Suicide

I'm listening to an NPR program about suicide; specifically, the families of people who commit suicide. According to the doctor citing research, there is clearly a genetic component to suicide. Not just to the depression, which was previously thought, but to suicide. Depression with and without suicide runs in families, along those veins.

Does one suicide in a family lower the barrier for others, increasing the odds for more suicides? Doesn't look that way, they say.

Should we tell kids the truth, that it was suicide? Sound like it, yes. Dr. Laura would disagree, though.

What about the person closest to the person who committed suicide? They are dealing with intense loneliness now, and they deal with thinking 'they should have known,' and/or family and friends thinking that same thing --- "why didn't he/she know?" Blame, inside and outside. Blame is a mess.

Suicide pulls. It's like you have to tie yourself to the mast to keep from taking the plunge. The cycle starts up, feeling the deep depression coming on again, and suicide lures as a way to end that pain.

Thoughts in mid-air. Survivors who jumped from the Golden Gate bridge --- a relatively small number from this popular suicide spot --- describe their thoughts on the way down. "As soon as my hands left the rail, I realized instantly that all those things in my life which I had thought unfixable, were utterly fixable, except this one thing, that I had jumped."