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0 By Maggy Corkhill
TRIGGER WARNING
This morning I attended a final preparation meeting for a very significant event I have the privilege of being involved in. It’s on Thursday and it’s being organised by the Cwm Taf Mental Health Partnership Board’s sub committee for Suicide and Self-Harm Prevention. I am currently serving on it as a Service User Representative. It comprises other reps from lived experience backgrounds alongside prominent members from the public & local health boards and local councils, and also Mind, Samaritans and voluntary council representatives.
The event is aimed at looking at ways that we can collaboratively work in preventing the current epidemic of suicide within our communities. Also, it’s encouraging openness on a subject that has been considered taboo for too many years. Instead of suicidality being considered a ‘dirty secret’, it’s rightly being identified as a serious illness. I believe that by talking about it, we are gradually breaking down the shame and guilt that once surrounded it. And actually learning what we can all do to help.
We all need to spot the signs
We are all trying to pull our resources together within these times of economic austerity, which is being extensively researched by many organisations. According to the linked Samaritans report ‘there is evidence of a strong link between socioeconomic disadvantage and suicidal behaviour’. https://www.samaritans.org/dying-from-inequality/report.
Our underfunded NHS services are overwhelmed and struggling to cope. That’s why WE ALL need to look at ways of spotting the signs and reaching out to people around us who are struggling with these powerful and consuming feelings.
It’s an epidemic
Suicide is also being intelligently covered by the media. Only last month I watched an evocative documentary called Stopping Male Suicide, which looked at the shocking statistics in the UK. Suicide is the leading cause of death in men under the age of 50. In 2017, the rates increased in Wales by 37.3%. And for every completed suicide, there are 20 other reported attempts. It’s way more than a cry for help, it’s an epidemic.
In the programme they found that if more people reached out to others in their moments of crisis, it could actually save lives. And many of them. They looked at the Zero Suicide work being achieved in the US and the encouraging initiatives being replicated in the UK. Research has proved that the power of a simple conversation can not be underestimated.
How can we help those struggling?
People who know me personally might be aware that September and October are difficult times of the year for me. That’s because of birthdays and anniversaries of the loved ones I’ve lost. My interest in the prevention of suicide, and also my commitment to spreading awareness, is because I have lost three family members to suicide. Two are not my stories to tell, but they have affected and shaped my views and continued work in this area.
I have also been suicidally depressed, as recently as two years ago, and thankfully, my attempt failed. And this has made me more determined than ever to help other people understand how they can help someone who might be struggling. Especially those who are not able to say the crucial words ‘I need help, I need to talk…’
Here is my Julie’s story, from my point of view. It is difficult to tell and, probably, to read, but I hope it will help someone. (Warning: actual details of suicide.)
Julie’s story
The day after World Suicide Prevention Day is 11th September (9/11), which was my beloved niece Julie’s birth date. She was four years my junior and for a few years after she was born, she was brought up with me in our family home in the Isle of Man. I was closer to her in age than to my own sisters, who were much older and had left home. So I always felt she was more like my sister. Particularly when we squabbled like typical siblings.
Although she moved away when her mother married, we used to spend most of our school holidays together during our teens. But in our early twenties our lives went in different directions and although we saw each other at family events, we just kind of drifted apart.
That was until 1995 when I received a phone call to say that she had been found unconscious and taken to hospital in Halifax with a suspected overdose. When I got to the hospital she was strapped to loads of machines that were keeping her alive. From the evidence they found at her flat, it looked like she had taken about 200 paracetamols. And she had written a note.
She had been found about 18 hours after she had taken the overdose, and it was too late for a stomach pump. The over-the-counter pills had taken effect and were killing off her liver. She didn’t have very long left to live, but was miraculously offered a life-saving liver transplant. We, of course, as family accepted it on her behalf as she was unconscious.
A ‘second chance’
Despite her best efforts to leave us then, the liver transplant worked. And after a very long period of convalescence in St James Hospital, Leeds, she gradually came back to us. But she never felt like she deserved the second chance. That’s the thing with someone who wants to take their own life. They think they’re a burden on the people around them and that we’d all be better off without them. They are so consumed with self-hatred that they are completely oblivious to anything good happening to them. It’s totally debilitating and wholly consuming and too overwhelming to see past the emotional pain.
I was always surprised that she was released from hospital without any mental health support. Although the psychiatric services had consulted with her in hospital, they seemed to accept that she was not in need of any psychiatric or psychological treatment. I had tried to talk to her several times to try and understand what drove her to that point, but I never really got to the bottom of it. She was unwilling to talk too much about it.
I personally suspected she was physically abused when she was much younger and was not able to come to terms with it. She said she felt as if there was something better ‘on the other side’. It was as though she was in too much emotional pain to consider that she could be happy again. There didn’t seem to be the awareness and the availability of help back then. Even 22 years ago, it wasn’t the done thing to talk about the ‘S’ word.
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We had some more years with her, but…
Of course, I beat myself up that I wasn’t around for her when she was struggling the most. However, I have always felt blessed that she had another 12 years, which I cherished. And I became closer to her again. We even still bickered as much as we always had, but she was my best friend and my sister by choice. She was as much infuriating and stubborn as she was a kind and beautiful person.
She moved to Wales to be nearer to my family and me in 2005, and got to meet and fall in love with my son. We made some really precious memories, before she eventually died in 2008. The anti-rejection drugs had killed off her kidneys, which caused too much damage on her other organs. Her body just couldn’t cope.
Her eventual death was recorded as suicide because it was her attempt 12 years earlier that had caused her premature passing. It’s 10 years since she passed and she would have been 47 next week. I miss her every day, so I had a stylised version of her tattooed on my inner arm so that I can still feel as if she’s still close by. And because it helps to remind me of how fragile life actually is.
A feeling of hopelessness, but feelings do pass
Fundamentally, being suicidal is the feeling of hopelessness, the feeling that our mental pain has no other way out. But it is just that – a feeling, a set of thoughts. The feelings are not real, and nothing stays the same forever. The feeling WILL pass. It did for Julie and it did for me, and when you talk to other people who’ve been through it, it does for them too, eventually.
Never underestimate how much you are loved and valued by people around you. They might struggle to show it or find it difficult to put into words, but believe me, in the spirit of REM’s classic, ‘everybody hurts’. Some of us just struggle with it more.
If you know of someone who might be showing any of these signs and feeling this way, then please reach out and let them know they’re not alone. Tell them there is always someone who will listen. Just a chat and a cup of tea could be enough to make that person feel the glimmer of hope they need. It might just save them.
Hang on in there
If YOU are feeling like this, then please reach out for support. You are not alone, and you will find help. These are only feelings and they will pass. Hang in there…
If you are on the edge of the abyss, don’t jump.
If you are going through hell, don’t stop.
As long as you are breathing there is hope.
As long as day follows night, there is hope.
Nothing stays the same forever. Douglas Bloch
Helplines and Support Groups
We know it can be difficult to pick up the phone when you are feeling so desperate. But please reach out to somebody and let them know how you are feeling…
Samaritans (116 123) 24-hour service every day, or email: jo@samaritans.org
Childline (0800 1111) for under 18s
www.elefriends.org.uk, a supportive online community run by Mind
PAPYRUS (0800 068 41 41) support for teenagers and young adults
Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) helpline (0800 58 58 58) an excellent resource for young men
Community Advice & Listening Line (C.A.L.L.) Mental Health Helpline based in Wales: tel: 0800 132 737 or text HELP to 81066
Contact your local GP or call NHS Direct 0845 46 47 (Wales), NHS 111 (England and Scotland), or Lifeline 0808 808 8000 (Northern Ireland)
Reproduced with permission, originally posted on mindarium.org
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