Personal connections save lives
What suicidal people can teach us in times of COVID-19 pandemic
Jess Stohlmann-rainey cries every day. And it’s not when she’s feeling suicidal. h On Monday, she cried because she woke up with hip pain, saw a one-eyed chihuahua and a video of bats swimming. She cried because she was thankful for her husband, Jon. She cried thinking about people she loves who killed themselves and those who wanted to but didn’t.
Jess cried because she had a nightmare where, in a twist of modern eugenics, anyone with a psychiatric history who caught COVID-19 was left to die. Another day she cried when a refrigerated truck pulled up to a Denver hospital and she wondered if it was for bodies.
During the pandemic, Jess, 34, who has attempted suicide twice and lives with chronic suicidal thoughts, sometimes struggles to ward off despair. Working toward a better world is how she keeps herself wanting to stay in it. But now that reimagining can feel out of reach.
The pandemic has taken a toll on everyone, especially the millions of Americans who think seriously about suicide. Calls to suicide hotlines in some parts of the country have spiked. In March, when stay-at-home directives began, the Crisis Text Line saw a 26% increase in text volume from the previous month.
Life stressors and recent or impending crises are known to contribute to suicide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2018.
Many mental health professionals can’t conduct in-person appointments, and not all patients can access virtual therapy even when it’s offered. On social media, chronically suicidal people are sharing how fear, uncertainty and isolation are fueling their thoughts of dying.
“Almost overnight, half the people I know lost their therapists,” said Jess, director of program development at Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners in Denver. “If you rely exclusively on that to get by, things are going to get really bad for people really quickly.”
There is some evidence that suicides increased in the U.S. during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic and among older people in Hong Kong during the 2003 SARS epidemic, the medical journal The Lancet reported.
“We’re about to face all kinds of challenges that we already know are hard for people, but they’re going to come all at once,” Jess said. “Increasing poverty and houselessness, increasing difficulties accessing health care . ... Basically everything that’s a social risk factor for anything is crashing down on us right now. If you don’t have a network for supporting yourself, I don’t know how people will survive it.”
The pandemic has revealed what many suicidal people know and others may have taken for granted: human connection is lifesaving.
Jess is alive, in part, because her life is threaded to others. Her sister, her friends, her fellow survivors – these are the people who love her, listen to her, validate her and make space for the heavy and sometimes terrifying without devolving into terror themselves. They do not judge her or hold her worst moments against her. They are the ones who know why she cries.
This is a look at Jess’s support network. This is how she and her peers – people who have struggled with suicide – survive.
Someone with the ‘biggest picture’: The sister
In September, Jess cried because her sister Jenny was visiting and she was so happy she was there. She cried when Jenny left.
It was the last time they saw each other before the crisis began. They don’t know when they might see each other again.
“I miss her,” Jenny said.
Jenny is not the person with whom Jess shares her most intense suicidal thoughts. Jenny is the person she reaches for to talk about everything else. She’s the one who knows her fully.
Jenny bore witness to some of Jess’s worst years. Jess began to hear distinct voices in middle school, telling her if things got too hard there was a way out.
She was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, which carries a heightened risk of suicide.
“As she got older, she became distant in a lot of ways, which was challenging for me as her sister in a house where we loved each other,” Jenny said.
Jenny remembers the wounds on Jess’s body, the self-inflicted cuts and burns. She remembers the time she attempted suicide at school, and the hospitalization.
Jess made two serious suicide attempts in high school.
“There was this sort of closeness I had with death in that period, where it was just more compelling than being alive,” she said.
Jenny wanted to help her sister. Back then, she didn’t know how. A few years after Jess left, when Jenny was a senior in high school, she experienced her own crisis – worry about her sister loomed, there was financial stress at home, she was over-committed at school and a fellow student killed himself.
On the last day of Thanksgiving break, Jenny attempted suicide.
“Everybody around me was in crisis and it felt like, ‘Wow, life is really, really hard,’ ” she said. “For a long time I didn’t even consider it a suicide attempt. I wasn’t really trying to die, I was just trying to figure out if I wanted to live.”
A 2016 study in the American Sociological Review showed characteristics of communities can contribute to teen suicide clusters.
Jess and Jenny are bonded not only through shared history but also through a common experience of suicide that is, for each, deeply particular. Jess was trying to end her life when she made her attempt, and she has thought about dying many times since. Jenny wasn’t sure what she wanted, but the attempt clarified that death was not it.
Someone you call in crisis: A long-distance soul mate
Jess cried because her friend’s grandfather died during the pandemic.
Dese’rae L. Stage, a suicide attempt survivor who founded the site Live Through This, had to say goodbye to her “Poppy” over Facetime.
Amid the swelling crisis, Des grieved her grandfather’s death, feared for the health of her mother, who has a respiratory illness, and her brother, who works in a restaurant, and lost her therapist.
All while quarantined at home in Philadelphia with her wife and two kids under 3.
But Jess and Des have each other. Brought together through suicide prevention work, they’ve formed a friendship where they talk openly, frequently and often irreverently about their suicidal thoughts. They spend hours discussing death without feeling as if it’s a downer, and they share outrage about how people pathologize their pain rather than question why the world may not always feel worth living in.
The intractability of suicide has led some people to believe it’s a problem that can never be understood or solved. Numbers released in January from the CDC show 48,344 people died by suicide in 2018. Since 1999, the suicide rate has climbed 35%. But many suicidal people say for all that remains unknown about suicide, it is clear that connection saves lives.
Suicidal people without in-person peer support, or who can’t access it during social distancing, can build connections online. The internet is home to everything from formal support groups to impromptu suicide social hours.
Des says the internet has been key to her own survival. The connections she has forged online, she said, make her uniquely suited to the pandemic.
“This has been like my Super Bowl,” Stage said. “I’ve been practicing for this my whole life. I’ve been on the internet since I was 14 and seeking out connections that whole time.”
Jess and Des’ relationship is, in large part, made possible by the internet. They live across the country, so hanging out means getting on Zoom together three or four times a week. They also host a Facebook Live series called Suicide ‘n’ Stuff.
“We had a ridiculous contest early on where the prize was a vial of Jess’ tears and a list of what she cried about for a week,” Des said. “She is a very sensitive person, and she is very sensitive to the world and what’s happening in it.”
When Jess in crisis, she seeks out Des. On a bad week, thousands of exchanged texts trumped the thousands of miles between them.
Des also knows Jess’s boundary that must never be crossed. After several traumatic experiences with involuntary hospitalization, Jess under no circumstances is to be hospitalized without her consent.
Research shows emergency room visits and involuntary hospitalizations – triggered when someone believes a person is at imminent risk of killing themselves – can increase a person’s risk of suicide.
“Jess has been very clear. Do not hospitalize me or I will kill myself,” Des said.
Someone by your side: A work friend (who is so much more)
Jess cried often at the thought of her dog, Marty, dying. Then cried in April when he did.
Jess sent a group text after he suffered several strokes. Some friends said they would go with her to euthanize him, but there was only one offer of help she accepted.
Her friend Carly Larson messaged her privately: “Do you need me to drive you?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Other than her husband, Jon, Carly is the person in Jess’s support network in closest proximity. Jess and Carly are neighbors and work together at Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners. Jess can’t hide from Carly, who also is chronically suicidal, and she says she never has to.
“She would literally drop anything to do anything for me any time,” Jess said. “I would never feel bad or like a burden to ask anything from her.”
Carly knows what it’s like to feel like a burden. She was born to a single mother who struggled with drug use, and she learned to fend for herself from a young age.
See CONNECTIONS, Page 3B