Moralizing suicide trivializes complex issue

I met a friend for a beer recently.

I know, you’re thinking, “Thanks, that’s just momentous news.” I have a caveat to add, though, which raises the stakes a wee bit: I was lucky to meet my friend, because he was lucky to be here, having survived a suicidal episode.

I know that emotions run high on this issue, as attitudes toward mental health, or rather, the lack thereof – with suicide as the ultimate example – are, for many, behind our current knowledge. That, despite the enormous number of prescriptions for antidepressants given out annually (227 million in 2006) in the United States.

And no other type of death causes such opprobrium, perhaps exacerbated by volatile stories of “celebrity suicide” and the breaking-news murder-suicide of the day. But most are quiet affairs, hushed up by the family, said cause of death unreported in the obituary, and the whole affair cloaked in an aura of shame and guilt by association.

This guilt is often part and parcel of a particular Christian belief that designates death by suicide as a “sin” – as opposed to, say, cancer – namely, the Sixth Commandment, which says, “No murder, folks.” This includes suicide, which is often labeled “self-murder.”

If only we took that to heart in other arenas, the world would be a better place. But I for one am unwilling to damn those whose individual pain ends a single life.

I know whereof I speak. My own brother took his life, a few months shy of his 21st birthday, back in August 1976. Thirty-two years later, I still mourn the missing years we should have had together, though it’s a wistful musing, far from the devastating pain I felt upon first hearing the news.

With the hindsight that comes with time and maturity, I was certainly among the walking wounded for a couple of years, but I don’t hold Mike’s cause of death against him. I only wish that he’d had a better answer for the pain he must have been in.

I’ll return to that in a bit, but let’s first consider another killer: breast cancer. Ever hear of it? Duh. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, anyone?

Let me give you a few numbers: A September 2007 report by the American Cancer Society projected about 178,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer and approximately 40,000 deaths for the year.

Now what would you say about an affliction that impacts the lives of almost 550,000 Americans each year, with a fatality rate in 2005 reported at 32,637? That’s three times the number of breast cancer cases, with a roughly comparable death rate, but I haven’t seen a colored ribbon campaign for those who die by suicide.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, about 80 Americans die by suicide a day, but more shocking, 1,500 others attempt to do so. The national suicide average is about nine per 100,000, although rates vary considerably by various categories, among them age and sex.

Or, say, veterans. The following is from a CBS News report, Nov. 13, 2007:

“So CBS News did an investigation – asking all 50 states for their suicide data, based on death records, for veterans and nonveterans, dating back to 1995. Forty-five states sent what turned out to be a mountain of information.

“And what it revealed was stunning. In 2005, for example, in just those 45 states, there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That’s 120 each and every week, in just one year.”

Which brings me back to my earlier point, about the pain and stigma surrounding suicide. Suicidality is typically caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, is environmentally induced, or some combination of both. The resulting pain and debilitation, the feeling of utter worthlessness, the notion that the world would be better off without you, is far from something one wishes on oneself.

It’s easy to mouth the old stock phrases: that suicide is a sin, that a person who commits suicide is engaging in the ultimate act of selfishness, that suicide is an attack on the people left behind.

The reduction of a person to a single, assumedly vindictive, act trivializes the pain and emotional ruin that leads to such a final conclusion. It is beneath the best of our humanity to so callously assign blame without a clue.

I find it particularly painful to think that those who are wounded in service to our country, beyond all help and hope, should be thought of and perhaps remembered with less regard, due to the way their lives ended – and are daily ending.

Suicide is a tragedy, stemming from a national failure of conscience and care, and a medieval view of mental illness.

Heart failure, unfortunately, sometimes occurs in the head and sometimes concludes in death, in which case it should be attended with the love and accord the rest of our loved ones’ lives merited.