Suicide

Disclaimer:  Contains hard information.  Today, I wanted to put down a few words about suicide.  This week, I experienced  the first professional/work related suicide of a young girl that I was working with.  I had only briefly visited with this young 24 yr old, who had just moved to Palmy 6 months earlier.  She had only experienced one episode of drug induced psychosis four years ago, but he just recently sought out help, because she was feeling some of those feelings and wanted some help.  In the four days that she had been on the ward, she had shown improvement, but had still had enough risks that the doctor wanted to only let her have day leave for a few hours.  She went out on leave from the ward, and was found shortly after from her one friend in town, dead by hanging.  I received the word at work on arrival on Tuesday, after the long holiday.  It was a shock for me, and difficult for me to hear the psychiatrist say that she didn't see it coming, and then we moved onto the next report, just like that.

I have seen suicide profoundly affect the lives of some dear friends and seen the many years of aftermath of fallout from that experience.  Even 40 years after my friends' event, the ramifications are still resounding in the lives of the children and former spouse of the one who died.  The ones who are left behind are tasked to make sense or not of it, and use this to shape their perception, perspective and lens on life and the world.

Hopefully many of my faculty will not be reading this, because there is not one reference in this, just gut reaction and reflection.  I have seen that many times the suicide may be caused by impulsivity.  This could be caused by a previous head injury and the damage to the frontal lobe, or a bad decision, or an accident or by altered judgement by substance abuse or a zillion other things.

In the end, we have a responsibility to let people know that we love them and that we care.  We have the responsibility to let people know the resources available to them, and give them access to those resources.  In the end, the individual has the responsibility to use these resources, choose to live with supports available and to not use anyone else for an excuse or scapegoat or reason.

I hope I don't get in trouble for this, without adding the numerous links to supports and help available, but I just needed to talk.  The debriefing or "resiliency training" that we had as an opportunity to share as involved staff was also a wonderful way to process the experience, and what it means to each of us.  It was humbling to hear the psychiatrist and the numerous psychiatric nurses also question their role and if they missed something or could have done something different.  There are so many people who care, and are interested in helping in whatever way available.  Sometimes it just doesn't seem fair.  It is important to know that there is hope.  Thanks for listening.