"I have two exams tomorrow and I have to work tonight. I'm going to kill myself," A friend of a friend put his head in his hands as we sat around talking.
"Please don't," I replied grimly, willing myself not to cry.
What he didn't know was that just a month earlier, one of my best friends completed suicide after a battle with undiagnosed depression. To me, "I'm going to kill myself" carried more weight than he was aware of, and it wasn't an appropriate way for him to verbalize how stressed out he was.
Last week was Suicide Awareness Week, and September 10th was World Suicide Prevention Day. Many people took to social media to open up about their personal experiences with mental illness, and it reminded me why I still get choked up when people casually threaten to take their own lives just because they're under pressure.
You'll notice that I refer to my friend's death as a "completed suicide." "Completed suicide" or "death by suicide" are considered the more correct terms among mental health professionals as opposed to "committed." "Committed" is a word that is usually associated with criminal behavior, and it is not believed that a person who takes their own life after dealing with mental illness is a criminal. There is debate about this both in and out of the mental health community, and you can read more about that here.
Saying something like "I'm going to kill myself" when you're stressed disregards the heaviness of suicide. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in this country as of 2014. Many unsuccessful suicide attempts go unreported or untreated, making it hard to get more concrete statistics. I could rattle off even more of the statistics that I've learned in grief therapy, but I digress.
When joking about suicide, most people don't realize the magnitude of the situation they're referencing. This doesn't, by any means, justify these jokes, offhand comments, or expressions of overwhelming stress. These comments will only begin to go away if people continue to advocate for suicide awareness and help people to understand what exactly they are expressing with those types of comments.
It is never, never, NEVER okay to say that you're going to kill yourself if you aren't really experiencing suicidal thoughts or battling a mental illness. It's not appropriate when you're stressed, frustrated, or defeated. When I hear these comments, I try to politely ask people to use a different expression or, if they seem serious, I refer them to professional resources and urge them to seek help. Like anything else, it's an adjustment that people must learn to make, and they can't be expected to change instantly. I only learned about this change after my friend took his own life, and I slip up too. It's taken a lot of conscious thought to adapt my vocabulary in the months since his death. My hope is that by spreading awareness, people will learn to use other phrases and expressions over time. You never know who you're in the room with when you make a comment like that.
Your feelings of overwhelming stress are legitimate and understandable, especially as a college student. You're entitled to those feelings, but please be aware of how you express them.
And to anyone who needs it, you matter. You are loved.
If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide, please seek help.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 (Veterans can press 1 for specialized support.)
Online support: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/gethelp/....
Crisis Line: Text "START" to 741-741
