Sir, – As one who has been on both sides on the divide, having once been suicidal and seen how suicide tears family apart, I was disturbed by reading Olivia Leary’s article (Opinion, May 14th) about a brave young man and a terrible tragedy. My heart goes out to Donal Walsh and his family.
However, I think the reporting around this issue has served to further stigmatise suicide. It may have even possibly pushed those who are suicidal even further away from help. Let’s make it clear, feeling depressed or suicidal is not a choice. You cannot help it more than you can getting a cold or flu. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how well your life looks from the outside. In fact, the more people who tell you how much you should cherish your life, the worse you feel. Somebody implying in a national newspaper that you are “devaluing” life by feeling suicidal will certainly not help either.
I constantly fear my own battle being exposed as I live in a society that would judge me differently for it, as Olivia Leary’s article demonstrated. However it’s time those of us who have been suicidal in the past, and lived through it, spoke up.
If there is one piece of advice I could give to a relative, partner or friend who is worried about their loved one, it is this: tell them what your life would be like without them. My mother told me our family would fall apart. My parents would most likely get divorced after the strain of their loss. It would destroy my little sister, who I was told became too afraid to sleep in case something happened to me. This may sound like I was guilt-tripped into staying alive, and maybe I was. It was the truth though, I’ve seen suicide tear families apart. These words kept me going through my darkest days, if I couldn’t be alive for myself then I would stay alive for my family and friends until things got better.
This may not work for everyone, but imagining the hole I would leave in the world helped. No matter how much I believed it, their lives would not be better-off without me. From my own experience, I can empathise with the mindset of teenagers who have taken their own lives, but it breaks my heart.
If you have never been in that situation, it might be hard to imagine the sense of loneliness and utter desperation. It’s time we started talking about this as a nation, not admonishing people for feeling down or suicidal. We need to listen to them and not tell them what to feel. The road is tough but with the help of others they can find a path out of it.
This is how you truly cherish life, by acknowledging how horrible it can be, but also making whatever way you can in the world. – Yours, etc,
KARINA BRACKEN,
Brighton Square,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.