The death of a thousand cuts

This resonates with causes of suicide. It isn't one thing or one trigger which leads a lot of people to take their life or want to kill themselves. There may be a hair which breaks the camels back but, if it is okay to use two metaphors, this is the last cut of a thousand which drives a person to kill themselves.

This may not make sense to those who manage to survive what life throws at them. These same cuts don't make a person bleed like a sensitive person might do. They're grazes rather than cuts. This doesn't mean those tough and insensitive people aren't oblivious to the pain of life but they feel it differently or they weather it better.

This doesn't take away from the factors which drive a person to take their life. I would guess it is the repeated blows to the mind, heart or soul which soften it and leave it vulnerable to one last cut which ends up being that last thing too much.

This is perhaps why understanding why people kill themselves is hard. People expect simple answers. It should be for one reason. Not several.

The thousand cuts makes sense as an analogy because it is often these many cuts which cause the misery which leads to clinical depression. Suicidal ideation is just one of the 8 or 9 possible symptoms but the things which lead up to depression are often as multifaceted as the things which lead to suicide.

And then one day the last cut happens. People focus on this one cut but there will be many other harms to the individual's psyche which lead to the death of a thousand cuts.

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