My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

The other day, I was notified about this article (https://www.sane.org/news/suicide-prevention-targets) in my SANE email newsletter. The article doesn’t seem to have a dedicated comments section, and indeed, it’s footnote seems to indicate that all commentary ought to be directed to this forum; so that’s what I’m doing.

Those who are familiar with my stance on this issue will no doubt get broken record vibes from this response of mine. I know I do have a tendency to harp on. But my feelings are that, so long as the same sort of errors keep appearing in major policy publications (e.g. an article published by the head of SANE), we need to keep calling them out; even at the risk of sounding insufferably repetitive.

I feel I ought to just clarify, too, that I’m well aware that I don’t speak for the entire suicidal community, and that many will disagree with what I have to say. If that’s you, please make your voice heard. I don’t claim to represent anybody other then myself; though I do hope and suspect that I have like-minds out there somewhere.

My key grievance with the article is this: we are still focussing on the wrong statistic when we keep talking about suicide reduction targets.

Downturns in suicide statistics tell us nothing, because an averted suicide doesn’t necessarily mean a positive outcome. As a matter of fact, my opinion is that an averted suicide can often lead to the most horrible of outcomes. Those who know me well on here know that that is the essence of my own story.

I reached a point in my therapy where my therapist suddenly decreed that there was no hope for me. Love, career fulfilment, meaningful relationships... none of it was in the cards for me; my life was a lost cause. In fact, she was the second therapist to tell me as much. So, naturally, I realized that the only legitimate option I had was suicide. My therapist realized immediately where my head was at, and set about to aggressively coerce me into abstaining from suicide, by shaming me with talk of how much misery I would inflict on my relatives if I went through with it.

She got inside my head with her mind games; and so now I just have to wait for natural death to give me the release I crave, but for which I have been robbed of the selfish determination to personally pursue.

Fast forward to today, and when I read articles like this, it makes me realize that the upper tiers of the institutions who claim to want to “help” us are still not our friends; because their priorities are contrary to our own. They are offended by our deaths; we are offended by our own suffering. We contemplate our deaths and figure: “it’s not ideal, but it’s better then decades of pointless anguish”, they look at people suffering at length and figure: “it’s not ideal, but it’s better then them being dead.”

That’s when you realize you are still just someone else’s pawn, being pushed around to serve someone else’s game. You live because that’s what others have decided they want you to do, not because it’s what you have any cause whatsoever to do.

Getting back to the subject at hand, my grievance with the official fixation on reducing suicide statistics is that I am not amongst those statistics myself. Hence, while I am sitting here in misery, our leaders are touting my life as one of their “success stories”: one more suicide averted – that’s all that bears mentioning. Does anybody out there, amongst those fastidiously monitoring these statistics, care that I, in all the years since my suicide-that-was-so-effectively-prevented, have constantly been yearning for the peaceful mercy of death? Does anybody care that I do not count the prevention of my suicide as improvement on what could’ve been if the system’s suicide prevention measures had been less effective?

Spending some time on these forums, I have repeatedly noticed instances of other users on here saying things to the tune of: “I hope I’m terminally ill right now, or that I get natural death soon, because that will release me.” Those statements always strike me, because that’s been my unwavering feeling for years now.

We are all the “success stories” of those people in the suicide prevention field who dwell on whether the suicide statistics are going up or down. We have not committed suicide! Congratulations, masters! You won! And when we do die (likely after decades of pointless misery), our deaths will be registered as respectable, natural deaths. We will be headaches for the chief cardiologist, or the chief oncologist; not the chief psychiatrist. One less suicide number registered in the annual tally. One more success story for the suicide-prevention crusaders. Well done.

Maybe I am crazy for thinking this way, but when I look at my story, my currant life, and the testimony I read in places like this from people in similar boats to myself, I can’t help but feel like suicide statistics are a terrible distraction for our leaders. Because, I think that we are living proof that it is all too easy to prevent 1000 suicides, and create 1000 far more grievous tragedies in the process.

Please, SANE, government, and anyone else in power who may be listening to the ramblings of this broken old nutter, stop focussing on whether suicide statistics are going up or down, and start paying attention to the numbers of people living in anguish. And please, stop to considder for a second that perhaps letting someone go might be more humane then obligating them to suffer through a senseless long life.

Because I’m sick of my continued existance being officially chalked up as a “success story”.