The Suicide Conversation - I Really Believe We Are Going Backwards (TW)

So I just learned that a celebrity "died" in the last day or so. That was the way it was described, everywhere: "X has died..." no further comment before the awkwardly hasty shift to the quoted responses of other celebrities who knew or worked with him.

When I hear/read about a death these days - and the person is fairly young - and the cause of death is conspicously left out (or the phrase "police do not considder the death suspicious" makes an appearance), my mind immediately gravitates towards suicide as the cause. Tonight, these impressions only grew stronger as I read several comments from the guy's coworkers, ect. along the lines of: "At least he's at peace now."

After some determined googling, I eventually found confirmation from a more open news site that, yes, the guy has committed suicide.

The manner of the journalistic coverage of this story has just solidified my already strong belief that our society has made a very sudden U-turn in the issue of suicide, and we are really starting to go backwards at an alarming pace, when only a few years ago, there were some mild glimmers of hope.

You can smell the fear coming off the journalists who cover these stories; you can feel it radiating in their typed stories, or quivvering in their voices during audio commentary. They are terrified of saying the S-word; terrified of offending somebody, by violating some newfangled rule that's been around for all of 2 weeks. Terrified of shorting out the dammaged, malfunction-prone brains of any suicidal people who may be watching them. To the mainstream, we've become as sinister a device as those bombs you see in movies that have motion sensors, and therefore can't be moved or even touched. Unless we are handled with absolutely flawless delicacy and finesse, we're gonna go off, and inflict devestation and tragedy upon the world.

It used to be journalistic second nature to report facts as they were, and in their most complete form. So it sticks out like a sore thumb when they refuse to talk about suicide.

I think we really need to have a proper conversation about the impacts of that very conspicuous silence (I'll say more about that later). Because I don't think this shift is playing out the way that those who've tried to curtail discussion of suicide have intended it to.

Only a few years ago, a public suicide would typically prompt journalists to actually talk about suicide and the motives for it. The conversation was typically superficial and unproductive, but at least it gave you the sense that a window might be opening soon for some really serious public conversation about suicide. Conversation that's essential for solutions to be made available.

Now, they are terrified of even saying the word, and that long awaited conversation doesn't look as if it will ever happen in the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, anti-suicide organizations spin out all this propaganda, advocating for regular citizens to talk to their suicidal family members/acquaintances about suicide and to not be shy about it. Don't they realize that the media's conspicuous avoidance of that subject is going to make the issue increasingly uncomfortable for the average viewer? The media's silence, in itself, is a very coherent and loud message: "Suicide must never be spoken of!" And that message is far more omnipresent and compelling then the anti-suicide organizations low-key publications urging more discussion.

The blatant hypocrasy of it all is that the same organizations who publically make this push for more discussion of suicide are - generally speaking - the driving forces behind the "expert guidelines" that have intimidated the mainstream media in to silence!

The course we are on now, is so very wrong. The warning signs are all there, if your paying attention. The guidelines and rules that "experts" have set up to "protect" the suicidal are doing far more harm then good. We need to recognize that, and we need to do something about it, now.

One final bit of food for thought: In trying to determine how the aforementioned celebrity died, I searched google for some time until I finally stumbled upon a website that confirmed it was a suicide. That was the only piece of information I wanted clarification on.

Except this news site I stumbled on didn't just confirm it was suicide. It painted a very detailed picture of how the guy's body was discovered; including a very unambiguous description of his method, and the circumstances that drove him to it. I hadn't sought that information out; it was just there, within the first coverage I found that was open and honest enough to mention the word suicide.

The primary goal of these guidelines is to conceal effective suicide techniques from the suicidal. And yet, through the frustrating media silence they have cultivated - be it intentional or inadvertant - they have driven me, a suicidal man, right to a very detailed description of how to successfully commit suicide, when I wasn't even looking for one.

I think that's something that the architects of these guidelines ought to have a good think about.