Transcript: Assessing the media; death by suicide.

I was twenty-seven years old when I attempted suicide.

I didn’t resist, I just let it happen, I didn’t want to kill myself, I don’t think anybody ever truly does, but it seemed like the only way out.

On January 27^th, 2009, a lifelong friend of mine ah killed himself.

Those were just three people whose lives have been touched by suicide.  Sharon Fawcett and Mark Henick live to tell their stories, while Chelsey Nicholson can only remember her friend and try to help other deal with the effects of suicide.

It was in the evening, I had had a really bad day, and something happened that just triggered that urge in me.  I had had suicidal feelings all along probably for that year but on that day I just wasn’t strong enough to overcome them so I took an overdose of antidepressant medication, it was about a whole month’s supply, um and I went to bed to cry.

That was Sharon describing her first and only attempted suicide.  She struggled with anorexia nervosa for three years and depression for nine years.  Mark Henick lectures annually at St. Thomas University about his battle with depression.  He describes in graphic detail his first suicide attempt in the office of his school’s guidance counsellor.

So I sat in his chair, he was across from me.  I opened the zipper on the front pouch of my bag, and I took out the knife.  So he asked me if I could give him the knife.  And I said No, and as I said no, I held the knife by the blade, I squeezed the knife in my fist and I held it up to my throat, right here, I held the knife up to my throat, I could feel the blood running down my hand and down my arm because I was squeezing the blade.  I don’t know what I was thinking at the time but I remember I just came to a point of almost clarity; I came to a point where I just stopped thinking.  I took a deep breath, I closed my eyes, and just before I pushed it into my throat, he tackled me.

Mark says he’s lost count of the number of times he’s attempted suicide and in spite of counselling and medication it still crosses his mind on occasion.  Chelsey’s friend tried cutting his wrists on his first attempt.  Medication and counselling helped him for awhile, then he stopped his treatment.  On the surface he seemed to be okay but inside the pain continued so he made a plan to escape. 

He had some friends over, just like he did all the time, and they had a game of cards and a couple beers and everything was fine and they left, and then he, decided that that was the night.  And he took his brother’s shotgun and drove out to the middle of nowhere and took his life.

The common thread in these three stories is depression, a mental illness and a subject few people want to talk about.  Mark knows how difficult the subject is. 

It’s still hard for me to do every year, I think if it wasn’t then I don’t know if I would do it, if it wasn’t hard because I think the very fact that I feel like I shouldn’t or that I feel embarrassed or I feel whatever other feelings, that says that we’re not to a point yet where it’s okay to talk about mental illness.  If I the person who talks about mental illness all the time still gets nervous about talking about it then it means we need more work.

I think that that should be a centre of some of the education is to provide booklets or pamphlets or something that’s easy to use in kindergarten, grade one, grade two so that people who grow up with mental illness (fades under narration)

Suzanne Barry-Kroening is a social worker with the Mobile Crisis Unit in Fredericton.  She makes her living on the front lines of crisis intervention.  If you call her, she will come to your door.  She and her team are committed to saving lives.  She says public education is needed to help combat the ignorance and stigma attached to mental illness and that she says should start in the home and continue into the school system. 

(fades up from narration) or they see Mary having to test her blood sugar, the reason that’s happened is because of the education that’s been provided and I think the same will happen with mental illness, but that’s where it’s got to start as young as possible.

So what about the rest of us, those of us who’ve already formed an opinion or stereotype? How can we illuminate and educate?  As a journalist I feel a need to get to the bottom of this.  I should probably do a story, right?  Oh yeah, the media doesn’t like doing stories about suicide.  Why is that?  How come we can produce graphic stories about war, murder, earthquakes and other catastrophic events but we can’t report the news about a lost soul choosing to end his own life?  I spoke with two long time members of Canadian media, both of whom teach journalism at St. Thomas University.  Mark Tunney currently teaches print and radio courses, he has worked as editor at The Telegraph Journal and continues with various projects on CBC radio.  He says it’s standard practice to avoid reporting death by suicide.

We don’t cover all deaths right, we don’t say how everybody dies, we do it if there’s been some foul play in some way or something special about the death.  The other reason would seem to be that it, or as what I always thought anyway is the families are upset, usually the families don’t want it out that the person died, and it’s kind of like he’s dead now, do we have to rub it in that he’s dead and announce that it was a suicide.  Because in many people’s religious views or whatever it’s either a cowardly way out or against religious doctrine of some kind so some families can get very upset if you mention that it was a suicide of some kind.

I can understand not wanting to upset the family, but does it really help to pretend it didn’t happen?  Michael Camp teaches a number of journalism classes including Law and Media.  He agrees that reporting on suicide deaths is a media taboo, one which he says should change.

I think it makes it worse when you try to cover it up.  Everybody knows.  You’ve got all this guessing going on so I think for everyone’s benefit, including reducing the stigma it’s best to say what really happened and that’s all part of recognizing the problem of mental illness in our society, we should be by this point surely past the stage of brushing things under the carpet.

Chelsey said she dealt with her friend’s death the way she tackles most things in life that upset her; head on.  With the help of various groups both at St. Thomas and the University of New Brunswick, Chelsey formed a support group for people whose lives have been touched by suicide.  She wants people to get talking about it and stop treating it like it’s such a mystery.  She agrees the media could do a better job in removing the stigma.

I think that it would have been hard for her in that everyone would have known but at the same time I feel like she would have just been glad that people would have known instead of always having to tell everyone and that’s something the media would help with as well.  It would bring it up for us.  We wouldn’t always have to talk about it individually, it would become worldwide.  So by having it in the paper and not having to explain it every time to every person you know wondering how she lost a child, I feel like it would help her talk about it because the hardest part to start a conversation like that is saying; he killed himself.  So by having people already know that before they speak to her about it I think it would actually help her.  So although initially it would be hard to see that in writing, it would be beneficial in the long run.

Sharon agrees, she says she’s always been open about her mental illness and had she died by suicide, she would have wanted it reported as such.  She appreciated the very compassionate way the Globe and Mail handled the suicide death of Dave Batters, a Member of Parliament in Saskatchewan; proof that journalists can take on delicate subjects if so motivated.  Dave Batters had come out publicly about his battle with depression a year before and received much support, as Suzanne says though, not everyone can brave the fear of judgement.

Make sure you learn as much as you can about depression, you know as much as we try and as far as we’ve come there is still stigma attached to depression to any other type of mental illness and the goal of course for mental health clinicians and those working in the field is to try to combat that stigma because once that happens then people with any kind of mental illness are going to be able to reach out and get that support that right now they don’t feel like they can do because they don’t want to be the ones that are labelled.

Of the three lives in my story that have been touched by suicide and depression they all have their means of coping. 

Sharon Fawcett feels she is cured.  She credits her spiritual counsellor with saving her life eleven years ago.  After years of trying various therapies and medications she was again thinking of suicide, she just couldn’t see another way to live. 

Mark Henick says he expects depression will be with him for all his life but he copes by staying busy with his studies, his activities on the Students Union and the Canadian Mental Health Association as well as continued counselling and medication.

Chelsey Nicholson keeps her friend’s memory alive by staying in touch with his family and continuing to help raise awareness to the problem of suicide.  The support group she started is for anyone who wants a safe place to talk about their experience.  Professional counsellors are part of the team. 

All of them want the same thing, to be looked at as a person who struggles, not as a disease or mental case.  Some people make it and others do not, but none should be the cause for indifference.

A suicide is the end of a life, so there was a life and I think it’s important to talk about that life, just as you would in an obituary you know where they talk about the life of somebody who’s died from natural causes.  I think we focus too much on the act when we do report it, whether they went out in a sensational way or were found under a bridge, that’s just the end of a life and if you could bring attention to that life and maybe a little clarity to why it ended the way it did then I think you’ve served an important purpose.

Short URL: http://www.newbrunswickbeacon.ca/?p=5273

Posted by Tammy Murray on Mar 19, 2010. Filed under Transcripts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.