There is an iceberg in our midst, 9/10ths of which is underwater, and threatening to sink any of us at any given time.
That iceberg is mental health issues.
A month ago my sister, Melanie, a registered nurse, took her life due to prescription-drug induced depression. Since then I cannot count how many people have come up to me and told me they are dealing with similar issues. Many did it after the funeral where I presented the last of three eulogies. Total strangers walked up to me, and in person, told me their darkest secret.
Many are on the same sleeping pills. Others have simply said, “I’ve been dealing with depression for years.”
Others have spoken to me, directly or indirectly, through emails, chats and Facebook messages via the in memory page I set up for Melanie.
Even more disturbingly, several have told me they have considered suicide themselves, or had even tried to do it. Many more people than I care to count. That’s a real heavy burden when you’re dealing with the suicide of your sibling.
My mother is hearing similar things. People with depression and suicidal thoughts have come to her, too.
My mom said to me, “Stigma is covered with dirt. A grave. That is what it means to us.”
In the last week of her life, several of Melanie’s closest family and friends were madly scrambling to find help for her. We knew we had to do something. She was effectively under suicide watch those last several days, which is why she slipped out of work during the middle of the day to accomplish her task.
Phone calls seeking mental health support ended up being convoluted and confusing, something I am told has been addressed since due to Melanie.
Just four days before she did it, Melanie had a phone call counselling session – with a person from ONTARIO. Excuse me, but counselling someone you’ve never met over the phone is not counselling. Maybe it’s a LEAN excuse. I don’t know. But a counsellor needs to look someone in the eyes and see what is going on, not just be a voice on the phone in a call centre two provinces over.
It was a huge personal stigma for Melanie, a health care professional, to seek help. Obviously it was a stigma she felt she would not be able to overcome. Health care professionals make the worst patients, because they never want to show any weakness and become the patient themselves. This was very true in Melanie’s case. She was terrified she might not be able to continue to work as a registered nurse, and that she could possibly lose her registration and ability to practice.
We’ve since talked to the regulatory and union people, and found that likely would not have been the case. They would have worked with her to get her through this, but how did she, or we, know? There was an ever-present fear that acknowledging a problem could mean a suspension of her registration. If that happened, if she had been put on long- or short-term disability, she would no longer have been able to afford her home. So not only would she have lost her job and career (even temporarily), but her home as well. How does anyone ask for help without fear of running those risks?
One of my biggest concerns at the time, and likely mistakenly now, was what’s next? Okay, so we get her in for an acute assessment. Then what? Will they let her work? Will she be trusted with keys to the narcotics cabinet?
Could we have dragged her slight frame in, kicking and screaming, and said, “She needs help?”
Melanie was so strong-willed, no one could make her do anything she didn’t want to. She was very good at hiding this. Few outside her innermost circle knew of her struggles. All she would have had to do is calmly say to whatever doctor saw her, “Look, I’ve been an RN for 14 years. I am fine. Can I go home now?”
There’s another, broader issue at play here. I’ve worked with newspapers most of my life. Do you know when the word suicide makes it into print? When someone like Robin Williams does it. Then it becomes a Twitter hashtag. Alternatively, when it’s a “safe,” non-specific issue like doctor-assisted suicide. But otherwise, the press does not report on suicides.
There is a very good reason for this. We, the press, do not want to encourage anyone seeking attention to think suicide is their way to go out in a blaze of glory, finally getting that attention they felt they never got during their lives.
But sometimes even this self-imposed ban is breached. In recent years we’ve seen an ever-increasing cases of suicide-by-cop, where a mentally disturbed person will pull a knife or gun or even toy gun on a cop, triggering their expected lethal response. The worst cases of this have been the school shootings, which almost invariably end in the shooter taking their own life or being shot by police.
I would venture to say that a very high number of police shootings we hear about in the media are actually suicide-by-cop scenarios.
Then there are the more subtle cases, the ones where we just aren’t sure if it’s suicide or not. Ask a long-time paramedic about cases where a car, for no apparent reason, suddenly swerves in front of an ongoing semi (or maybe a train). The results are typically fatal. The trucker usually makes it, in that they survive physically, but will have nightmares for the rest of their lives. The car driver usually does not make it. Was that a simple traffic accident, or a suicide-by-trucker?
There are police officers on the Golden Gate Bridge whose primary duty is to avert suicide attempts. They often fail. It’s one of the most frequently used places to jump from.
The net effect of this self-imposed press ban, however, is that no one ever talks about suicide, and its root cause, depression, openly. Our society can now openly talk about once-taboo subjects like residential schools, soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder, and LGBT issues, but next to no one will talk about depression and suicide.
I am no expert on depression, suicide or mental health. I know hardly anything about these subjects. But I have found out in the last month it is way more common than I had ever imagined.
I was blissfully unaware. I am not anymore.
The iceberg has been revealed.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
