Suicide Stinks

Anyone who knows me understands that I have loved sports my entire life. I have always found sports as a great way to escape from reality. Sadly, the reality of it is that my teams rarely win championships, but I still enjoy them. Sports, unfortunately, jumped the tracks from entertainment to my “professional” and spiritual side yesterday with the news of Junior Seau’s suicide. I did not know Mr. Seau, but I have known suicide way too often.

In one fashion or another, I have had a career dedicated to mental health and have been involved with mental health care since 1986. Let’s see, I have had acquaintances commit suicide. I have had co workers commit suicide. I have had patients commit suicide more times than I can recall. I have cut a person down who had decided to hang themselves. I have been involved and have led “psychological autopsies”, which is a major discussion and presentation after suicides. I have been an expert presenter on the topic of suicide.

I am dedicating the next few blog entries to the discussion of suicide. I plan on covering the subject with frankness and sincerity as I am convinced nothing rocks a person’s world like a suicide. One thing I want to emphasize is that I am not condemning anyone who has the thought cross his or her mind. Honestly, through my years of experience, I think at sometime in a moment of despair, the thought crosses the mind of the majority of people. This may be controversial and many of you will read this and say, “not me”, but many of you will also say to yourself, “How did he know?” My mind swirls with what direction I want to take this series of blogs. I want to thoroughly attack the subject and leave no stones unturned.

Misinformation and misconceptions about suicide exist everywhere. I believe that so many exist because suicide provokes emotion like nothing else. This comes from its absolute and definitive nature. Seau will never physically hug another of the hundreds, if not thousands of children he has helped over the years. Seau’s friends and family are now forced to deal with raw emotions and feelings that will always be one sided arguments and discussions. So many questions will go unanswered for the rest of their lives and closure will be elusive, if ever obtained. I am not going to supply hard core statistics about suicide. That would turn a blog into a research paper.

I will make this a 5 part series on suicide. Starting with the next post, I will discuss the following topics:

1

- .     Suicide is painless

2.     Suicide lurks in the shadows

3.     Suicide and the Bible

4.     Suicide and the family

5.     Suicide and hope

I pray that none of you experience suicide in any capacity. I can honestly say that suicide does scar a person and those emotional scars often run deep.