“Why admitting you have ever considered suicide is still taboo in the face of mental health awareness.”
Short answer: it scares the shit out of people.
Long involved answer:
I have considered suicide, myself. Those moments were a long time ago now, but I do remember them vividly. I always get surprised when people react to that news with shock and/or anger, because, I mean, hasn’t everyone considered it at some point????
Turns out, NO. No, not everyone has considered suicide. They really have not ever even thought about it, and they find the idea that others have to be very upsetting. Who knew? Not me, clearly. *grimaces*
My world view was impacted by the fact that my mother suffered bi-polar disorder on top of myriad medical issues. Suicide was a regularly occurring topic* in my childhood, and while the idea that Mother might kill herself was terrifying enough that it often kept me up at night, it was also very normal to me. Poppa drank a lot of beer, Mother got depressed and talked about suicide, I liked Capt’n Crunch cereal.
The end result is that I understand part of the fear that makes suicide taboo, even when we are all hip and socially aware about mental illness. It’s scary to think that someone you love might even consider removing themselves from your life. I don’t think that’s the only reason people shy away from the topic, though.
There are deep-seated values of morality (“suicide is a sin”, “suicide is selfish”) on top of personal fears. The religious anathema against suicide is long running and fierce.
And finally, whenever you mention the word “suicide” in relation to depression or mental illness, people freak the fuck out because their terror is less about death–frightening enough–than it is because our collective world view considers death a form of failure. Medical science failed you, your body failed you, time failed you…you failed to take the right supplements, do the right exercises, eat the right foods, drive attentively, stay clean. You failed to stay young, you failed to stay alive.
In such a culture, how can we not view someone who considers suicide as the ultimate representation of failure?
“Why did she commit suicide?” is a question that reflects the last bastion of regarding mental illness as a moral failure and/or a failure of willpower.
The taboo surrounding suicide is so strong that even those of us who have (or are) suicidal shy away from mentioning it because while modern awareness of mental health issues clearly state it is not our fault that our brains are working against us, suicide is still seen as a personal failure.
I am not arguing that it is failure (a question far beyond my own philosophical abilities), what I’m talking about is how we talk about it. If we, as a society, view death as the failure of longevity, then suicide is failing on purpose. Surely, we think, no one would seriously consider such a thing? No matter how bad life gets, how could anyone want to fail at life?
It’s one reason I try to be upfront about my experiences. I was clinically depressed–I do not need to explain why I felt suicidal because those reasons are immaterial, outside of the fact that I was clinically depressed. Mother’s suicidal ideation had nothing to do with her weight, her finances, or her marriage, it was always a direct consequence of being in a depressive cycle.
But the layer cake of shame, guilt and repression keep us back, the fear of being judged for even thinking about suicide making us wary of telling anyone, even our therapists and doctors. It is past time for that to change.
*[To my knowledge, Mother never actually attempted suicide. I think if she had, she would not have been half-assed about it, and she would have been successful. I also don’t know why she didn’t, whether it was fear or pride or pure damned Germanic stubbornness.]