Attempted suicide

English.

Posted April 29, Reviewed by Lybi Ma. Though I've never lost a friend or family member to suicide, I have lost a patient who I wrote about in a previous post, "The True Cause of Depression ". I have known a number of people left behind by the suicide of people close to them , however. Given how much losing my patient affected me, I've only been able to guess at the devastation these people have experienced.

Pain mixed with guilt , anger , and regret makes for a bitter drink, the taste of which I've seen take many months or even years to wash out of some mouths. The one question everyone has asked without exception, that they ache to have answered more than any other, is simply: Why? Why did their friend, child, parent, spouse, or sibling take their own life?

Even when a note explaining the reasons is found, lingering questions usually remain: Yes, they felt enough despair to want to die, but why did they feel that? A person's suicide often takes the people it leaves behind by surprise only accentuating survivor's guilt for failing to see it coming. People who've survived suicide attempts have reported wanting not so much to die as to stop living, a strange dichotomy, but a valid one nevertheless.

If some in-between state existed, some other alternative to death, I suspect many suicidal people would take it. For the sake of all those reading this who might have been left behind by someone's suicide, I wanted to describe how I was trained to think about the reasons people kill themselves. They're not as intuitive as most think. The wounds suicide leaves in the lives of those left behind by it are often deep and long lasting.

The apparent senselessness of suicide often fuels the most significant pain.