I am certain that someone who has suicided has left behind a number of hurts including among them the pain that those closest to them must feel.
I do not at all subscribe to the very pervasive believe that those who end their lives do so primarily to hurt others.
In fact, if you ever read the story of someone who attempted suicide and survived, it's an altogether different reality.
But very often when someone has died by suicide the quickest response from others is to label the act as one of selfishness.
When we do this, we generally reference the survivors, the loved ones who have been left behind.
We count their loss, their pain, their hurt, and their grief and mostly discount the feelings of the one who died.
Of course death is always painful but some consideration must be given to the feelings of the person who has suicided. Why did this person make such a decision?
Were they thinking: "I'll just take my life and hurt all my friends and family?" Do we really believe that is what happens when we say they were being "selfish"?
Before I educated myself on the issue and before I understood much of what I now do, I too, referenced suicide as selfishness.
It is what I had heard growing up. It's what was said of anyone who had died by suiciding and it was repeated ad nauseum my entire life.
But I have come to realise that suicide is an act of desperation by someone who is in intense emotional pain and really just wants the pain to end. I have learned and accepted that calling someone's act of ending their own life "selfish" is stigmatising, which only seeks to perpetuate the misinformation about the suffering of the suicided.
One survivor penned this in the Huffington Post: "Suicide is a decision made out of desperation, hopelessness, isolation and loneliness. The black hole that is clinical depression is all-consuming. Feeling like a burden to loved ones, feeling like there is no way out, (and) feeling trapped and feeling isolated are all common among people who suffer from depression."
Wanting the pain to stop is a very natural human response to extreme pain; it is not a selfish one.
And this is not at all to support suicide–I do not–neither is it meant to negate the feelings of those who suffered the loss of a loved one, which is quite valid and expected. This is to help us get another or better perspective on suicide.
Some researchers say up to 90 per cent of the people who die by suicide have a mental illness at the time of their death.
The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) attributes up to 60 per cent of suicide due to severe mood disorders. People at the time of their death are generally not thinking clearly.
"The sadness of a major depressive disorder differs both in degree and amount from the sadness that strikes anyone at times when life is especially hard.
"Normal states of grief or sadness generally have less pervasive effects and last for shorter periods of time than those that mark major depression," says the CMHA.
It cannot be too difficult toimagine that people's mood, mind and judgement are severely affected at the time of suiciding. And if so, it cannot be accurate to label the suicided as selfish.
In fact, we should not be labelling anything but instead empathise with the distress of the one who has died and sympathise with the grieving they have left behind. That is the appropriate response.
Kevin Caruso at the Website, www.suicide.org, writes: "Saying that a person who had severe clinical depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or a similar illness was engaging in an act of selfishness when they (suicided)–even though their thought process, mood, and judgment were greatly affected by their mental illness–is not only inaccurate, but downright cruel, to both the (suicided) and the suicide survivors."
"A suicidal action that manifests from intense, excruciating, unbearable pain associated with a serious mental illness has nothing to do with selfishness. Period," says Caruso.
Yet "selfish" is the most common adjective people use about suicide. It is the most common sentiment repeated in social media in these past few weeks when people chose to comment.
From my observations, it is also especially "crucifying" the way it is used when it is a man who has suicided. The vilifying could almost kill the dead a second time, so poisonous it seems and so loaded with judgment.
As a mental health advocate, I understand it will take a long time to undo the use of "selfish" in our response. I begin today by saying that such a label is useless, ignorant and discriminatory, seeking only to perpetuate the stigma that mental illness already bears in our society.
I begin with a plea for us to reconsider accusing the suicided of being selfish.
(See: http://toronto.cmha.ca/mental_health/the-relationship-between-suicide-and-mental-illness)
Caroline C Ravello is a strategic communications and media practitioner with over 30 years of proficiency. She holds an MA in Mass Communications and is pursuing the MSc in Public Health (MPH) from the UWI. Write to: mindful.tt@gmail.com