act. Upon release from the hospital, you are treated to silence. People want to "protect your privacy." They also want to protect their own peace of mind. NOBODY wants you to mention it again.

Live Through This

So an archive of 157 stories of people who tried to die at their own hand, and yet they survived, a place where you can find people who are willing to tell their stories, how they got to that scary place and how they moved beyond it, or how they didn't (the scary lingers), that place is -- transgressive.

Pride Month Report: What Parents Can Do for Their Trans Daughters and Sons


1.8 million LBGTQ youth (13-24) in the US seriously consider suicide each year. The numbers for trans people in particular are even more staggering. According to the UCLA Williams Institute report, 81.7 percent of those surveyed by the National Center for Transgender Equality had seriously thought about killing themselves in their lifetimes, and 48.3 percent had done so in the last year. 40.4 percent of transgender people attempted suicide sometime in their lifetime.

Suicide happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain. This report adds evidence to that assertion. The following statistics are pulled directly and paraphrased or quoted from this report.

Misconceptions about Antidepressants

What do you think are the most common misconceptions about antidepressants?


Prozac Monologues: A Voice from the Edge is at the press kit stage with Q&A in development. My publicist wants me to answer questions that interviewers might ask. My responses should be in the three to seven sentence range, she says.

Three to seven sentences are not my forte. I am doing my best and taking comfort that in an interview format, there might be a follow-up when I can say more.

They are good questions and worth a blog series, I think, where I can expand to three to seven paragraphs. Mostly seven. Maybe more. Plus, you know, pictures. So that's what you get for a few weeks.

No, antidepressants are not happy pills

How to Stay Sane

Shock, rage, fear, despair, depression, hopelessness, apathy, or even how about - drinking the kool-aid, surrender. Do we have a better choice?

Robin Chance, behavioral specialist and therapist, did a little therapy for the nation three years ago with her article, How to stay sane if Trump is driving you insane: Advice from a therapist. She offered a better choice.

Two questions: (1) How do we integrate this crisis into our understanding of the world? and (2) what do we do now? Now that the crisis of three years ago is our new normal, it seems time to revisit her words.

Preventing Suicide Among Gun Owners

Can we reconcile a most basic suicide prevention strategy, means restriction with the 2nd Amendment? Gun owners and public health people have to find a way to talk about this. In Oregon, the conversation has begun.

Gun owners in rural have a sense of responsibility and honor. It's a thing. Part of that responsibility is to protect one's family, one's livestock, and oneself. So let us begin by acknowledging that some gun owners, the ones who live in rural areas where suicide rates are growing the fastest, need guns for protection. But they have to do the protecting themselves. The government, on account of distance and distrust, cannot do the job. And then let us acknowledge that one of the things they need to protect their families (and maybe themselves) from is suicide.


Compare states to states.  Compare regions to regions.  Compare states within regions to other states within the same region.  Compare people of the same age group, in any age group, men to men and women to women.  Compare unemployed people to unemployed people, working folk to working folk.  Compare city dwellers to city dwellers, country folk to country folk.

Compare people with depression to other people with depression; people who are suicidal to other people who are suicidal; people who have a plan to other people who have a plan; people who have a past suicidal attempt to other people who have a past suicidal attempt, for God's sake!

More Guns = More Suicides.

Get it? Rural areas have more suicides largely because they have more guns.

The Blues Aren’t Blue For Me - For Suicide Prevention Awareness Month


For Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, guest Margalea Warner tells a story of healing after an attempt and what happened #AfterIDidntKillMyself.
************************

When I emerged from the gray cloud of near death, the color I woke to was blue. It was an artificial blue, kin to a chlorinated pool water or blue Jell-o or Smurfs. It was a long tube with ridges that seemed to be coming from my face. I couldn't use my mind well enough to know it was a respirator tube. I stared at this blue with bewildered wonder. 

I did not remember what caused the gray. I did not remember walking away from my job at ten in the morning without asking for time off. I did not remember going through my closet and throwing all my clothing in the dumpster until I had very little left to wear.

From deep inside my mind I did remember a room of flickering shadows where I was on trial for witchcraft or for being a bad daughter. I remembered the voices saying that I must be executed. I had to be my own executioner. I remember narrator voice saying, “The prisoner is walking into Reliable Drug.  She is walking through Health and Beauty. She is walking through First Aid.  She is picking up a bottle of rubbing alcohol.  She needs the Reliable Drug brand. It will be a reliable drug. She needs it now. No time to think about it.”


But what happened next? I couldn’t remember if I obeyed the voices. I wish I could remember if I challenged their distorted thinking. All this forgetting makes perfect sense when you consider the gray that followed it. Fortunately or unfortunately, my mind’s computer made a back up copy in the cloud and replayed it over and over years later.


Suicide Is Not a Choice

I peered over this very overpass on the Eisenhower Expressway. Years ago, there was no the fence along the top, just a rail. It was pie that brought me there. Yes, pie. It was Thanksgiving night, and the holiday was ending without pie.

Of course, it wasn't a reason to commit suicide. Of course, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Don't treat me like an idiot with your clever lines.

No, pie brought me there, but that was not why I would jump. Pie was a match, a tiny little three letter match. My problem was a brain filled with gasoline. And one tiny match, that I should have been able to snuff with my fingers, threatened to ignite it and send me over the edge. The shame of being powerless over one tiny match poured on more gasoline.

Michael Hill and Antoinette Tuff: Lesson in Crisis Intervention

On August 20, 2013, at the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Center in Decatur, Georgia
                       -- nobody died.

Tuesday, the first school shooting of the new school year

                       -- didn't happen.

It started the way these things start.  A disturbed young man went off his meds.  He decided he would die that day.  He did what others have done who wanted to die.

Suicide By Cop

The Suicide Monologue

Suicide Humor

They asked for a trigger alert. This is a humor alert. Oh, well.

I realize some people do not find suicide humor humorous. I get that. I respect this opinion and honor the feelings and experiences behind it.

If you have not read Prozac Monologues before, you need to know that it has always aspired to a bent sort of humor. And in honor of the World Health Organization's World Suicide Prevention Day, today's post, a long time coming, is The Suicide Monologue. Watch me while I attempt humor. You don't have to read it. Just know, it is what it is.

More Guns = More Suicides


Compare states to states.  Compare regions to regions.  Compare states within regions to other states within the same region.  Compare people of the same age group, in any age group, men to men and women to women.  Compare unemployed people to unemployed people, working folk to working folk.  Compare city dwellers to city dwellers, country folk to country folk.

Compare people with depression to other people with depression; people who are suicidal to other people who are suicidal; people who have a plan to other people who have a plan; people who have a past suicidal attempt to other people who have a past suicidal attempt, for God's sake!

More Guns = More Suicides.

Get it?

It Gets Better

I was going to get funny this week.  But this won't wait.

The message below took place at a city council meeting in the center of Iowa.  It means all the more to me, because I live in Iowa, and because I know this small city in a rural and conservative part of the middle of America -- a fly-over state.

Oops -- a reader corrected my confusion.  Joel Burns is a councilman in Fort Worth, Texas.  Maybe that makes the story even more significant.

Joel Burns, elected to that city council, has lived long enough for it to get better.



Educators who want to respond to his challenge can find resources at the Teaching Tolerance arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center.


Their new documentary and classroom resource, Bullied includes lesson plans and is available for free to any school that requests it.


I also want to plug their quarterly magazine, Teaching Tolerance.  It gives teachers specific ideas and lesson plans for K-12 on many diversity issues.  Subscriptions are available for free to any teacher who requests it, any donor, and also online.

Bullying Has To Become A Crime

I have never understood why schools are law-free zones, why students who beat up other students are not prosecuted for assault, why teachers and administrators who do nothing are not prosecuted for accessory after the fact.

It Is Time To Prevent Bullying

I also have never understood why society places the burden of violence on its victims.  We know the names of recent victims who could no longer bear that burden.  We develop therapies to repair damage that is done to other victims.  But as with PTSD, we treat after the fact.  We do not prevent.

All the bullied teenagers who died recently have been "outed."  But we do not know the names of the bullies.  We do not work on fixing them.

Children who are cruel grow up to be adults who are cruel and raise children who are cruel.  I repeat Joel Burns' challenge to stop the violence.  That is when we will stop the suicides.

We also do not know the names of the witnesses, those who remain silent.  All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing -- Edmund Burke.  These students, too, must find their voices.  We all must.

Meanwhile, If You Need Help Now:

In the U. S., call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish.
Click here to find a hotline outside the United States.



Use of the SPLC and Teaching Tolerance logos does not imply
that they have endorsed the views expressed in this post. 

OMG!!!That'sWhatTheySaid -- Failed Method/Successful Attempt

OMG!  it has been four months since I last gave an OMG! Award.  It's not that I don't keep finding excellent candidates.  It's just that I have been covering other major topics.  Plus, life just...

I am amazed and disappointed to give this month's award to HealthCentral.com for their July 22nd news release, Failed Suicide Method May Predict Likelihood of Successful Attempt.

First, let me introduce HealthCentral.com.  From their website:

Health Central's mission is to empower millions of people to improve and take control of their health and well-being.
  • Our 35+ sites provide clinical resources and real-life support to those with life-changing conditions.
  • Our wellness resources and tools help people to live healthier, more fulfilled lives.
  • We are honored to serve over 12 million visitors each month.

Health Central addresses lots of different health issues, including mental health.  Often their information is excellent.  This time they missed the boat with this OMG Award-winning title to one of their featured articles.  They don't get points for originality.  They have repeated a much too popular -- what shall I call it?

Let me put it this way:

A twenty-seven year old woman is diagnosed with breast cancer.  Young women with breast cancer generally have a poor prognosis.  So she receives the most aggressive treatment available, including procedures that damage her body in ways that can be mended and other ways that cannot.  She undergoes intense pharmacological treatment using harsh chemicals that leave her sick, debilitated and at risk for other health complications.  Willing to try anything, she joins a support group, does mindfulness and visualization and changes her diet.

These measures eventually do work.  Her cancer goes into remission.  Her health is monitored carefully for a long time.  Just when she and her family begin to breathe again, she relapses.  Again, she opts for aggressive treatment, tries new drugs prescribed in off-label use, and again is left too weak to care for her children or leave the house.

This time, everybody's best efforts do not work.  She dies.

Does her doctor call that a success?  Does the preacher say she fought a long hard battle and finally succeeded?

Let me put it another way.

A middle-aged man has heart disease.  He gets regular medical attention, takes all his meds, monitors everything he is supposed to monitor, changes his lifestyle, even his job to reduce stress.

Nevertheless, he has a heart attack, in fact, several heart attacks.  Each time he is rushed to the hospital, where emergency personnel work their butts off to save him.  He is transferred to ICU, then to a regular bed, then to rehab.  His family posts frequent status reports on facebook, and his church prays for him every week.

Does anybody say he failed?  That he wasn't serious about these heart attacks of his?  When he returns to church or the golf course, do they turn their faces, afraid they might say the wrong thing and provoke another attack?  One that might be successful?

Mental illness is physical illness.  It has a mortality rate, just like cancer and heart disease.  We struggle desperately for years and undergo every treatment we can find and tolerate, trying to survive our illnesses.  Death by mental illness is not a success.  It is a tragedy.  Survival is not a failure.  When somebody has to be rushed to the hospital and manages to fight his or her way back to life, it is a hard won victory celebrated in heaven.  It ought to be celebrated on earth.  This person deserves a party.  With balloons.  And a cake.

Now let me pause to discuss the content of the article with this outrageous title, because the article does give important information.

The article reports research into the prognosis of suicidal individuals according to the method of self-harm they originally use.  The numbers are astounding.

Those whose initial act of self-harm takes the form of hanging, suffocation or strangulation have the poorest prognosis.  Of those who survive, 85% of them die at their own hand within a year.  They do not get it out of their system.  They die.  Within the year.  85% of them.

Those who jump, or use a firearm or drowning are at a moderately lower risk of subsequent death (69-78%, as reported in the original research.)  Those who use poisoning, overdose or cutting have the lowest risk of completed suicide with in year (25-36%.)

These figures hold true when controlling for diagnosis and for sociological factors.

That said, the single greatest risk factor for death by suicide is a previously survived episode.  Nobody gets it out of their system.

These findings have implications for aftercare.  Just as the most aggressive treatment is warranted for younger women with breast cancer and out of shape persons with heart disease, those whose original method of self-harm is hanging, strangulation or suffocation need the most intensive follow-up, monitoring and treatment.

Again that said, one potentially harmful consequence of this report is that those who use less lethal means, such as cutting or poison, may be dismissed as not serious, as engaging in attention-seeking behavior.

Yes, cutting and overdose are attention-seeking behaviors.  They are the serious attempts of seriously ill people to get serious attention for their serious condition.

Cutting and overdose have serious health consequences.  They are the methods used most often by Latina and African-American girls, who have less access to health care and mental health care anyway.  The consequences of not receiving the attention that these girls plead for are first, brain and liver damage, and then further deterioration of their lives, including dropping out of school, substance abuse, being continued victims of violence at their own hand or that of family and acquaintances, continued poor health choices and early death on account of all of the above.

If you turn your face from anybody who commits a potentially fatal act of self-harm by any means, you become the Scribe who turned his face from the man who was mugged, beaten and left for dead on the road to Jericho, because you count your agenda more important than that person's life.

As I said, this would be an unintended consequence of this article, and one that the author seek to avoid: However, "although use of more lethal methods of self-harm is an important index of suicide risk, it should not obscure the fact that self-harm in general is a key indicator of an increased risk of suicide," Hawton wrote.

Back to the OMG! Award.  I am on a Mission from God.  It is my mission, in whatever years I have remaining of my own life, permanently to eradicate the use of the word successful in the same sentence as the word suicide, and to eliminate the scandalous naming of survival as failure.

So I plead for your help.  I plead, when you hear a grieving friend or family member say that their loved one who died of mental illness was successful in the attempt, I plead that you tell that person, kindly and gently, Suicide is not a choice; it happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain.  I am so sorry for your loss, and so sorry that your loved one has lost the battle.

I plead that you, whenever you hear health care professionals refer to a failed attempt, that you feel and that you express your shock and horror at the words.  I plead that you confront them, and urge then to examine the hostility toward their patients and clients that lie beneath their words.

I don't usually inform people that they are winners of the OMG!!That'sWhatTheySaid Award.  Following what I have urged you to do, I will inform Health Central of their award.  Right now. 

Prozac is Talking -- Anybody Listening?

Anybody know this story?  You get a new prescription.  Responsible consumer that you are, you read carefully the PI [prescribing information] sheet.  It says, "If xx happens, call your doctor immediately."  Sure enough, xx happens.  You call your doctor, who does not call back.  After persistent calling over several days, the doc says, "Really?  We'll keep an eye on it."

The other day, I had a nosebleed that wouldn't stop.  The PI sheet says my new med can interfere with platelets, admittedly not very high on the list of side effects.  But I contacted the doc.  "Really?"  she said, "Where did you hear that was a side effect?"  My answer, "On the PI sheet you gave me."  It turned out, my blood work was fine, and the humidifier took care of the nosebleeds.

No harm done.  Right?

On the other hand, five years ago my GP had me on Prozac.  After a couple months, I couldn't sleep, was irritated, agitated, couldn't concentrate, had thoughts of harming myself and others.  The PI sheet said I should tell my doctor.  My doctor increased the dose.

Thus began a series of antidepressants, and a downward spiral that has ended with disability.

Alive!

Cut the top ten and go straight to the number one reason why Willa Goodfellow should never get herself committed to the psych ward:


I suck at arts and crafts.

I didn't used to.  I used to produce Christmas cookies and gingerbread houses that made adults and children alike respond, "Oh! My! God!" -- though not the way this cake does.  I used to make big gingerbread houses.  No kits. and no showing off with royal icing and special decorating tips (which might have improved this cake, if I had been able to find them).  I used Golden Grahams for shingles, individually placed sprinkles on the door wreaths, graham bears ice skating in the yard, pretzels for fences.  I made Dr. Seuss-like trees out of marshmallows and gummy savers, M&M's for roofing material, or maybe candy-canes for the Swiss chalet touch -- those were a bitch to hold in place until the frosting glue dried.  Once I used peanuts to construct a fire chimney.  All color coordinated.  I must have made thirty of those suckers, and each an original masterpiece.

Then I took Prozac.  And Celexa, and Cymbalta, and Effexor.  And part of my brain has never come back.  I think the part that departed included the "good taste" part.  Also the "give a damn what you think" part.

This cake and the guerilla party I held in the hospital lobby to celebrate the 45,000,000 people at risk for suicide who will survive it, the same hospital whose psych ward I hope never to call home, definitely come out of the "Prozac Monologues" spirit.  So does the grammar of that last sentence.

This one, I am submitting to cakewrecks.com.  So, Elaine, (a friend who happened by the party and was speechless) you can go ahead and say it.  Yes, I know.

Some people actually do get it.  One of the guests was a psychiatrist who laughed along when I bemoaned having thrown away all the meds I have stopped using over the course of the Chemistry Experiment, so that I was reduced to Smarties and Mike and Ike for decorating material.

So...

"I have a dream. Okay, technically it's a fantasy." [Elmont, Doonesbury]  That when people who survive self-injury are transferred from ICU to the psych ward, they will be greeted with a cake.  That when they get home, there will be a party, just like the party that will greet my friend who just made it through colon surgery.  A quiet party, befitting the energy level of the guest of honor.  But a party with a guest of honor, for having survived this latest round with a disease that has a 15% mortality rate.  I have a fantasy that people who survive self-injury, or manage to avoid it altogether, will be treated like people who survive breast cancer.

I have a fantasy that next year the Psych Department itself will host the party for Suicide Prevention Week, with both Emergency Room workers and the patients, out on a pass, sharing the honor.  For sure, the hospital-catered cake will look better. 

Suicide Prevention Cake

Okay, I know.  It's supposed to read Suicide Prevention Week.  I had a post all written, an attempt at a thoughtful response to an exerpt from Nancy Rappaport's book, In Her Wake: A Child Psychologist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide.  I found it on Knowledge is Necessity, one of my favorite blogs to follow.

But before I ever heard about Suicide Prevention Week, I gave the topic a whole month just last June.  And I do recommend that you look at those posts, especially the ones that refer to David L. Conroy, "Suicide is not a choice.  It happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain."  Those two sentences open his book, Out from the Nightmare, help to make sense of a topic that people would rather hold at a distance, and give a simple program for suicide prevention.  Reduce pain and/or increase resources.

So after I did my best at one more profundity, I thought again, really, how should one mark Suicide Prevention Week?  It occurred to me, why not celebrate it?  According to Conroy, "Five million people [in the United States] now alive will die by suicide. Twenty-five million more are, or will become, suicide attempters. Suicide has been, or will be, seriously considered by more than 50 million people." [Out of the Nightmare, p. 280.]

But think about it.  In other words, 45,000,000 people now living in the United States are or will at some point be at risk of suicide, and yet their suicides will be prevented.  For the most part, by the people at risk, themselves.  We will keep asking for help until we find somebody who isn't too freaked out to give it to us.  We will take our problems apart, examine them one piece at a time, fix what can be fixed, and either learn to live with or leave behind what cannot be fixed.  We will interrupt a negative thought.  We will get a dog.  We will volunteer.  We will take our meds.  We will stop taking the meds that are making us worse.  We will find a therapist, join a group, speak out against ignorance.  Oh, it's a long list with more ideas here for how to reduce pain, increase resources and remove barriers between.

I propose one more item for the list. We will celebrate our success.  It has been some years since I went to my favorite sushi restaurant for what I thought would be the last time.  So I will go there this week to celebrate how many times I have gone there since and will again in the future. I will bake a cake for a friend to celebrate the number of times that she has prevented her potential suicide.  I will take another friend to coffee to celebrate the number of times that she checked herself into the hospital instead.

Anybody with me on this one? How will you celebrate?  And how will you give yourself cause to celebrate next year?

Suicide Prevention for All of Us

I end this month's focus on suicide with what we can do. Remember, "Suicide is not chosen; it happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain." (David L. Conroy, Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain)

So the way out of the nightmare is laid before us: reduce pain and increase resources.   Somewhere below is something you can do for yourself, for those you love and for those whom you have been commanded to love, if you believe in that sort of thing.   These lists are from Conroy, pp. 300-302.  My remarks are in brackets.

OMG!!! That's What They Said!

First, how did I ever start reading so much about depression, medication and the brain, the topics of Prozac Monologues?  Well, it was after I took two antidepressants that made me crazy and one that made me sad.  Then I was back in a psychiatrist's office, and she said, You have to weigh the costs and benefits.  And I took her seriously. 

But the information she gave me and that I found on the prescription information sheet wasn't very much information at all, not the kind that would have helped me when I was taking the antidepressants that made me crazy.  I knew this because I had read them, and they didn't help me.  I will write more about this some other time. 

The Language Of Doctors And Scientists 

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