Saints and Sinners: Suicide can be prevented
She was 33 and it was summer, a combination that was all wrong for suicide.
At age 33, at the prime of life, we can look far down the future’s broadening way and see forever.
The gray dreariness of winter days can make us melancholy and subject to dismal thoughts. But come summer, our hearts rebound. Suffused in light and sunshine, the world suddenly looks better again.
All this may be how it is for most of us but it was not that way for this woman. Longfellow said of summer that for some it is “the gravestone of a dead delight.” It must have appeared so to her as she stood on the bridge in the mist at the crack of dawn.
Somebody saw her there and called the police. When they came she was still there. Maybe they were in luck. They talked to her. They never stopped talking to her. By 7:00 a.m. she was still there. A small crowd had gathered. A fire department ambulance waited below.
Was she having second thoughts about her decision? Or was she trying to summon up the courage to carry it out?
I couldn’t hear what the police were saying to her but a fireman who’d dealt with attempted suicides once told me that one of the things you don’t say in a situation like this is, “Think of your family.” Very often, he said, it is someone in the family who has driven them to this. To think of their family now would only strengthen them in their resolve.
At 7:35 a.m. — with her beclouded mind unable to come up with any good reason for her to go on living — or perhaps with the courage she had been looking for — she jumped. If only she could have realized what a precious possession she had.
The crowd gasped in unison and then slowly went on its way. Moments later the ambulance sirens could be heard. The next day’s paper devoted only a short paragraph to the suicide.
We are learning some things about suicides. According to the National Mental Health Association, “eight out of ten suicidal persons give some sign of their intentions. People who talk about suicide, threaten to commit suicide, or call suicide crisis centers are 30 times more likely than average to kill themselves.”
Suicides defy demographics and the usual seasonal ups and downs that influence us. We know now that suicides peak in April, May and June, not in the winter.
The weather may be a factor in suicides but in ways quite opposite from what we had come to believe. An environmental psychologist speculates that people expect their spirits to lift and their lives to improve in the spring and summer. “If that does not happen, they may become discouraged and feel they have nothing left to look forward to.”
If you believe that someone you care about is suicidal, follow these guidelines from Suicide Awareness Voices of Education’s Web site, www.save.org:
1. Never keep a plan for suicide a secret. Don’t worry about endangering a friendship if you truly feel a life is in danger. It’s better to regret something you did, than something you didn’t do to help a friend.
2. Don’t try to minimize problems or shame a person into changing her mind. Your opinion of a person’s situation is irrelevant. Trying to convince a person it’s not that bad, or that she has everything to live for will only increase her feelings of guilt and hopelessness. Reassure her help is available, that depression is treatable, and that suicidal feelings are temporary.
3. If you feel the person isn’t in immediate danger, acknowledge the pain as legitimate and offer to work together to get help.
(George Plagenz is an ordained minister and veteran newsman based in Columbus, Ohio.)