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0 By Annie Lovatt
Two years ago, I tried to die. My depression had gotten so bad, so unbearable, that my most basic instinct – to survive – was overridden. Fortunately, I came through that experience and have since recovered from the depression that made me feel that way in the first place.
Despite my conviction that openness around mental health is vital, I didn’t tell anyone at school about it. I let them believe I’d had food poisoning. In the years since, it’s not something I readily share with people in my life. I wouldn’t dream of telling people at work or mentioning it on my university application.
Asking For Help in Our Darkest Hour
Why can’t I share what was one of the most life-changing, terrifying events of my life?
The same reason that when I saw a post on Facebook recently of a girl calling out for help, I was left feeling disheartened and sad about the stigma still surrounding asking for help in our darkest hour.
The post was in a group for horse riders seeking support; at 3 am, she said, “Riding horses makes me suicidal lol. Should I quit?”
The Aftermath
In the immediate aftermath, the replies were numbers for suicide helplines, advice and sympathy. But there was also a staggering number of, “This is so attention seeking”, “Get off Facebook and talk to your therapist” and, horrifyingly, “Just kill yourself”.
The people urging her to kill myself are not so much my concern, although it makes me furious. That’s disgusting behaviour, similar to people that are still overtly racist – they are loud and proud and they won’t change, no matter how wrong they are.
What bothers me more are the normal, reasonable people who decide not to help this person in favour of telling them to take their problems elsewhere, or telling them they are not serious and are just attention seeking. Both of these attitudes have far-reaching, heartbreaking consequences.
Passing the Buck
First of all, the argument to take the problem elsewhere. Where else should she take it? Assuming she is lucky enough to have a therapist, they are not a 24/7 source of help. Suicide helplines do fantastic work, but ultimately they are most helpful for people in immediate crisis, and she may not have been. People seem to believe that the line between wanting to die and being ready to make that happen is a thin one. It’s not. It’s a wide, turbulent ocean, and this girl could have been floating anywhere in that space.
The idea that people suffering from mental illness need to take their problems elsewhere is so damaging that I’m certain that people are needlessly dying from that attitude alone. Friends and family passing off to professionals, professionals passing off to helplines, and helplines passing off to friends and family… where is there left to go?
A support group, with people from many different time zones around to help, is a reasonable place to make a post like that. The call for help was made to an “appropriate” audience – so now the truth of it comes under fire.
Fighting to be Believed
People seemed to be unable to look past the “lol” in the post. “I’ve had friends who killed themselves and it wasn’t a lol moment”, said one. “You wouldn’t be laughing if you were really suicidal”, said another.
How would they know? How dare they dictate how another person will behave in such a desperate moment?
It’s not funny. But as anyone with a mental illness will know, sometimes humour is the only way to cling to a shred of hope. I was sob-laughing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Fighting to be believed is simply too common when seeking help, whether it’s from professionals or friends, family or Facebook. So the attitude of questioning the truth of someone’s cry for help worries and saddens me.
Attention Seeking Saves Lives
And lastly, the “this is so attention seeking” comments.
Of course she was attention seeking. She wanted to die. That, in my opinion, is a reasonable time to be seeking attention. As it happens, attention is what saved her life, is what saved mine. So they were right. She was attention seeking. But why the hell is that a bad thing?
1in4 UK Book Store:
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That is the attitude that needs to change.
Attention seeking saves lives. Sharing saves lives. Crying out for help saves lives.
All I can ask is that people are there to answer, as they were for me two years ago. It hurts to think that people are dying because they can’t seek attention to save their lives.
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