Suicide Prevention; My Story
As September turns to October, I’m thinking about suicide prevention. September is suicide prevention month.
But suicide prevention began long before September for me, and will continue on for the rest of my life.
Today, I have decided to share some personal narrative on why suicide prevention is so important to me, personally.
This post is deeply personal to me, and I will try to only share what is necessary to convey my thoughts and pay my respects.
Please be warned, this post will discuss suicide, mental illness, self harm, death.
I have known several people to die by suicide. Each time, the loss is a shock, a deep sadness, and an anger. That makes sense, in terms of the stages of grief, and typical human emotion.
Losing someone “before their time” is excruciating, but to add the element of self-directed violence? It is beyond comprehension.
It will leave a person sobbing, fuming, shaken, numb, motivated, devastated; in no particular order, and perhaps all at the same time.
I felt guilt, too, with each passing; guilt I hadn’t somehow intervened and stopped them. Guilt that perhaps I had no idea they were suffering. Guilt I had survived, and they had not. I would think about them on special occasions; prom, graduation, weddings. All the things they did not get to experience, but I did.
And I felt deep confusion; how could the world be like this? For me, a devout Christian until almost 18 years old, and a currently deeply spiritual person, suicide punctured an irreprable hole in the pink balloon of my worldview which I was so desperate to keep afloat.
Today I want to share a little about the story of an acquaintance of mine; she died by suicide at a very young age. Her loss has had an indelible mark on my life. She has motivated me to pursue my own mental health, and to become a social worker and therapist in large part so I could be there for someone like her, in their time of need.
When I was about 16, I spent about 6 months in a residential facility in the American west. I will, perhaps, discuss the reason for this stay at a later time in more depth.
Note: As a therapist, I walk a fine line between self disclosure in a professional and helpful way, and TMI. For the purposes of the Internet, I will not provide much information on this situation.
The girl, who I will call Lori, was still in grade school, but we shared a housing facility during part of the program. She was a very friendly, outgoing, funny, spirited girl. I remember thinking she was cool and fun, in spite of being much, much younger than most of the rest of us. I also wondered about her, being so young and in a residential facility. I didn’t know anything about her backstory. She seemed to want recovery, and I thought that she would likely succeed once home. She seemed motivated, fairly content, and like she wanted to move forward in her life.
About a year and a half later, I found out through facebook that Lori had died by suicide. She was still in grade school. I was devastated. Though I hadn’t known her very long or very well, the death of someone so young- not even adolescent yet- struck me like a freight train.
Myself and the other girls who had been at the facility had an online facebook group to share news with one another. We were all shocked, horrified, and aghast. How could this happen? How on earth could a child successfully end their own life? And WHY?
At the same time, we all understood some tiny part of the “why”, as we had all been in a residential treatment facility for eating disorders- themselves a slow suicide, many argue. And yet, to see someone else suffer, especially someone who was so young, and so bright- we were all shattered by her loss.
After her loss, I had a crisis of faith. I truly could not reconcile a loving God allowing a child to suffer, and ultimately take her own life. I lost my faith for some time after that. Never fully; but I felt abandoned by God, and questioned the existence of any Being outside of humans. After all, how could a good God allow this to happen? Up to that point, my faith had been the central point of my entire life. I never thought that I would leave the Church, but I did.
I also realized that I wanted to do something with my life that didn't harm the world, and maybe even helped it a little. If the world was full of nonsensical violence, loss, and darkness, and if perhaps God as I’d known him didn’t exist as I’d known him, didn’t I still have a responsibility to show up for my belief? Even if my belief was simply that there was still some good in the world, along with all the evil, the bad, the ugly, the suicides, the murders, the sexual violence, the abuse?
With the suggestion of a trusted therapist, I made the decision to pursue psychology and therapy as my future career. I made this decision shortly after learning about Lori’s death. I wanted to honor her, and to try to do something to make the world better, so that little girls didn’t have to feel the way Lori felt, and do what Lori did in a moment of desperation.
I think about Lori often, still. Much of my work- both as a therapist and as a clinical social worker, is about mental health. I speak with people often, usually several times per week, and sometimes several times per day, about suicide. I directly ask people about their thoughts around wanting to kill themselves or someone else.
I also work indirectly with suicide prevention- I firmly believe that every therapy session and every encounter with a decent, kind, open minded, and open hearted human is suicide prevention.
At the end of the day, we know that suicide often happens out of desperation, and is usually a quick decision. In fact, research has shown that substances drastically increase the risk of suicide by estimates of over 5.8 times (1). Other studies show that most people complete or attempt suicide within ten minutes of deciding to make a suicidal gesture or act (2).
We can teach people small interventions through therapeutic techniques to allow them to tolerate difficult thoughts and feelings, we can help create barriers to harm like gun locks and safe storage of sharps and medications, and we can check in on our friends and family when we are concerned for them.
These seemingly small gestures can add time between someone we love making a quick, life altering, life ending decision, and acting on that decision.
We can donate to food banks, we can write to our congress person about issues that affect our community, and we can advocate for safer, less desperate conditions for all of our fellow humans. Paid parental leave, livable wage, affordable housing, social services, aid to the elderly, and an eradication of racial, sexual, gendered violence.
All of these would greatly reduce the desperation of our fellow human, and all of these are part of suicide prevention.
I wish I could have been there for Lori. I wish I could have saved her. Her and the other people I have known to die by suicide.
Even knowing what I know and doing what I do for a living for over half a decade, I am never un-moved by suicide.
I am very grateful for my own life, especially after seeing the way a young person's death shatters a community. It motivated me to keep pursuing recovery. I did not want my loved ones to feel what I felt when Lori died. And, I was highly motivated to make a change in her honor. Her loss lit the fire I needed to keep going.
I will keep attempting to add to a world, to honor Lori and the others who died far too young, and to be a piece of the puzzle of suicide prevention, particularly in young people.
If you are in crisis, call or text 988 in the United States, or go to the nearest emergency department for assistance. Suicide is never an answer.
Sources:
Alison Athey, Jaimie Shaff, Geoffrey Kahn, Kathryn Brodie, Taylor C. Ryan, Holly Sawyer, Aubrey DeVinney, Paul S. Nestadt, Holly C. Wilcox, Association of substance use with suicide mortality: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis, Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, Volume 14, 2025.
Deisenhammer, E. A., Ing, C. M., Strauss, R., Kemmler, G., Hinterhuber, H., & Weiss, E. M.(2009). The duration of the suicidal process: How much time is left for intervention between consideration and accomplishment of a suicide attempt? Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 70, 19–24. https://doi.org/10.4088/JCP.07m03904
