Suicide is Not a Mystery - Get Beyond the Romance to Get to the Work

Suicidal people have not been quiet this year during Suicide Prevention Month. Most years we are the topic of conversation, not the source of the content of all these campaigns. But Twitter, at least, has been filled with our own voices this year. I have always shot my mouth off, and seldom taken the party line. Which means my voice is never included in the campaigns of the typical mental health organizations.

The following is an example, a post from a previous Suicide Prevention Month, edited with my more current thoughts on the matter.

This is Suicide Prevention Week - from September 8, 2011

When I started Prozac Monologues, I didn't know there was a Suicide Prevention Week. I spent a month writing about suicide in June, 2009. I chose June because it is the month when the highest number of suicides take place. So I wonder why the officially designated week is in September. Maybe because when everybody else is so happy about the sunshine in June, they wouldn't give any thought to the darkness? Maybe because they didn't ask those who are suicidal?

If you want to know my take on suicide prevention, here is the link for those original posts. Among the Labels in the right-side column, you will find links to other posts tagged suicide, suicide prevention, and the like.

Looking back at these posts, I wish I had less to say about suicide. But having this much to say, and frankly, a lot more, I think it's best I go ahead and say it. That was my POV for The Suicide Monologue. And I'm sticking to it. I urge you to take the same approach. If you have something to say about suicide, go ahead and say it.

You know, all those years we never talked out loud about cancer, our silence never saved a single life.

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.

On Surviving - I Wish Robin Williams Had

Nearly a week's worth of reporting on Robin Williams' death, some of it heartfelt, some of it educational, some of it ignorant bloviating -- even if you have been living under a rock and not heard any coverage at all, you can name the bloviators, can't you.  By now, my readers surely wonder, What is the Prozac Monologues take on his untimely death?

I have written reams on suicide and suicide prevention.  Click on those two links and take your pick.  But skip the Suicide Monologue, at least for another week.  It is inappropriate for another week.  And if you do go there, then mind the humor alert.  I am serious -- about the humor alert, that is.  Some of you won't find it funny. It wasn't written for you.

But before we abandon the suicide conversation in favor of the next thing, let's expand the frame.  Here's the deal.  Of all the people alive on the planet today, 50,000,000 will, at some point in their lifetimes, struggle with suicide.

I can't say we will think about suicide.  Those of you who think about it in passing seem to think that the seriously suicidal think.  There is lots going on inside our burning brains.  But thinking doesn't really describe it.

Mental Illness Humor - A Manifesto

Is mental illness funny?

Depends on what you mean and who and you ask.

If it's not, well there goes my career. And indeed, in some corners, my career never got out of the gate. But here's my story.

Humor serves several functions for us loonies. The first for me was as a coping mechanism.