Sometimes things need to be said, and said, and said, until they don’t need to be said anymore…

As a mental health professional, chewing over the topic of suicide is a common occurrence. Suicide-killing yourself by your own hand-is not a pleasant subject to think or talk about, and, as a result, most people don’t do it.  It brought me great joy to discover an article in the bulletin at my church that specifically discussed the misconceptions about suicide from a faith-based perspective.  

Below are a few excerpts that I found to be enlightening.   

“We are made up of body and soul, either can snap. We can die of cancer, high blood pressure, heart attacks, aneurysms. These are physical sicknesses. But we can suffer these too in the soul, not just the body. These are malignancies and aneurysms too of the heart, mortal wounds from which the soul cannot recover. In most cases, suicide, like any other terminal illness, take a person out of the life against his or her will. The death is not freely chosen, but is an illness, far from an act of free will. But where we stand helpless, God’s compassion can still reach. God’s love can descend into hell itself (as we state in the creed) and breathe peace and reconciliation right into a wound, anger, and fear.”

“The Christian response to suicide should not be horror, fear for the person’s eternal salvation, and anxious self-examination about we did or didn’t do. Suicide is indeed a horrible way to die, but we must understand it for what it is, a sickness, and stop being anxious about both that person’s eternal salvation and our less than perfect response to his or her illness. God redeems everything and, in the end, all manner of being will be well, even beyond suicide.”

-Ronald Rohlheiser, omi   

Suicide is not a pretty subject. Talking honestly about it may upset people, but so be it. Most people who are thinking about suicide mistakenly believe that their lives are not worth living. Like Gorski says in his book, Straight Talk about Suicide, “This, too, will pass. It always does, even if in the moment we don’t believe that it will."

If you know and love someone you think may be suicidal, be direct and honest with your suspicions. If they say they are suicidal, believe them, support them, and do your best to get them to see a professional for help as soon as possible.

We all have a compelling reason to live! Take the time to love yourself.