http://www.fftimes.com/index.php/6/2006-02-09/24433

When you say suicide, you get my attention
February 09, 2006




In the early 1980s when I was living in Thunder Bay, a male friend of mine
changed the way I looked at the world. He was in his early 20s, charming,
single, and living with his brother, sister-in-law, and their two small
children.

Then one day, while everybody was off doing their thing, he hung himself in
the living room.

He didn’t write a suicide note, he just left family and friends bewildered
and crushed. We tried to cope with why he’d done it, if we’d missed something,
if we could have stopped it.

We felt angry, helpless, and empty—and none of us were ever the same again.

The other day, I came across something I’d written just after he died. I’d
tried to reason out, in my own words, the thinking of a lost soul. I’ve always
wondered if, in his last fleeting moments of consciousness, he’d wished he’d
changed his mind.

It still troubles me when I think about that. . . .



Every 40 seconds of every day somewhere in the world, someone commits
suicide. In Canada, it is the leading cause of death among youths aged 10-24,
after motor-vehicle accidents.

Some 25,000 Canadian youths attempt suicide every year—and 250 of them are
successful.

And although it seems unimaginable, statistics also show 70-80 percent of
Canadian youths consider suicide before graduation. Other statistics say more
people are dying from suicide than in all armed conflicts around the globe.

Why people kill themselves is an overwhelming subject to investigate. In the
end, there’s never just one answer or just one reason, or just one event in
someone’s life that annihilates their coping skills to the point of “ending it
all.”

But reducing the staggering statistics has to begin somewhere. Putting aside
the stigmas that cloak the issue of suicide—letting our guard down and others in
who can help us before we think we have no other choice—are crucial first steps.

“[Suicide] does need to be talked about and not treated like it is some kind
of national secret or something,” Hal Wilhite, a counsellor at Riverside
Community Counselling Services in Rainy River, stressed during a recent
interview by phone from his office there.

“It happens—and it has occurred here locally,” he noted. “It’s important to
try and break the isolation that people feel [and] to get the word out that
‘Yes, there is something that can be done.’

“People don’t have to feel so alone [in dealing] with something that might
lead them to make that sort of decision.

“I suspect most people don’t seek out counseling when they need to and out
of the people who do, women are more likely to do so than men,” Wilhite
remarked.

According to a report by the Canadian Institute for Health, women are four
times more likely than men to make suicide attempts. But men commit suicide four
times more often than women do.

There’s something to be said about being wide awake in the face of suicide,
and the important role that everyone can play in recognizing the signs in
someone who is headed down that one-way path.

Susan Marshall, team leader for the Canadian Mental Health Association’s CAN
HELP program (Fort Frances branch), co-facilitates workshops on suicide
prevention across the district and in area First Nations.

“Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training” (ASIST) is a two-day workshop
led by Marshall and CMHA colleague Brent Chapman, and held largely by request to
community caregivers in all walks of life.

ASIST was spearheaded in 1982 by “LivingWorks Education” in rural Alberta
because of a huge suicide problem there, and is now known worldwide as the most
used suicide intervention program.

“The workshop is for everybody—and I mean everybody,” Marshall stressed last
week. “Everybody can be at risk for suicide and the more of us who recognize the
[signs], the better.”

Foster parents, guidance counsellors, high school teachers, police, child
care workers, family who have a relative with a mental illness, and even school
bus drivers are among those on the front-line in suicide first aid.

“The key is awareness of the actual signs and talking,” Marshall explained.
“The one great thing about this workshop is that it makes you step back and
value that you have to take the time to talk about [everything].

“It teaches you to know how to act, what to say, where to go to get help.”

But Marshall also doesn’t deny the difficult task in opening up
conversations on issues surrounding suicide.

Research published in a report, “Suicide ideation and health-related quality
of life in a community, 2001,” indicates that each week, roughly three percent
of people consider ending their lives.

It also states that thinking about suicide is very common—it’s just that
most of us find better solutions than that.

“There’s still a stigma surrounding suicide and mental illness,” agreed
Marshall. “It’s not a subject you are going to share with your co-worker. You
wouldn’t just turn around to your co-worker and say, ‘I feel suicidal today.’

“Society doesn’t encourage people to talk about it [and] there is a sense of
shame if life isn’t running smoothly,” she argued.

“It is a normal part of the human experience to feel so bad that you think
about ‘ending it,’” Marshall added. “The healthy person moves on from that. The
person with a mental illness does not.”

Jon Thompson, director of Riverside Community Counselling Services here,
suggested suicide prevention be incorporated when fresh, young minds are being
taught the benefits of healthy lifestyles and healthy choices.

“We should talk with children about all the range of things that can happen
in life, the good, the bad, and the ugly,” Thompson said via cell phone last
Thursday from Thunder Bay, where he was making a presentation to a standing
committee hearing on Bill 36.

“Prevention is fostered by education [and suicide] prevention should begin
as early as we can, but be age appropriate,” he cautioned.

“Suicide prevention should be built into the school curriculum as part of
the emphasis on positive mental health,” Thompson added.

“Integrating these [educated] individuals and peers means that if more
people have that [prevention] information, the kids [who need help] are more
likely to run into somebody who does recognize the signs of suicide,” he
reasoned.

However, Thompson also deemed that avenue of suicide first aid “secondary”
to a much more difficult challenge in the fight to reduce the national suicide
rate.

“If you want to go really deep . . . suicide is a condition of hopelessness,
poverty, apathy, poor employment opportunities, determinants of health, etc.,
and those things aren’t so healthy,” he argued.

“You have to intervene with everybody at every level, school, community,
services, etc. [to change it].”

Historically, suicide rates are higher in remote aboriginal communities—and
phenomenally high on reserves in Northern Ontario. In Pikangikum First Nations,
100 km northwest of Red Lake, there already have been three youth suicides this
year, with 24 in 2005.

The community of 2,300—of which 75 percent are under 25 years of age—ranks
among the highest in the world for suicides.

It’s also been said that Pikangikum has living conditions equal to a Third
World country. Most homes have no sewers or running water, and there is no road
out.

While Thompson agreed that suicide among aboriginal youth is very high, he
adamantly argued against it being an issue of race.

“I don’t buy into that,” he stressed. “Even though the rates of suicide are
higher in First Nations communities, [aboriginal people] are not [inherently]
suicide-prone.

“It’s a coping mechanism and it’s about some of the other variables they are
living with.

“If you took non-native youths in a similar-sized community and gave them
the same variables as a [impoverished] First Nation community, I believe those
people would potentially have the same rate [of suicide],” Thompson contended.

“Suicide is not bio-chemical. It is a reactive act to your conditions,” he
argued.

Mental health counselling services regularly advertise that people do not
need a referral from their doctor to make an appointment, yet Thompson said that
message remains unfamiliar to most to a large extent.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the world probably
will never have ideal conditions where drastic measures like suicide are
extinct. But as a society, it is our responsibility to ask questions when we
suspect someone is in trouble.

Being afraid to do that because we think confidentiality is in the way does
nothing—and doing nothing is not an option.

“The key surrounding suicide is that if a person comes forward to get help,
that’s great. But if others suspect [something is wrong] and want to help, they
need to get to us quickly,” Thompson stressed.

“If people want to do the right thing, I encourage them to do that.

“Speaking as a member of the public, I would rather err on the side of
trying than be sitting on my hands and then find out that someone [took their
life],” he concluded.

LivingWorks Education estimates only one in eight people have enough reasons
for living, or other protective factors, that thoughts of suicide will never be
a consideration for them. No one knows the source of this resiliency.

I wish my friend had been the one.



If you need to talk to someone call:

Riverside Community Counseling Services 274-4807 (Fort Frances), 482-1442
(Emo) and 852-4462 (Rainy River)

Canadian Mental Health Services 274-2347

Anishinabeg Community Counseling Services 274-9839

Crisis Response Services Crisis Line 1-866-888-8988



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