Listen well for pleas for help
One of the startling statistics that we ignore is that a person is more than 10 times as likely to die by their own hand as by another’s. Every year, Canada loses more than 100,000 years of potential life to suicide.
From the Latin, suicidium, suicide is “the act of taking one’s own life.” Intentional self-harm decrees an abrupt and drastic end to what may seem to a person insurmountable difficulties, grief, pain, loss and isolation. Depression, anxiety and emotional distress, whatever the cause, directly indicate potential suicide. There are those overwhelmed, hopeless, desperate and alone, but even the person who seems outwardly invincible can be at risk. Anyone can have thoughts of suicide and anyone can help someone contemplating that finale.
Our casual dismissal of mental illness is a far greater shame than the act of suicide itself. The cruelest and most derisive phrases indicate our cultural insensitivity toward those who experience psychogenic challenges. I have heard people who profess “gentle thoughts” toward friends on Facebook blithely dismissing others — in public — as “batshit crazy,” and laughing. The currency of a phrase like this is an indication of how spiteful cleverness has taken the place of genuine communication, a turn that we must surely lament.
One of the best measures of prevention for those considering suicide is connection, together with the confidence that they are being heard. Relationality is key, and genuine contact the tool, just as much as the availability of professional help for a person suffering from emotional or physical pain. Talking, reaching out, and relating are proactive persuasions.
We resort only too often to the cowardly and passive-aggressive emotional abuse of ghosting, of selective deafness. We silence those who may be appealing — directly or not — for help by scoffing at their tentative disclosures. As a person who battled depression in the past, I once timidly confessed to a colleague how I was feeling.
“Oh,” she said, mockingly, “you’re always depressed.”
I was silenced, shamed, and needless to say, prohibited from speaking further. That overt act of blockage was both hurtful in the extreme and a measure of how workplaces inadvertently enforce a culture of concealment.
As a non-profit organization, the Centre for Suicide Prevention works to save the lives of Calgarians, seeking to prevent self-harm by educating and equipping people with the knowledge to respond to those at risk. Through skills training, as well as applicable courses and workshops in intervention and postvention, the centre advances a perceptive and responsive vision for active suicide-prevention efforts: in the workplace, with Indigenous communities, with caregivers and with children and youth.
I would personally encourage all readers to listen and to respond to those who reach out, however diffidently, and I encourage you to support the Centre for Suicide Prevention as one of the recipients of the 2018 Calgary Herald Christmas fund.
Do not ghost those who need to be heard. Do not turn a deaf ear to the faintest whisper asking for help.
Aritha van Herk is an author, a University of Calgary professor, a member of the Alberta Order of Excellence, recipient of the Lieutenant-Governor’s Distinguished Artist Award, and Member of the Order of Canada. To donate, call 403-235-7481 or go to https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/startup.aspx?eventid=273670. To read other Christmas Fund stories, go to calgaryherald.com/ christmas fund.