Suicide prevention

THE SILENT ONES

I have had bipolar disorder for 20 years and it is part of my illness that I become depressed - and seriously suicidal – with terrible frequency. As all too many people unfortunately know, it is truly awful to be depressed. For me it is as if the very cells of my body are weighing me down and all the “will power” brain chemicals have vanished overnight. I think of nothing but suicide, day in and day out, for months on end.

I was committed once, 13 years ago, and I live in fear of a recurrence. From the health care “professionals” who invaded my home to take me away, to the heartless nurses, the dismissive doctors and the aggressive fellow patients, it was a nightmare. Possibly things have improved but I was so traumatised by my experience that I still live in fear of a repeat.

It is therefore impossible for me to cry out for help in my depression. This is because everyone who could help – my GP, my psychiatrist, the Mental Health Line, Lifeline, Beyond Blue etc. is mandated to report seriously suicidal people to the authorities so that they can, if deemed necessary, be forcibly taken into care. Given my overriding fear of this, I suffer in silence.

This need for silence is, in my view, tragic and I don’t believe I can be alone. The suicide statistics are frightening and it is my understanding is that an appalling number of the dead (apparently 70%-80%) never even tried to access a mental health service before they died. How many of these people, like me, were forced into silence by a wish to remain outside a system that has the power to commit?

Are those responsible aware of this gaping hole in our suicide prevention services? Are they giving urgent thought to how it might be remedied? It seems to me we need a suicide prevention policy which targets what I call “the silent ones” - the large proportion of the statistics who are suffering – and in many cases dying - in silence.

My idea to address this is to establish a 1800 mental health counselling line which, by legislation, is almost truly anonymous and confidential. A number where the specially trained health care professionals staffing it are not permitted to take action to have a caller committed unless they believe they may be a danger to others - and must instead try to persuade the caller to seek help. If such a telephone service could be established then people like me could call to talk and to listen without fear of committal.

It would take a fair bit of political courage to establish such a telephone line because it could, of course, be argued that it was in some way “allowing” suicide or condoning leaving the mentally ill unattended in the community. But heroin injecting rooms provide an interesting comparison – as a society we do not condone heroin use but harm minimisation steps are taken. I am suggesting something which could be seen as analogous and when one bears in mind that you would be targeting the proportion of the statistics who are presently dying (and suicide has recently overtaken heart disease as Australia’s biggest killer in certain age groups) then, on balance, it does not seem such a bad choice. And perhaps there is a better answer - one which doesn't so radically change the way we treat the mentally ill. The above suggestion is only my off the cuff idea. Don't we have policy experts who could and should be addressing the terrible problem of helping “the silent ones” avoid that so final of solutions - death.