Society, not pharmacy, is key in suicide prevention
Tuesday November 25 2008
Kevin Myers recently, in this newspaper, used the lexicon of crime to characterise the tragedy of suicide. As ever when Kevin uses a word, he has thought very carefully about it. When I sent Kevin my book on male suicide in Ireland, I made the point of bringing his attention to the note on terminology at the start of the book. The note was entitled "Complete Not Commit".
Kevin disagreed with me on the semantics of describing the suicidal act. He persisted even when I told him how hurtful it was for people bereaved by suicide to hear the term "commit".
The sister of a young man in Leitrim who took his own life stated quite plainly to me "my brother was no criminal!"
One commits murder. One does not, since 1993, in this State 'commit' suicide.
Kevin's piece, in a premeditated fashion, equates suicide with the murder of a loved one. His use of the word "slain" is chosen with care.
I spent the best part of two years interviewing tortured, broken people who had lost a close family member, a son or a brother, to suicide.
At no time did the idea that their loved one was a criminal enter the room.
I also interviewed men who had, at the final moment, pulled back from the edge.
One such man shared his last letters with me, one day he intends to show them to his children. He had written a letter to each of this three children and one to his adulterous wife. It was his children, sleeping upstairs as he prepared to end his life, that saved him. Where he would go to after death or where his remains would go never even entered his head as he saw only death as a way to end the pain he was in.
Kevin's motivations are the best, I am sure. He wishes to see the suicide death toll reduced.
Neither medicine nor religion can offer a way out of the yearly body count of our young men. Ten years on since the late Professor Kelleher's Government-appointed task force on suicide reported to the Government, we have known that something sociological not pharmacological is needed to save our young men.
In Scotland, the "Choose Life" campaign has met with no small degree of success in reducing that country's suicide rate.
Like here, suicide in Scotland is a killer of men, mainly young men. Unlike Ireland, their campaign is fully funded and fit for purpose. Crucially, the people in the campaign are not squeamish about the gender issue. They aggressively target young men. They go to where young men congregate and speak their language -- in Scotland, soccer is the not-so secular religion of most males. The campaign has seen the suicide rate fall for three out of the last four years. It is very early days, but it is encouraging.
One of the more impressive information products was an A5 flier in club colours of the ground targeted. The back of the leaflet was the back of the club's shirt. The traditional substitute number "12" and the name was "Life". There is, of course, no substitute for life.
The young men I wrote about in my book didn't get that message in time. I must have read over 50 suicide "notes". I have often considered this term to be awfully dismissive of these last letters written from the condemned cell of a tortured mind.
Kevin may empathise with TD Dr James McDaid for the alleged "lynching" he received after his "selfish bastards" outburst in the 2002 General Election. I cannot concur. I was the journalist who broke the story.
Kevin deserves two cheers for his piece. The first cheer for here is a columnist in a national newspaper that wrote a piece on suicide. This is rare enough.
The second cheer goes for the fact that he wasn't squeamish about the role of feminism as an ideology in the annual body count of our young men.
Kevin is correct in that the people left behind are devastated by grief, guilt and uncertainty, especially without a letter. That pain will not be eased by harking back to the old time religion of hellfire and damnation any more than looking to the new state religion of feminism which has done so much to cause this annual body count of our young men who walk to the shed alone.
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain is the author of 'Preventable Death: The Scandal of Male Suicide in Modern Ireland'
