Hi Romany,

Public awareness campaigns, like for mental health, are needed. But you seem to miss my point, which is that not enough people care. Once again, the reality is that if they did, and if they showed it to those who are suffering, suicide wouldn't be a problem.

Romany said, "the cavalry might not be ready to charge to the rescue quite yet - but at least the horses are getting saddled!"

I know its something, but, and here I go again, not enough! My initial point was to tell it how it is. Suicide is murder. I know this for a fact. I've been there. I know what its like. I felt so isolated, alone, frightened, angry, hurt, violated, and shut out. I wish I could say I had a choice. And I would rather have made it. Like I said, society kills, and most turn a blind eye. Now I also know that if others in my life were more caring, I would not have attempted. I'm past all that now, and I'll never go back. But I feel for anyone who might.

Well written Romany. I think most of us got the point you were making. Davidf got a bit stuck in semantics.

Haralambos, as Romany pointed out, there are many instances that do provide assistance, but I guess, you demonstrated the extreme isolation from all others a suicidal person feels. That is the difficult part. That a person who otherwise may know that there is indeed help, cannot seek that help when the chips are down, so to speak.

Society is not holding a loaded gun, but it is difficult for others in society to second guess when intervention is necessary in another's life. The person needing help is not able to seek it, so help cannot be provided.

As a person who has had experience with suicide within the family all I can say is that a person's suicide has devastating effects on many for a long, long time. From deep anger to guilt. For some sorrow didn't come until quite a few years later.

Maybe, we should all accept that many of us can experience a time when we feel that life is not worth living and therefore we need to learn to hold on to the fact that each and every one of us can walk through that valley of despair and come out the other end. We can only die from a broken heart, to use a cliche, when we are afraid of the grief.

First off - Got confused with threads and directed my last posting to Kieth instead of Davidf for some strange reason. Sorry 'bout that.

Hara - as Yvonne said "Society is not holding a loaded gun, but it is difficult for others in society to second guess when intervention is necessary in another's life. The person needing help is not able to seek it, so help cannot be provided."

Friends and relatives of those who have committed suicide are often completely amazed and one often hears them saying that they can't understand why, or they had no idea, or that the dead person gave no inkling that they were unhappy. At least two of the people in my life who have suicided were fully aware of the love that surrounded them and the help that was there and we, none of us who were left behind, had any idea of what was going on in their heads.

Each person's individual case is so very different. One may feel that nobody cares, another that the burden of care is just too much. Another person may feel unworthy of the abundant help or the good intentions of those around - as was my own experience. On the three different occasions I tried to suicide - and laid careful plans - each was thwarted through the most incredibly serendipitous sequence of events. Once by a person whom I considered to be total uncaring.

I DO understand what you are saying. I see your point about society seemingly having moved in a direction that you consider fosters despair, unhappiness and an all-for-me-and-bugger-the-rest-of-you ethos. The fact that our suicide rate is so high itself speaks of something that is wrong.

But it is important to keep in mind that we all construct our own reality. Two people experiencing the same event may view it from opposing viewpoints: one as a positive, one as a negative. The importance of mental health (having a healthy and balanced mentality) is to teach people to construct their own particular reality in a positive and not a negative way.

Suicide is not the problem. Treating it as something wrong is.

I knew two men who committed suicide. Neither left a note, but I think I know why they did it.

One was my father-in-law who cut his throat in the bathroom and was found by his grandson.

The other was a man of thirty who rode out in the desert and managed to end his life by the exhaust fumes.

My father in law was a widower in his nineties who was fed up with life. The other man was a really fine person with a good life, but as a teenager a pervert had raped him. He could not put the horrific episode out of his mind.

To me the tragedy was not the suicides, but the way in which they had been done.

My father-in-law was never going to be young again. His family cared for him, but he had enough of life. The way of his going was traumatic for his family especially his grandson. It was also traumatic for family and girlfriend of the thirty-year-old to be told that police had found a suicide in the desert. There seemed no way for his life to be other than a torment.

It would be reasonable to have suicide parlours where a suicide could be provided with the means of a peaceful and dignified exit after a waiting period. The suicide could change his or her mind until the final step. They would not have to die alone but could be surrounded by friends and family at the end.

Death would be dignified.

The choice should be ours if we want to leave this life.

I don't think we should conflate the questions of euthanasia and suicide on this thread. Apart from anything else euthanasia is a subject on which most people have very definite and fixed ideas and nothing except heated tempers usually results from discussing it on these threads.

The concern regarding suicide for me and, I am sure, quite a lot of other people, is the amount of young people who find life unendurable. Providing sanctioned spaces for teenagers and young adults or parents of dependent children to end their lives is also sanctioning the societal problems which led to them wanting to take that path. I would consider that a cop out. Those who were led to their decision not so much by societal pressures but by irrational or unclear thinking can also be helped and learn how to cope without resorting to the final solution.