Maybe you’ve been there. No matter how hard you try, all you want to do is pull the covers over your head and stay in bed hoping to escape the pain. You don’t want to go anywhere. You don’t want to see anyone. You just want to be left alone.
September is Suicide Prevention Month and I’ve been working tirelessly with psychology and counseling students at Truett McConnell University to plan activities to raise awareness on campus. We would like to share with you a photo frame where you can add a picture and name of someone who you’d like to remember who died by suicide. When people die from suicide, stigma often keeps those…
1. Did you see it coming? This question is irrelevant. There are times when a person takes their life and everyone is shocked; there are other instances where loved ones knew and were doing everything they knew to do in order to prevent it but the person still suicided. Asking this question only adds to the guilt survivors already feel. It is not helpful in…
After losing both my husband and my mother-in-law to suicide, I felt both guilt and shame. I wondered how could I have missed this? If only I’d said this or done that…the list goes on and on. I also felt shame. I thought others blamed me. “She must have been a horrible wife or he would never have done that.” Then there was the shame…
I heard the familiar vibrating sound notifying me that I had a new message. I clicked on the message and what I read made my heart cry out. A dear friend (who I will call Peter) was telling me goodbye. He was prepared to end his life. After twenty minutes of talking the phone went silent. I waited. And waited. And waited. No more messages….
I recently had the privilege of presenting at the American Association of Suicidology Annual Conference. It was quite humbling to be surrounded by thousands of people burdened by devastation of suicide and working to do their part to create change. In one of the sessions there was a debate on whether or not suicide prevention is possible. One of the arguments given was that when…