You Matter. World Suicide Prevention Day #WSPD15, #RUOK

I think few would disagree that suicidal thoughts are in themselves very frightening. However hard we may find it to live in this complicated world of wars, births, deaths, marriages, losses gains, progress, recession and so on, suicide is not something that we often discuss, at least not among my friends. Imagine, though, a person whose world has become so unbearable that it seems a release to consider letting go of all of the things that are making life seem impossible for a different choice – a choice where none of these struggles exist anymore, and where that person will be freed from expectations and constraints of life placed on him / her by others, or, most importantly, by him/herself.

I recently spoke to a group of senior leaders at work about resilience in my definition of the term. More to come on that in another post. During my talk, I mentioned how bad things had been last year and how things still were, quite often, very very bad for me with depression and anxiety invading and dictating various aspects of my life – what was possible and impossible. I told the group that at my lowest ebb I had not been suicidal, meaning I had not made plans to kill myself or set about putting those plans into practice. What had happened to me, though, was something very damaging: I had stopped wanting to live. I awoke each day with a heavy head as I looked out of the window at a world I no longer wanted to be part of. I felt a total failure, despite the promotions, the new job, the happy marriage, the friends I had. I felt awful. I felt I was awful, and that feeling this terrible way each day was my life sentence, a sentence I wanted to give up.

Nothing if not practical, I eventually realised that the tears every day before work and the panicked feeling that I couldn’t shake no matter how much exercise I did, sleep I got, reading or other distraction techniques I employed, the feelings of absolute hopelessness, were not going away, and that I had to do something about it. I chose to see my psychiatrist and explain how I felt. He made me fill out a questionnaire to assess the severity of my depression, and as I circled ‘very frequently’ against ‘feeling of not wanting to be alive’ I started to cry and cry, realising when I saw my self-assessment on paper just how bad things really were. I was dreadfully ill. I was living not even a half-life, even though from the outside every aspect of it was going well.

And this is how to interpret...

Mind puts it like this:

Mixed feelings
You may be very clear that you want to die – or you may simply not care if you live or die. However, for most people, suicidal thoughts are confusing. As much as you want to die, you may also want a solution to your difficulties. You may want others to understand how you feel and hope that they can help. Yet, you may not feel able to talk to anyone who offers to help. Having such mixed feelings and being unsure about what to do can cause great anxiety.

The latter description is more relevant to me – I just did not care whether I lived or died. But I did want a solution and I did want others to understand.

In hospital I met many other patients who were stuck and wading through the treacly mess of depressive thoughts. Looking into the treacle to try to find meaning, but seeing only blackness. Trying to get out of the treacle, but being sucked back into its sticky, strong mass that we had not the means to counterattack.

One patient who became my friend was very silent almost the entire time that I was there. Many more were like him. I was pretty well versed in the language of therapy and (no surprises here) had always been something of a talker, but others, particularly men but not exclusively, were so immersed in the terrible depths of their illnesses, so entrapped, that their mouths and gestures were glued shut and slowed by the treacle. And even if they opened their mouths to speak, many times they had no language to say what was going on.

You may be aware that more men commit suicide than women, by which I mean that more men succeed in the attempt. It is always dangerous to make generalisations, but the rates of suicide among men are rising over the past few years, whereas for women they have stayed broadly the same.  Wikipedia says: “The rate of nonlethal suicidal behavior is 40 to 60 percent higher in women than it is in men. This is due to the fact that more women are diagnosed as depressed than men, and also that depression is correlated with suicide attempts.”

The Guardian says: “The Adult Psychiatric Morbidity in England 2007 survey found that 19% of women had considered taking their own life. For men the figure was 14%. And women aren’t simply more likely to think about suicide – they are also more likely to act on the idea. The survey found that 7% of women and 4% of men had attempted suicide at some point in their lives. But of the 5,981 deaths by suicide in the UK in 2012, more than three quarters (4,590) were males“

As I have said before, I am not a doctor and have no qualifications in this field other than the benefit of my own lived experience.

I personally believe that we need to do more to support each other – whether we are struggling or not – to prevent ourselves and others potentially struggling to the extent that life ceases to be enjoyable. Even for me, while I may (may, no proof) be genetically predisposed to depression and therefore have life’s experiences + genes to thank for my seemingly effortless propensity to become depressed through various times in my life, life can be enjoyable and often is. I am so lucky that I have people who ask me ‘Are you okay?’ and really mean it.

The hardest thing for me about feeling so dreadful was the loneliness of it. And I talked about it as it was happening to my husband and my doctor, and still I felt alone. What must it be like to be someone who is experiencing these terrifying thoughts that a world without them in it would be a better reality than one with them?

We cannot move mountains to end all suicides today. But we can do little things to connect ourselves to one another and seek to invite connection from others, so that people feel that they are not alone, and that someone – a lot of someones, in fact – cares for them. We can ask each other how we are, not as a throw away ‘hello’ platitude, but as a real question expecting (and accepting) a real answer.

We can ask about each other’s lives and share something of our own, so that we make connections with each other. We can smile at the person we meet out running and wish them a good morning. That might be the only time that person sees a smile or hears that all day. Simple steps like these can be very powerful. And at the end of the day, we can say thank you to our work colleagues for what they have done for us. We can ask them what their evening or weekend plans are, and listen and share our own. We can thank our friends or partners for helping with dinner (whether ordering Domino’s or cooking a three course meal, whatever!).

By connecting ourselves with others and by sharing things about ourselves, especially if we are not having a good day and we feel we can say it aloud, we are inviting others to do the same. So when I next ask you how you are, or how things are, or if I ask, “Are you okay?” I promise: I really want to know the answer.

Dear Stranger: My letter to the world on the theme of happiness (Mind Charity)

"Dear Stranger is a collection of inspirational, honest and heartfelt letters from authors, bloggers and Mind ambassadors to an imagined stranger. Insightful and uplifting, Dear Stranger is a humbling glimpse into different interpretations of happiness, and how despite sometimes seeming unobtainable happiness can, in the smallest of ways, become and achievable goal..."

...And when I read that summary provided on the Penguin website it seems that with the positive messages in the book, provided by the collection of writers, many of whom I greatly respect, that happiness which – to me – so often – does seem unattainable (or it does when I define it as being the end of depression) – starts to feel less vaporous.

Click here to buy Dear Stranger on Amazon.co.uk

Reading further on Mind’s website, the book describes the letters as a collection of the thoughts of a number of (named) authors, who “offer their innermost thoughts on what happiness means to them.”

After a lovely meeting today with someone who represents one of the clients which the company I work for works with to talk about what we are doing as a firm about our approach to raising awareness and lessening stigma around mental health, I offer this small missive to the world of the city, as my wish for happiness in the strange world in which I work.

Dear stranger,

This is a story about two little girls who grew up. Both began life as little girls who liked running around, reading stories and singing nursery rhymes. One of the little girls had bad nightmares, though, and found sleeping often terrifying. The other little girl loved imagination and reading and creating stories, and could sing nursery rhymes with all the actions almost as soon as she could talk.

The little girls went off to school. One of the little girls loved school, she loved painting and writing and playing hopscotch. She learned to wink from the dinner lady Mrs. Keene and loved using it as part of her cheeky personality. The other girl cried when she was dropped off at school. She didn't want to leave her mother and spend the day in the company of other children or adults who were not safe. She sometimes got horrible headaches and couldn't wait for the day to be over so she could go home.

The girls went to junior school. The first little girl wrote a poem about a daffodil which was put up on the wall. She learned to play the piano and the trumpet, she sang songs in the playground at break time and played ball games and elastic band games and cats' cradle. She made lots of friends and had great fun learning to roller skate, ballet (and then giving up ballet because it was boring to "point and close" on and on), ice skate, horse ride and take part in the school's winning speech and drama group. She could run and swim really well. Breast stroke was her best stroke. Once she showed all the other girls how to do it because her teacher singled her out as one of the best swimmers.

The second little girl was scared of the playground. She was made to stand on the playground wall all break time by three older girls and wasn't allowed to get down. It happened every playtime and in the end, she pretended to be ill and asked for permission not to go to school. She didn't say why. Her parents didn't find out for a while that she was being bullied. Aged nine it happened again with a different bully. The second little girl thought it was probably get fault, because she had, after all, been bullied before. She started to believe there must be something wrong with her. She also couldn't breathe very well and often felt too tired to go to school. Eventually she was diagnosed with asthma and started to have trouble with sports.

At senior school the first little girl made more friends and enjoyed the new clubs, the different subjects and the new uniform. She made sure she understood the right tights to wear, the right shoes, bag and everything else. She went to sleepover parties and pool parties and all sorts of other parties. She met boys at the boys' school, and enjoyed life in the "big" school. She found it exciting to be growing up. She enjoyed swimming and drama, she loved going to the cinema. She didn't always work hard at all her subjects but she still did pretty well in her school exams, especially in English and Latin, her favourite subjects. Her teachers told her she was doing well and could do very well. She knew she could do well enough in the subjects she cared about and she didn't try too hard at the other subjects because she didn't want the teachers to push her too much and stop her having fun.

The second little girl found it hard to adjust to big school. She got very tired and overwhelmed by all the new teachers. It was hard to learn every different teacher's sets of rules. It was hard to manage all the homework. She found it frightening and tiring to be growing up. It was hard. She found homework confusing and exhausting at times. She didn't get top marks in her exams. Sometimes she did badly. Her teachers told her she wasn't working hard enough. She needed to work harder. She tried to please the teachers but sometimes she found it too hard and because she didn't concentrate in lessons or understand everything, and because she was often too ill with asthma she had to go to hospital and she fell behind.

These little girls have different lists of achievements, as you can see, and on they went. One of them went to university and got a degree. She got a job with a prestigious graduate charity and then a job in the city, all in her twenties.The other one had health problems with stress, grief, depression and anxiety throughout her twenties and got a degree with difficulty. They both fell in love with a wonderful man, but one of them - now a young woman - seemed to find it easier to have a great time and enjoy every moment together; the other young woman was plagued by anxieties about herself and worried about their relationship frequently. One was promoted several times at work, worked internationally and was recognised a number of times for her achievements; the other found the depression returning at intervals and spent some holidays resting in bed for fear of confessing her illness to a world she feared would not understand, and because she could not accept the weaknesses and failures she saw in herself.

So, reader, what do you think happened to those two little girls? As you have probably guessed, because you are wise and discerning, and used to stories like these, those two little girls were one and the same. In fact those two little girls grew up to be me.

Now you will say to me, "Writer, you have not told a tale of happiness, which I thought was your purpose?" And I will say this to you: I read my own story back again and again, and I remind myself that I am the happy little girl alongside the sad; I am the confident high achiever alongside the shy, fearful and tearful teenager. I am the woman who has made a successful career in spite of suffering episodic depression, anxiety and trauma. I am she. 

When I need a reminder of the definition of happiness, I can look at parts of my own life. (And when I want a reminder of sadness and hurt, I can do the same, but enough of that for now.) I shall celebrate the happiness when I can, and be thankful for every happy moment past, present, and yet to come. And throughout my life, as you have seen, there have been threads and strands and patches of happiness, alongside any sadness you may see or know of. So, please, dear stranger, remember that. And lastly, I wish a wish for you: yards of happiness of your own, among all the threads of sorrow. Keep looking backwards and forwards for happiness because it can and will find you, somehow, somewhere, and treat others with the kindness that you try to show yourself.

With love, Jessica