Article
Comment
Death & life
Psychology
3 min read

A survivor shares how we can help prevent suicide

Allowing people to voice their despair makes space for hope to grow.

Rachael is an author and theology of mental health specialist. 

 

 

yard signs read: Don't give up. You are not alone. You matter.
Yard signs, Salem, Oregon.
Dan Meyers on Unsplash.

Were there signs I missed? 

Why couldn’t they stay for me? 

Could I have done something? 

These and a million other questions fill the minds of those who lose a loved one to suicide - and there are no easy answers.  

Suicide evokes a particular loss which can torment those left behind with grief and guilt. With suicide rates reaching a twenty-five-year high, too many people are living with these unanswerable questions. 

At the heart of many of these questions is the stigma which still surrounds suicide; it was only eighty years ago that suicide was still a crime and much of the condemnatory thinking remains.  

People still believe that suicide is somehow selfish, that it’s the reserve of only those most severely affected by mental illness or that nothing can stop someone from taking their own life if they’re considering it.  

The truth is far more complex and, thankfully, far more hopeful because whilst suicide is complex - it can be prevented.  

A heartbreaking 1 in 15 people will attempt to take their own life - and most will survive, with trauma, yes but also with the opportunity to build a life that they can bear. 

Suicide prevention involves the whole of society. From government, charities, families and friends, it has to begin with shattering the myths that perpetuate the stigma. And, we need to begin by changing the language we use: Suicide is not a crime that is committed so people don’t commit suicide, they die by suicide and by moving away from the language of committing we can begin to accept that suicide is no-one’s fault - it’s a tragedy.  

Suicide is not selfish; for many people in the depths of suicidality, they believe that they are relieving their loved ones from a burden, and it can affect anyone - including those with no history of mental ill-health.  

Many have believed in the past that once someone has decided to take their own life, there is nothing that can be done to stop them, but suicide is preventable with openness and honesty.   

A heartbreaking 1 in 15 people will attempt to take their own life - and most will survive, with trauma, yes but also with the opportunity to build a life that they can bear, but they need help to do so.  

We each have a role by reaching out with kindness and creating sanctuaries. 

As a teenager, I twice attempted to take my own life and I’ve lived with thoughts of suicide for almost twenty years, but I am still here - in large part due to the kindness of others as they held hope for me when I could not manage it alone.  

Perhaps strangely, the place I wanted to be the most in the wake of my attempt was church; it was the place I felt the safest and I wanted to be in a place where I could cry and let out my conflicted and confused feelings to God because I felt there was no-one that could understand what I was going through. I remembered the character of Elijah in the Bible who begged God for death and was met with God encouraging rest, nourishment and the opportunity to pour his heart out. It was what he needed in his darkest hour, and it was what I needed in mine.  

We cannot take on the role of mental health professionals - and neither should we - but we can be prepared to hear the hardest words and to listen to someone’s thoughts of suicide because research shows us that allowing people to give voice to their despair makes space for hope to grow.  

When people are struggling with thoughts of suicide or trying to navigate the aftermath of a suicide attempt, we each have a role by reaching out with kindness and creating sanctuaries; safe spaces for those who are struggling to express their despair and receive compassion. It might look like dropping around a meal, listening to them pour their heart out, advocating for them with mental health professionals or offering childcare or running errands.  

We can all play our part in changing the culture around suicide with language, care and holding hope for those who feel that all hope is lost. 

Article
Comment
Digital
Film & TV
Masculinity
1 min read

How our social media turns us against ourselves

We treat others differently when our eyes and hearts are forced inwards.
An unhappy father sits next to a scared son in a police interview room.
Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper star in Adolescence.
Netflix.

My wife turned to me this week whilst watching the compelling Netflix drama Adolescence and asked if it was based on a true story. That proves the quality of the acting, script, and storyline. But it also demonstrates the drama’s prophetic nature. Conceived two and a half years ago by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, the perversion of Jamie’s underdeveloped brain and developing masculinity by social media forces has come to reflect real-life extreme violence by young men. With the sentencings of murderers Axel Radakubana and Nicholas Prosper in recent weeks, Jamie’s actions resonate deeply. Adolescence isn’t based on a specific true story, but that doesn’t prevent it from being true. 

What about the role of social media in these narratives? Radakubana and Prosper were radicalised by violent content they had accessed online. With social media, extreme content does well, particularly on sites with no filters on pornography and violence like Reddit and X. We are beginning to discover that content algorithms are not neutral, instead siloing us into echo chambers that are deliberately forming us into better consumers of content, advertising, and objects. Social media harvests our data and sells it on- meaning it cultivates us as the product. 

Yet these manipulations cover over the deepest issue. Social media depersonalises us, preventing us from making genuine human connection and perverting our view of anybody but us. The German philosopher Martin Buber differentiated between two different ways for humans to exist in the world. One was I-It; in a person treats everyone and everything they come into contact with as an ‘It’- something to be used or taken advantage of. 

The other was I-Thou, in which humans approach every other person as a unique being, with resources to offer the I which ensures that a mutual, open, present connection ensues. For Buber, the ultimate ‘Thou’ was God, with whom humans can have the deepest and most transformative connection. 

Social media ensures we see life in ‘I/It’ mode by removing genuine contact with others and providing curated, fake, existences that can never be open to genuine connection with others. Love and affection become commodified; likes, follows, reactions. Our presentation of ourselves becomes more extreme, more perfect, more beautified, to keep mining the commodities. Our eyes and our hearts are forced inwards, and we lose any sense of encountering a ‘Thou’ on the way. We just keep encountering the I: our own thoughts, needs, desires, self-radicalised by our own insular minds. 

This can be our contribution to the conversation on the culture our young people, and particularly young men, are growing up in. To live I/Thou lives.

The great St Augustine back in the fourth century developed the idea of ‘original sin.’ All humans are prone to destruction: it’s in our DNA. The evidence for such an idea is found in every human experience, as the destructor and the one destructed. Left unchecked without genuine connections with others to challenge and expand our hearts, an I/It life digs deeper and deeper into these destructive impulses until our humanity is twisted into violent obsessions. 

The I/It life focuses completely on self-glorification through any means, something amplified by social media. What if we don’t get enough likes, follows, reactions? What if we cannot achieve self-glory through the more banal mediums of attraction, attention, popularity?  

Both Radakubana and Prosper said they wanted to be notorious, attempting to find the most extreme channel for their violence as possible to ensure they are never forgotten. They will not be the last. Jamie continues to deny his crime but in episode three of Adolescence he states that he could do whatever he wanted to Katie, the young girl he murdered. The same impulses come through; others as objects to take advantage of in achieving self-satisfaction. 

The good intentions for human connection that some of those early social media sites were set up for has been largely lost. But the good intention can remain in our own resolution to live an I/Thou life. Putting down social media and picking up connections with humans in the real world by seeing the other with curiosity and openness will ensure that we are constantly turning our heart outwards, embracing genuine relationships, and finding space in our heart to think of the other before ourselves. These are the relationships that will make us more human. 

Ultimately, Buber was right that the ultimate ‘Thou’ connection we can make is with God. The Christian story is full of God’s desire to seek out relationship with humanity, to allow us to find a connection with God that surpasses our own human experience and transforms us to be people that slowly grow away from our destructive instincts.  

What might Christian faith have to contribute to the conversation on the culture young men are growing up in? To live I/Thou lives that are curious, open, and seeking truest divine and human connection. Such a life might even touch those who have been ravaged by social media and ignored by other I/It lives. It might even inspire them to compassion and curiosity that look beyond the content that turns them inwards, to turn outwards and find a healthier future. 

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