I feel comforted to read that Prof Chong Siow Ann, a psychiatrist and vice-chairman of the medical board (research) at the IMH, did not give easy answers to why people commit suicide.
In his article “Living after a loved one commits suicide”, let me fast forward to his conclusion, which I thought would unveil some 5-step or 10-step solution to the issue. But it didn’t.
He wrote: “And we should continue to talk openly and widely about mental health and what is it that makes us despair and question the meaning of life to the point of wanting to end it, and more importantly, how we can pull ourselves and others from the edge of that abyss.”
Of course, I would expect Prof Chong as a psychiatrist to give advice to his patients on addressing depression and stress which are the most common causes of suicide, but in the article, he did not give any advice, just observations and understanding.
Because if you think about it, a life is a journey and this journey is filled with stories, and these stories come with layers after layers of most times raw and unprocessed emotions at every crossroad, which are personal and intimate to the sufferer. And this is made even more complicated by the fact that no two lives or experiences accumulated are alike.
Therefore, an advice to one may not apply to another, and an advice at one point can lose its effectiveness or resonance with the same person when he or she is at another point of his/her life or crossroad.
The journey that is life is too complicated to be resolved by a series of seminar or a 5-day life-improvement camp or a few interrelated sermons on a Sunday.
But I have to say that the focus of Prof Chong’s article is the suicide survivors, and no, it is not written for those who have passed on, but those left behind.
He wrote: “many people think the term “suicide survivor” refers to those who have tried unsuccessfully to kill themselves, but it actually refers to family members, friends, co-workers and mental health workers who have lost someone, with whom they had a close relationship, to suicide, and whom the suicide has also traumatised in various ways and to varying extent.”
To the suicide survivor, he is left with the stinging guilt and stigma of not being able to help to step in at the right time and place to save the life he loves deeply.
Prof Chong wrote: “That act of self-destruction is, after all, also an act of abandonment and rejection and a reproach that somehow you were not powerful enough, had not loved enough or were special enough to keep that person from choosing death over everything and everyone else.”
Most times, if not all the time, it is the whys that haunt the suicide survivor. While the pathologist performs a post-mortem on the deceased and it generally takes just a day to confirm the cause of death, the suicide survivor does his for almost a lifetime to find the whys of it.
His post-mortem is not only to find the whys but also to struggle with the anger, the pain, the guilt, the blame, and the self-reproach. And not only that, the suicide survivor, according to Prof Chong, has to deal also with being the “object of gossip, morbid curiosity and speculation” about why the loved one committed suicide.
Admittedly, most of it may be imagined or exaggerated, but the suicide survivor’s compromised mind often plays tricks on them and the bitter regret or mental script for not doing enough will always come back to them in some form or another even when they have thought they have moved on.
In the article, Prof Chong quoted this apt observation by Dr Edwin Shneidman, founder of the American Association of Suicidology: -
“The person who commits suicide puts his psychological skeleton in the survivor’s emotional closet - he sentences the survivor to deal with many negative feelings and to become obsessed with thoughts regarding his own actual or possible role in having precipitated the suicidal act or having failed to abort it.”
And that explains why many of them become victims themselves. “Research has shown that suicide survivors are more prone to developing symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder; they are more liable to get into accidents and develop alcoholism, physical illness and a variety of problems.”
...and I suspect one of the problems is the contemplation of ending their own life too.
Lesson? I think life for the living and those thinking of ending it is, most times, too complex to be captured in one or two well-intended advice or seminar notes.
At this juncture, let me bring up another relevant news today to illustrate my point.
Mr Henry Antoine Nicolas Sebastien, 34, recently received the Public Spiritedness Award at a ceremony at Clementi Police Division for saving a teenager’s life.
It happened on 4 Nov at Skywalk, Sentosa Island. The assoc game director of Ubisoft saw the boy “perched atop the metal ledge of the bridge” and he seemed to be in great distress. According to Henry, he also looked “extremely tense”.
Henry then distracted him by speaking to him for 15 minutes while his wife called the police. At one moment, Henry “lunged forwards and grabbed the teen by the waist...Henry then held on to the distressed and sobbing boy, until the police arrived on the scene.”
One passerby said: “The teenager is lucky that there was a Good Samaritan who was there to save his life.” (Ms Christine Yap).
Henry shared the same sentiment when he said upon receiving the award: “I am happy and humbled. I was just in the right moment, in the right place, at the right time.”
Well, being there at the right moment, place and time is often what it takes to save a life contemplating suicide. And ironically, it was the same for the boy who wanted to jump down the Skywalk.
For him, I believe it is also the perfect storm of being at the right moment, the right place and right time for him to resolve in his mind and heart to end his life. When that perfect moment comes, it usually takes either a nudge or a grab to end or save a life.
But not every act of suicide crosses the path of the timely presence of a rescuer. Hundreds of successful suicide are committed every year and none of them were as lucky as the boy Henry met that fateful day. And who is to ensure that the perfect storm would not happen also in the future to go either ways?
After all’s said, the most ironic question is, how do you save someone from himself?
For them, the right to live also comes with the right to end it and the reasons for it is too multivariate for enumeration.
Most times, even the suicide survivors are helpless to prevent or stop since they too cannot be present at that point when the living is helplessly hijacked by that compulsive-possessive act to take his own life.
So, in the end, Prof Chong’s conclusion is the best way forward, and let me repeat it here: “we should continue to talk openly and widely about mental health and what is it that makes us despair and question the meaning of life to the point of wanting to end it, and more importantly, how we can pull ourselves and others from the edge of that abyss.”
Hopefully, this continual talk and openness, and this search for the meaning of life and how it can empower one to overcome his or her demons can save more lives in the future.
And my takeaway from it all is to never take anything for granted. I can never be too sure of anything, or anyone, including my own loved ones.
My relationship with them can never be on autopilot, left to its own devices. For this reason, intentional living is more than just being aware of how I feel, but how others feel about how I feel, and how it affects them for good or bad.
And I strongly feel that everyone of us has a responsibility towards life, and every conversation we have with our loved ones, every unspoken word even, ought to be not only consciously evaluated by us but also consciously acted out to make sure that it encourages a soul towards life, and not condemn him or her towards, well, otherwise. Cheerz.
No comments:
Post a Comment