Robin Williams, Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, a couple of musicians I don't remember the names of because I'm not cool like that. A friend's son just a couple of months from graduation. A couple of college students my daughter works with. The suicide world uses the term completed to describe people who succeeded in killing themselves. According to the latest report by the CDC, half of all the states reported an increase in suicide rates by 30% from 1999-2016. My gut feeling tells me the reason why is we're living in a society that feels like a pressure cooker. The pressure starts in pre-school when parents begin to compare their toddlers and enroll them in soccer and dance and the most prestigious preschool they can get their kid in. It continues in grade school with more sports and music lessons and state mandated testing administered by overworked, underpaid, stressed out teachers.
Then there's middle school, junior high and high school. You have to be in the right activities, make straight A's, score well on your PSAT, ACT's and SAT's, figure out what career you want to do for the rest of your life. All while comparing how much fun you're having and how popular you are with every other student in your class who has a snapchat and Instagram account. Oh yeah, you also have to worry about your school getting shot up.
In college, you get the same pressure as high school but also get to start building up your debt. You graduate with college loans it will take years to pay off and a hefty health insurance deductible it will be hard to pay if you get sick. Most work places no longer offer pension plans, so you feel pressure to save for retirement, but all your left over income is going to paying off your student loan.
Then one day, while you're stuck in traffic and late for work, you have your first panic attack. It feels like it hits out of nowhere and you're pretty sure you're going to die. They keep coming, relentless, day after day. You feel like you have the flue. You can't eat, can't sleep, can't think, can't figure out how you used to be able to do all the things you used to be able to get done. You go to the doctor who checks out your thyroid and leaves your results on the phone. Everything looks good, you're healthy, no problems. So you're convinced you're going crazy. You think you're weak. Everyone else is able to handle so much more than you. You can't get out of bed anymore even though you can't sleep, so you call into work sick. You know you'll get fired if you continue calling in sick.
The days drag by. Each hour feels like a lifetime. Nothing gives you any joy any more- not the music you love, your favorite books, the long bicycle rides you used to live for. You don't want to be a burden on your family and friends, so you use the tiny bit of energy you have left to pretend to be o.k. It gets harder and harder to fake. You've now lost an alarming amount of weight so you go back to your doctor. They suggest you see a psychiatrist. You call every psychiatrist in town but every one of them has at least a 2 month wait. The psychiatrist your doctor recommends doesn't accept insurance and costs $500 an hour. There are other psychiatrists who charge a sliding fee but they have 3 month waits. You can't imagine living like this for one more day, let alone three more months.
While you're waiting for your appointment with the psychiatrist, you self medicate. If you drank a glass of wine everyday before, you now drink five. If you smoked a little weed every once in a while, you now smoke it everyday. If you have some old pain medication laying around you take that. You'll do anything to try and feel better. Nothing works.
You start imagining how nice it would be not to be any more. You see the worry on your family's faces and hate that it's because of you. Your sick mind starts telling you that everyone would be better off without you. Your sick mind starts telling you that you will never feel anything resembling normal again- you are too far gone. You're convinced everyone would be better off if you were dead.
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A lot of things need to change if the suicide problem is going to decrease. Raising awareness of signs and symptoms and passing on suicide prevention hot line numbers is a great place to start but it can't end there. We need to train doctors better to aggressively treat mental health issues. We need to train more psychiatrists to provide for the increasing need. We need insurance to pay for mental health services. We need to treat mental health like any other disease and take away the stigma that keeps people from talking about it. Schools and businesses need to see it like any other illness and accommodate the needs of students and workers whether that be time off, shorter work days or an extended sabbatical. Students need better options for schooling at home when public school is just too much. And most of all everyone needs to stop the social media bullying, criticizing and bashing. We need to learn to be kind to each other once again. Especially to the people who are the hardest to be kind to. And when that family member or friend can't think well enough to get help, make that appointment for them and take them to it. If you think they may be suicidal take them to the Emergency room. They may not want you around, but be around anyway. Tell them they will get better. Tell them they aren't alone. Tell them you will help them with whatever they need. Clean their house, make their meals, watch their kids. Don't ever give up.
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