By Michael Laws
I have, twice, seriously considered suicide as the most rational reply to adversity.
In the first instant, it was as a lovelorn teenager in the first year of university studies and after being dumped by my then girlfriend. It was a measure of both my insecurity and my anguish that this relationship break-up prompted such self-destructive thoughts.
Having made the decision to end it all – with as much melodrama as I could muster – my next problem was, how? By the time I'd resolved that issue, I had discovered that a combination of testosterone and the welcoming smile of another had carried me over the abyss.
I can make light of it now. But had I immediate access to something instantly fatal (and painless) then I would not be here today. To this day, I wonder how many more suicides (and murders) New Zealand might suffer if our handgun legislation were the same as that of the United States.
This past week the chief coroner made a similar point. In noting that this country's suicide rate was 50% higher than our annual road accident toll, Judge Neil MacLean noted that relationship break-up was a prime factor in the death of so many young and that the media censorship around suicide reporting was proving ineffective.
He is right. The conspiracy of silence that surrounds suicide must end. It is a proven failure and is actively assisting people to destroy themselves.
The media, for example, deliberately restricts itself from reporting any of the salient details relating to a suicidal death. Their fear – pressed upon them by public health officials – is that talking about suicide will provoke more copycat victims.
Nonsense. Indeed to use such logic, let's stop talking about road deaths, mental illness, welfare dependence and criminal offending. There will, of course, be dramatic reductions in antisocial and destructive activities all because we choose to ignore them.
Because, sometimes, suicide is so damned rational and right. Or so it seems.
It certainly was when I was in the child oncology ward of Starship Children's Hospital two years ago. When I was informed that my daughter Lucy was likely to die, my world dissolved. I could see no point to existence if she were not a part of my life.
And I also started thinking of death from the perspective of Lucy. When she dies (the "if" seemed to have been removed from the equation) then where does she go? Are the rationalists right, nowhere? Or are the Christians and popular culture on the right track to think she would walk off into the light somewhere?
All I knew is that I did not want my golden girl to walk there alone. I would have gone too: I knew that then, and I know that now.
It makes no sense, it seems, to write those words in August 2010. But they made perfect sense in February 2008. And I was a sane man.
Recently I attended the funeral of the wife of a very dear friend – her end caused by her reaction to a major depressive illness. Again, in her hurt and pain, suicide was perfectly logical despite being a bright and attractive woman surrounded by a loving family.
The point is that suicide is an intensely individual response to often appalling circumstances. It is not a cop-out nor a surrender but an active act. It could be defiance or it could be defence. But it is about that individual regaining, if only for a moment, a semblance of control. Even by ending their life.
But then I'm no expert on suicide or suicidal thoughts. I only know my own experience when considering departing this world seemed the sanest option.
And to be fair, were I dying of cancer, motor-neuron disease or similar, then it probably would be again. I like the fact that this option exists – even if anyone assisting me is instantly going to be branded a criminal. It is my life, and it should be my death.
One thing I do know is that the debate and the discussion must start. It must be public and, in understanding the deaths of those who die now, we would all be better informed. We run multimillion-dollar public awareness campaigns every year for every ill from smoking to domestic violence and from speeding to what we might do if a volcano arrives in the backyard.
But we ignore suicide. It's not there and if it is, then it is only the mentally unstable who contemplate it.
Wrong. It is contemplated by tens of thousands of New Zealanders every year. Maybe not seriously, but contemplated. The thought might be fleeting, it might strike bedrock. But every one of us knows that, if life becomes just too acute, too helpless, too damned crazy, it is the extreme option.
Talking about suicide and reminding us why it is wrong, why it is self-defeating and selfish, and where we can get help is not going to provoke lemming-like rushes to the Sky Tower. Rather, it will save lives.
And one of them might just be our own, or that of a loved one.
Sunday Star Times, 15th August 2010