How does a community reduce suicide?

Lost opportunities. What are those last precursors that train through the mind of someone suicidal? Their last thoughts and actions. 

Whatever led to that final moment? That wasn’t it.  

It wasn’t the final straw. That moment.   

In the funnel of the mind, thoughts are churning, like a blender, all the reasons, why? At the same time sucking you down, like the first moments of a yanked bath tub plug. Slurping and shrinking, it’s your life on pause. When you feel like your thoughts won't ever change, or lift or ever feel like you can smile again.  It is exhausting. It is this state, the more prolonged state in the lead up to an attempt that drains a persons’ life force.

There were so many days in this futile headspace that was spent with a lot of time understanding it. The hopelessness, the loneliness and the lost opportunities. 

As much as a long time ago,  I was an educator, consumer rep, and an advocate for ‘seek help from services before it’s too late.’ I had to eventually realise that those services you have to turn to: the phone lines, the groups and the GP, would always fall short. They can only ever be a safety net. They aren’t going to be able to prop you up long term. 

It is removing the lost opportunities that in the long run, are the best medicine.

A person’s village is no longer geographical, it is a network of connections, of interactions, regular faces and moments. Some people have become so extremely isolated. Their village is tiny. Every time ‘process’ interferes with an opportunity to share a moment of humanity, it is another opportunity lost.

I have found many lost opportunities for connections again recently after needing services for my own mental health. Opportunities where a moment of genuine connection are avoided. This cold, ‘I’ll keep my professional distance.’ I’ll just pretend for the sake of confidentiality that I didn’t see that you needed services. We will just pretend that you’re just the office side of you. Not the person needing conversation, or acknowledgement or a willingness to hear and understand this perspective. 

I think about the few people I could count on one hand that I could seek in that metaphorical circle in my village of connections. As a young person, there were only a couple of supportive people. As an adult, with the number of people that supposedly work with people with these illnesses professionally, I am astounded how the ‘professional over personal' veil of interactions, have hindered, not helped in moving forward. I have begun to realise that it has created multiple cases of lost opportunities for connections. 

To have had the cynical pleasure of suicide quicksand grab me for years again. I can see that those simple connections were the life savers in that dark time. Where someone gives you a nod in passing, or remembers your name when saying hello.  So what benefit does avoiding a connection actually have?

The skinny cobwebs that held the fabric of life together then was through people willing to reveal just a little of their story. In the telling of the rising up since then, showed that someone always had their own pit to climb out of.

To create a village, a network of connections we need to strengthen the thin threads that bind us. Threads don’t strengthen just by bland objectivity. Threads strengthen with honesty, being real and being authentic.

I think how through a recent horrendous tragedy in a mosque in New Zealand so many people have come together, to hold space together, to spend time together and acknowledge each other.  The veils and shrouds of their religion, nationality and culture removed through unity, solidarity, kindness and empathy. Aren’t we all at the end of the day, just people?

If we want to reduce the loneliness, the hopelessness and the emptiness that people on the verge of suicide feel… then we have to begin to strengthen the threads that bind us. We have to take off the hats that we wear, the roles that we play and the jobs that we do because suicide hides, it cuts behind all of that. We have to remember at the end of the day we are people who need connection, unity and kindness from another. It doesn’t matter how you know someone, they are a fellow human on their journey, in this moment.

Always remember that you don’t know what is going on behind the eyes of someone you meet – anywhere. Many many people can be on the long lonely road seeking a way out.  But if we show a smile, make an acknowledgement, a genuine ‘how are you?’ you never know how much you may make some persons’ day better by your action. 

These moments, they add up. When a person is seen, gets heard and feels acknowledged, witnessed and taken seriously, these are all life rafts to a suicidal person’s survival.  This is what we as a community need to do. We need to strengthen the connections in our village.

Let’s remove the lost opportunities, let’s find connections. Let’s be a part of this village of humans.