Note: This section is written primarily for those ‘more removed’; friends & acquaintances of suicide survivors, in the interest in ‘raising awareness’. (As friends, perhaps you have taken to the internet yourself to make more sense in your grief.)
Better still, I hope this section gives you greater appreciation for the ‘suicide survivor’, the position in which they now finds themselves.
What Causes Suicide?
When we are forced to lose a friend, our brain demands a reason. Lets face it, when the death is a suicide we deserve reasons. An intelligent being has chosen to go against its primal will to survive, a drive that exists in everything in nature.
However, in reality the majority of suicides have no one cause ‘serious enough’ to be found (a reason that is ‘hidden’). Why suicide is unique to humans alone could be briefly summerised as “too intelligent”. Because there is no ‘common cause’ I believe there no one way of preventing suicide. Though I do believe in the following, common circumstances leading up to a suicide (my personal experience);
Suicides are often sparked by a significant, structural and stressful life changing event. ‘Life gets hard for everyone’ and we all find ways to cope. For people that take their own lives, they have probably coped with this kind of stress or ‘worse’ before.. (This helps explain why suicides are often never ‘obvious candidates’, their deaths ‘unexpected’ and why they have often been ‘successful’ throughout life.)
The difference with the life changing event leading up to a suicide is the strong perception the event is beyond their control (or any ones else control to fix/change). This could be sadness over aging, worry over permanent injury rather than a ‘loss of job’ or ‘life savings’ etc. This sparks a ‘perfect storm’ depression which is kept hidden due to particular personality traits;
- They are generically predisposed to clinical anxiety/depression, they have been known to worry generally.
- They rarely discuss the depression because they are realists. They know what has (or will) come to pass is permanent and unchangeable. Like it or not, it’s a ‘fait accompli’ and no one can change any of it anyway.
- They don’t discuss the depression because they are conditioned not to. They may be the head of a family, their career may have demanded they hold a brave face at all times (comedian, military, finance). They may have had stern parents or a partner.
- Subconscious repression of the problem causes disproportionate concern over small problems. As the brain is ruminating in the background ‘beating its head against a brick wall’, The ‘bleeding’ manifests consciously. Day to day issues are ‘left unattended’ and build up. They discuss unusual worry over concerns most rational people would dismiss as trivial or highly unlikely. (Perhaps they cant sleep because they didn’t close the gate or they worry about where they’ve parked their car or what they need to fix in the house..)
- Last and most upsetting is they never discuss it because they can not imagine change or happiness. Its been said that ‘You are what you look forward to’. Leading up to the suicide the relentless depression hollowed them out to an ’empty shell’ of a person. They have lost their sense of identity, because a future has been slowly, mentally been closed off for them;
These mental disorders produce a diminished sence of self, or even a total loss of self.. and it is only under such conditions that suicide becomes possible.
With a loss of self, the possibility of self harm becomes a logical consequence of distorted thinking.
– Understanding Suicide and Its Prevention: A Neuropsychological Approach, Frederico Sanchez
These factors; An unchangeable life event, a person clinically predisposed to depression, having a reputation for ‘coping’ previously, their family circumstances/responsibility, their personal nature and conditioning/upbringing etc has come together in perfect storm.
A Pathology Of The Mind
I like to use this concept of ‘positive and negative feedback loops’ in the body.
Negative feedback loops are prevalent under ‘homeostasis’; the bodies physiological set of protection/control mechanisms. Negative feedback loops always act to bring things back to normal to ‘equilibrium’ after external shocks, as the body responds to changes in the environment.
For example you are stuck in a car in the midday sun. The higher the temperature goes, the more the body sweats to try and cool itself. The feedback loop is negative to the heat (other homeostatic negative feedback loops include Insulin and blood sugar levels, the livers role in breaking down drugs and diuretic hormones that regulate hydration levels.)
Positive feedback loops in the body are generally found when things go wrong or spiral out of control. This malfunction means as the body responds in a way that amplifies the cause, essentially making things worse and worse for itself. (There are a very few positive feedback loops that help the body survive, oxytocin release during childbirth being one).
An example of pathological positive feedback is arterial bleeding (fresh blood from the heart). The body detects a blood pressure drop ‘hole in the pipes’ and responds by telling the heart to pump faster (trying to increase blood pressure). This of course makes the bleeding worse, the harder the heart pumps the heavier the bleeding, the further drop in blood pressure etc. The body is stuck in a positive feedback loop that it can’t resolve itself.
Depression causes a pathological positive feedback loop of stress in the mind, which eventually spirals out of control. Stress is a natural reaction to help the brain ‘think its way around’ perceived problems and often set the body on ‘high alert’. Short term, we all know our palms sweat before a job interview, your heart rate/blood pressure goes up before a test or exam (sympathetic nervous system response). Stress occurs as you worry over perceived consequences of this event on your future.
Major life changing events are stressful in a different way. The subconscious mind can not avoid the question ‘what will I do’ or ‘how will I get by’ or ‘how am I going to cope’. More stress (just like the heart pumping faster) is the bodies natural response, trying to motivate the brain into thinking its way around a problem. Because depression is pathological, it is often termed a “mood disorder”. The disorder means the bodies natural response (stress) compounds the problem (worry in a depressed mind) rather than alleviating it (Motivating search for a solution).
Think about it; If this significant structural life changing event is ‘permanent’ and the consequences are perceived as ‘unchangeable’ by that person. What do they do? Their personality type is “not one to complain”. They keep a brave face, which ensures depression goes unrecognized and un-discussed and un-challenged.
The depression is rooted in fertile soil and subconsciously grows, trapped a pathological positive feedback loop. Through a ‘perfect storm’, the brain has been left to slowly ‘think itself into a corner’ regarding this life event ‘it cant change’
What is most hurtful for survivors is coming to realise this. Their loved ones spirit, their soul, had become enslaved by depression that grew well beyond that persons own ability (or importantly their loved ones) to see happiness in the future. They carry the full burden of the depression alone, as they suffered in silence;
Suicide is not necessarily a very awful way to die, but the path that leads to it generally is.
The mental suffering is prolonged, intense and relentless. The suffering is inexpressible.
Love, friendship and understanding are hardly ever enough to counteract the pain and destructiveness of the mental illness.
– Understanding Suicide and Its Prevention: A Neuropsychological Approach, Frederico Sanchez
Just like the racing heart can not do what is really needed (stem the bleeding / plugging the hole) the brain can not think its way out of a depression by itself.
Without external intervention, all pathological positive feedback loops spiral out of control; A bleeding artery/racing heart and a depressed mindset/subconscious stress both lead to death. One just happens much quicker than the other.
This is what makes suicide prevention so difficult, the depression is insidious and extremely dangerous. Such is the cancerous nature of the depression; it grows and grows until it eventually becomes too much a burden for host to bare.
Depression is like a cancer. If you don’t treat it early on, it will kill you
Absolutely, stressful life events can be incredibly unbearable mood disorder or not. This is why ‘Lieutenant Dan’ is a good example of the kind of brutal injustice and wild cards life can deal us all.
The difference between a healthy mind and a mind suffering mood disorder (that dies by suicide) is a healthy mind does not progress deeper via the positive feedback loop depression, and consequently lives longer to see the possibility of life and perhaps their original perceptions or worries (as per lieutenant Dan).
Also, of course everyone is different. The amount of stress depends on your perception of ‘danger’. How many of us now in hindsight realise such and such ‘didn’t really matter’. How daunting it was for parents to take out a large home loan, yet how much the property has increased in value since? How useless a result of a test at school may have been, but how stressful the exam at the time?
“Suicide is a solution. Its a very poor choice, but none the less its a solution in their mind at the time”
The brains perception of an event and consequent stress go some way to explain suicide in adolescence. Expectations involving gender identity, pressure over sport or academic excellence. Hence, suicide occurs in humans because they are often “too intelligent” generally when they suffer from mood disorders.
Suicides Are Erratic, Not Romantic.
In the movie “A few good men” the highly ranked army officer ‘Lieutenant Colonel Markinson’ is under pressure to give evidence against his superior in court the next day. Instead he chooses, as Tom Cruise’s charactor puts it;
Markinsons dead, You really got to hand it to those marshals. He didn’t hang himself by his laces, or slash himself with a butter knife. He got into full dress uniform, drew a nickel-plated pistol, and fired a bullet into his mouth.
The scene we are familiar with involves the respected army officer getting dressed up into ‘parade dress’ uniform before taking his own life, parade dress being the Army’s version of ‘your best attire’. Perhaps unsurprisingly this, like so many other popularised Hollywood accounts of life built for entertainment rather than enlightenment, they are far from the reality.
Suicides are often unceremonious and hardly ever a befitting end to lives that have achieved so very much. If you think a little more about it, an unceremonious suicide makes perfect sense.
The kind of mind that is wracked by depression and believes there is nothing to live for is not celebrating anything. It feels it has no future, it feels its past achievements are gone, done and insignificant. Of his incredible achievements, Winston Churchill was heard to speak of them;
Such is the evidence toward the tangle a distressed mind finds itself in, leading up to a suicide. If you read the circumstances of death (for those few suicides documented in the media) you will mostly find a very unromantic, ‘matter of fact’ and often erratic sequence of events on the day of their death. With some regret in using this example to prove the point;
A thick set of tyre marks cut a clear track across the wheat crop and lead directly to the dam where Mr Hunt’s ute was found abandoned.
On Wednesday afternoon police divers recovered what is believed to his body.
Although a formal autopsy had not been done it appears as though he walked into the water and shot himself. A gun was found close to the body.
– What led to the death of Kim and Geoff Hunt and their children
Most poignant are suicide notes, which are notorious for leaving more questions than answers. I had read somewhere that the only clarity suicides notes provide is the extent to which the persons mind was entangled, irrational and depressed.
They “Snapped” Or “Couldn’t Cope”
In our day to day lives, we have so much information we need to process. Getting the kids to school, what time is that meeting on, what is that persons name again? etc. etc. On top of this our brain has to interpret ‘news and events’. This is often events that has happened to a friend or family but on a daily basis its more often news in the media.
Again, our brain wants things simplified, it has enough challenges it has to deal with.. “give me the jist of it”. Some events are easier for our brain to digest than others.. “Do we need more milk” is no where near as complicated or stressful as “what is that persons name again”.
Because most suicides are ‘unexpected’ by ‘functional’, ‘sucessful’ and otherwise ‘normal’ people, it’s so dramatic that our brain wants to resolve it. Can’t believe that it can’t be resolved. Something must have caused it. Desperate for a solution.
- The brain doesn’t like what it cant understand.
- So this causes stress, confusion, anxiety, fear and funnily enough leads to a stigma in society.
- People feel if they understand it more, then they will feel better they can avoid it.
- If i understand it, the I can make sure it doesn’t happen to my family.
cowards way out – ignorance, ignores. Its also quite offensive to call someone a coward, so it hints at the underlying uneasiness in this persons brain and that they themselves are scared of the uncertainty. Rather than calling them cowards, people of higher emotional intelligence are able to understand ‘its not that simple’ and can manage the event of not packaging
Our Brains ‘Force’ A Rationale
Once you survive suicide long enough you continue to see evidence of this everywhere. Our brains, god bless their cotton socks, just can’t rest unless they are able to orderly box and lable the event before it gets sent down to the memory archives.
Picture one of those organised people that vacuum packs all their summer or winter clothes at the end of the season.
Now Imagine that person is autistic and absolutely must bag the clothes according to their own mind; all blue shirts i this bag, only white socks in this bag etc. etc.
Now picture some one coming in, “gimme that bag” and starts stuffing the clothes in with total disorder. This causes total panic and distress for this person.
Trying to package away disorder just doesn’t work.
– Website Author
So they gradually, subconsciously are forced to accept the best rationale they have at hand. It begins with friends and acquaintances (less attached to the person that took their own life) who’s brains take some desperate leaps to join some of the dots. A recent example in the Media associated Robin Williams death with no longer being able to bicycle;
ROBIN Williams may have killed himself because he feared his Parkinson’s disease would stop him cycling and lead him to addiction again, a close friend believes.
Tony Tom, who is the owner of a bike shop near Robin’s California home, told The Sun the actor threw himself into riding to help beat drink and drugs and battle depression.
“He could have turned back to his earlier vices if he wasn’t riding and maybe that was one of the things he was thinking about.” “For somebody as active as Robin was, both in his acting and his personal life, it would have been really hard on him”.
News.com.au “Robin Williams feared parkinsons disease..” August, 2014.
“Parkinsons diagnosis = he couldn’t ride his bike in the future = he was an active guy, would have missed riding = maybe thought he was doomed to revert to addictions = decided to take his own life instead.
This far fetched but well meaning rationale, demonstrates the kind of “long bows” the brain is prepared to draw to resolve such an unbelievable event. In this case, Tony Tom’s brain is doing as best it can to categorise how it can resolve the disorder of reality, with the information it in particular has at hand: Robin loved cycling.
(As an aside I hope you can take my point that its only after weeks, months and even years that have passed, that things like this get revealed to you. Only with time do you notice the uncanny similarities for all suicide survivors. Similarities that continue to cement the only reason that continues to hold water; That there was no rational reason why, other than the irrational decisions of a depressed state of mind, during a perfect storm of unpreventable life circumstances that were incredibly distressing for your loved one.)