Suicide

[Wise Young]

OJ,


Your opinions are always welcome. I agree with you. A main mission of this site is to provide information to the spinal cord injury community. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate for us to have a sticky in the Life Forum that contain resources for people to contact on the subject of suicide. However, suicide is a different issue from mental health or even health care.

I debated what to call this thread when I made it a sticky. Originally, the thread was entitled "Suicide Cluster/Contagion". I thought that this was inappropriate. However, "Suicide Resources" sounded like providing resources for suicide. So, I decided to name it just "Suicide".

In my opinion, CareCure provides three important perspectives to people with spinal cord injury who might be contemplating suicide. The first is that you are not alone. The second is that there are people who care. The third is that many people have the same problem and have concluded that life is worth living.

I have been thinking what else CareCure can or should provide. For some, I believe that we provide hope. Part of what drives suicide is the belief that spinal cord injury is not reversible. If the condition is reversible, this may discourage suicide. Hope is important for life. No hope is devastating.

For others, we provide advice on medical conditions that are treatable. It is bad enough that one has spinal cord injury but to add neuropathic pain, repeated urinary tract infections, and feeling sick all the time may simply be intolerable. Just relieving some of these may help.

Finally, people may choose to live for all sorts of strange reasons. For example, I am just thinking that curiosity is often a compelling reason. Some people may want to live just to find out what will happen. I know that Christopher Reeve would have wanted to know the outcome of the 2004 election.

Wise.

Originally Posted by orangejello

My opinion on this doesn't really matter and nobody asked me but I will share it anyway.

If one of the mandates of this site is to provide information and links to resources to help people and families living with a spinal cord injury shouldn't mental health resources, including resources dealing with suicide be an important part of that mandate? A look at the responses in this thread show that mental health is an issue for many people here. There are stickies dealing with other health issues in the care forum. Maybe this thread would be more appropriate there and renamed something that reflected it is resouces for depression and suicide or something along those lines.

This is just my opinion but I honestly don't think seeing a thread with the words "suicide resources" is going to plant the thought in somebody's head nor is it going to sway somebody contemplating suicide to follow through on it. But the resources in that thread might help somebody feeling that desperate to link up with resources that can assist them through their crisis. For that reason alone it would be of great value.

I think arguments against making it a sticky in an easily accessible place just reinforce the stigma and negative connotations surrounding mental health and expecially suicide. I think not including a thread of such resources does many members here a disservice. It sends the message that it's too shameful to talk about.