behaviour. I think this is, in general, a total load of bollocks. It's
the sort of thing someone who's not attempted suicide would foist on
someone who had so they'd think that they were trying to get help rather
than wanting to die when they attempted to take their own life.
I really wanted this person to suck on my chocolate salty balls. Suicide
is something you read about and understand.
I am 99% sure he wouldn't have any good evidence to bring to bear. There
might be research into why people kill themselves. Certainly one of the
most significant suicidologists in the 20th century, Edwin Schniedman,
dedicated much of his life to understanding it. I'm not sure if he ever
attempted suicide. His interest stemmed from other reasons, at least
publically. His research used suicide notes. He considered these a very
significant source of information and brought a science to the
understanding of these significant documents. They're the last thing a
person writes before they kill themselves.
You know what he thought the reason was? He called is psychache. I
interpret is a deep soul pain, something which may not express itself in
psychiatric measures like GAD or PHQ. Whether or not he attempted
suicide he did the best research into it. None of that arsing about with
epidemiological research. He bothered to find out something useful using
techniques which are akin with qualitative research though he appleid
positivistic principles.
While people perhaps should have sought help before they tried to kill
themselves and while the help they seek after an attempt may help them
with the problems they were having before the attempt what's going
through a person's head when they're thinking of killing themselves is
not "I need mental healthcare and this is how I'm going to get it. I
think everyone is the UK is aware of the Samaritans and anyone who puts
suicide into Google will come across many links to support services. I'm
unaware if this has had a significant impact on the number of attempted
suicides.
The conversation which I'm speaking about centred around the male
suicide rate. He was dismissing the high female attempted suicide rate
as largely due to help-seeking, i.e. the women who attempted suicide, in
the main, were trying to do it because they were trying to get help or
attention. It was at this point I wanted to get my chocolate salty balls
out for him to taste.
The problem is before I let him taste my chocolate globules I need to be
sure that I'm right. The value of my personal experience versus his book
reading (and I've read a few books too) is another debate. I think we
could both agree that a decent study into the issue, one that used
evidence rather than supposition, would be the deciding factor on who
gets to eat what of whoms.
My guess is doctors would make a good group. They have a statistically
significant higher suicide rate than the general population. They have
one of the highest levels of knowledge of how to take their own life as
well as having access to the means to do it peacefully. Doctors are also
meant to know a fair amount about mental illness however they're also a
highly self-stigmatic group. They understand the notion of seeking help
for mental ill health. There's a case of a UK doctor being suspended for
self-prescribing antidepressants. He could have asked another foctor to
prescribe him antidepressants but felt unable for reasons which I
attribute to stigma. Doctors and other mental health professional are
also usually put in psychiatric wards away from where they usually practice.
The potential to compare the completed versus attempted suicide rate in
doctors is an opportunity to understand this idea of help seeking
behaviour. I expect it will show that not every doctor who attempts it
is successfuly but the rate is considerably higher. The doctors who
survive (or fail) could be be asked about whether they thought they
should have sought help before their attempt and how help afterwards
helped them.
Or perhaps there's a better study into what's behind a suicide attempt.
I think most of all it's about a person wanting to die. I think one of
the world's top suicidologists of the 20th century would agree with me.
He would give the reason of psychache. I would say it's because the
person wants to die. We'd both agree the idea of suicide as a form of
attention seeking or help seeking was something which needed to be
dispelled with expediency with methods that may, perhaps, involve
sampling the delights of my chocolate salty balls.
It's the same with the whole gender help seeking before attempting
suicide prejudice. It's all stuff whose proponents can suck on my
chocolate salty balls.
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