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All this concern is killing me — 9 Comments

  1. Strikes a chord.  The love of my life killed herself in 1985.  No warning, no chance to help or save her.  I still think "what could I have done?  It has dominated my thinking every day since.

    • That is horrific.  My neighbour was a friend but not a particularly close one, yet I still have the thought from time to time that maybe I could have done something.  It's completely irrational I know, as there is nothing I could have done.  I can't imagine how you must feel.

  2. "Suicide is a terrible thing, but the worst affected are those who are left behind." This comes to the kernel of the problem. I've known two lads, in different places, who killed themselves, without warning and without any prior awareness by grieving parents and siblings. The siblings were shattered as they were in their early teens. The parents wondered if they were to blame. The act of self killing is intimately private, but the impact is social. 

    • The impact must be horrendous.  Not only do the family have to cope with the questions, the guilt and the "what if" scenarios but there is also the social stigma.  Up until no so long ago here in Ireland, suicide wasn't even recorded as cause of death – it was always "misadventure" or "accidental", and it's only in recent times that people dare breathe its name.

  3. I have no doubt that somewhere behind this 'day' is a health charity/quango who received a large grant to enable them to hold it.

  4. I have had to deal with a number of tragedies over the years and would object to the use of the word "prevention". It suggests that suicide is something to be "managed" by "strategies" and all the other platitudes of management speak. The best for which we might hope is awareness.

    • I would hazard a guess that the organisers of this "event" have little experience of life on the ground.  They organise these events from management meetings, conferences and think-tanks, and doubtless receive nice fat salaries for their efforts.  A far better use for the money would be to put it directly into counseling and psychiatric services.

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