As I’ve just posted on iBrattleboro in response to the recent Wardsboro tragedy, I submit the same to fellow readers of Green Mountain Daily:
This entire topic speaks to my heart. Vincent Van Gogh once wrote in a letter (1898) to his brother, Theo; “As for me you must know that I shouldn’t precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice. What consoles me is that I am beginning to consider madness as an illness like any other, and that I accept it as such”. The word “madness” in this case is interchangeable with any other mental health label.
It’s all about ignorance and stigma, fear of what we don’t know and generalizations of what mental illness is all about. A NAMI quote often used is “The most shocking thing about mental illness is how little people understand it.” (Two meaningful ways to interpret that quote.)
With the utmost respect for the family of this woman and her two children, I have to say that I find it unbelievable that there were no indications of any underlying illness. It is more that no one recognized them for what they were, or, if the signs were recognized, what became most important was the reality that many people feel they must keep this type of illness a secret. The stigma is unbearable for most people. Credibility is lost, blame is often times assigned, and the resulting reactions and opinion of the families, friends and society in general is one of fear, disgust or cruel indifference.
This is the root of the problem We cannot expect a man or woman in uniform to be able, in one short interchange, to instantly (or close to it) undo all of these historic and deeply rooted discriminations, denials and indifferences that have been suffered often times, for a lifetime. Although a mental health professional may be better equipped to try, we all must appreciate the fact that a person who has suffered a long period of time will have already concluded from past experience, that a few moments of compassion, even if that compassion gives any hope that things will one day be better, is fleeting at best. I’m not implying that nothing can be done to save others from suicide intention, only speaking from a viewpoint that brings an entire history on both a personal level, and a societal level, to that point of running into a church, or a river, or a medicine or gun cabinet.
I would easily be able to assume that any person who is doing something out of the ordinary, in certain situations, is suffering from mental illness and in a crisis. To expect that any person can talk someone into or out of an act of one sort or another while in a crisis is expecting the impossible. I feel we’ve all been mislead into thinking it’s a reasonable expectation. While it can sometimes work out (I recall someone with a weapon in Brattleboro where the police were in fact able to bring things to a safe and meaningful conclusion) it is certainly nothing that ought to be relied upon as an end all to a crisis being experienced by an individual that for the most part, the responders do not know.
I’m not sure what to do about that. I don’t know what to do about people who are in treatment and despite that, choose suicide. I can only guess. But, it’s long overdue that we all find ways to embrace all sorts of people and their labels into our lives because I’m feeling that it’s the utter isolation (regardless of the reasons) that shrink a person’s world into one decision to live or die. Seems to me that when a person’s whole world has become so small, the decision can be an easy one to make.
About 45 years ago, I lost an older sister to suicide. She had been discharged a week earlier from a hospital. I had been helping her with her two young children for a short while, and I had over heard a number of conversations she had with other people, that when I look back on, were in fact her final attempts to deal with her underlying disorder (fill in the blank) in some practical ways, while at the same time, living her life with the responsibilities of parenting and keeping up the appearance of normalcy as best she could.
In the aftermath of her suicide, blame was going around in circles; it was her upbringing; it was her insensitive husband; it was this and it was that. I heard some of this directly from a person who had no idea I was her sister. I heard about how, even if she had been saved from her suicide attempt, that she’d no longer be seen as a credible or significant member of society. I heard ways in which her children would be ostracized as they grew into adults, and labeled as somehow different from the rest of us even without a label, just for who they had as a mother.
Meantime, still living here with my parents and surviving siblings, too much emphasis was put on hiding this tragedy from our own neighbors; and for those who did find out the truth, that she did not die in some other tragic way (like a car accident; we were supposed to say), we were all held suspect. Feared and given labels of a different sort ; there must be something “wrong” with all of us – there must be unspeakable things going on in our home – there must be someone to blame for the terrible flaw that no one could see or we, her family, all somehow drove her to her final act. And all the while, as everyone reacted to this terrible event, they were all showing me the very reason my sister ended up in a world so tiny that her choice may have been one of the easiest of her lifetime.
No therapist or psychiatrist could have helped her with that reality. No policeman ,or even an entire swat team, could have saved her, either. It’s us as a whole; it’s all of us together. Not one single person could have changed a thing.
As long as the stigma remains so vibrantly alive and the practice of fear, blame, shame and lack of understanding that is born from that, continues to encapsulate lives into tiny, confining spaces, we will continue to hear of these tragedies.
