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Original poster

People ending their lives?

264 replies

girlfriend44 · 15/01/2024 21:16

Are more and more people giving up on life? Heard another suicide today and its going to be debated in Parliament tomorrow?

Is it because mental health services are poor, have they always been poor?
Is life just getting harder for people?
Or has it always been hard?

I can remember when suicide was rare now you hear it so much sadly.

OP posts:
quisensoucie · 16/01/2024 09:01

I'm old enough to remember when suicides were not allowed a church burial, or if they had one, they were laid to rest in an undesecrated part of the cemetery
And it was illegal to attempt suicide until 1961:
Before the Suicide Act 1961, it was a crime to die by suicide, and anyone who attempted and survived could be prosecuted and imprisoned, while the families of those who died could also potentially be prosecuted.

decionsdecisions62 · 16/01/2024 09:01

@FatBack2023 yes after my father took his own life I thought 'it's not a selfish act' but then after a second family member I likened it to a terrorist detonating a bomb and my children being caught in the explosion. That analogy doesn't sit easily with some people but that's my reality.

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 16/01/2024 08:59

Fionaville · 15/01/2024 21:28

I've had two relatives end their lives (two different sides of the family) One 10 years ago. One 5 years ago. Both felt their immediate families would be better off without them. Obviously they weren't, apart from financially.
Without going into details, both of them did it in a horrific way that severely impacted other people unknown to them (who would have probably needed counselling) and onlookers. Which, to me is the part I find almost unforgivable.
I don't know if it's more common now or there's just more awareness. It's heartbreaking for the people left behind.

I’ve attempted a few times but the early ones were where I was quite young. This year I had quite a long period where I was catatonically depressed and pretty much the only reason I didn’t do it was because my housemates would have to come across me somehow after.
To OP: mental health services have deteriorated and wait lists have increased. But eight years ago the wait list for an ADHD assessment was two years - that’s the assessment, not the help. They were crap then too. I’m currently waiting for help for stuff which includes but is not limited to alcohol related stuff, so I could put myself on a path to a very early death. I’m on a path for an alcohol/mental health specialist unit and even though I might die in the interim I’m told to keep drinking and wait for the help.

decionsdecisions62 · 16/01/2024 08:57

I've personally suffered two close family suicides and I find some responses on here glib and trite. Don't try to be amusing on a thread about suicide. It's a new low!

I think the data shows that rates are not increasing, there was obviously a Covid blip. My brother took his like in 2021. Also January is a month which people struggle. March is another believe it or not. We think Spring. They think it's another year of life I just can do.

quisensoucie · 16/01/2024 08:57

FatBack2023 · 15/01/2024 22:21

I knew this would be triggering for me upon reading the title, but couldn't stop myself from opening this thread.
I've been affected by 3 suicides.
My grandmother - I cannot tell you how much I adored her, I was in love with her and we were so, so close - took her life when I was 14. The pain I've felt ever since is indescribable and I'm late 40s now, it still hasn't gone. She was only in her 50s. I couldn't, as a child, understand why she'd chosen to do it, and I still can't understand now. I've never been given any explanation for it as it's not talked about in my family.
My stepfather - he took his life when I was a child and my sibling was a baby. There was no warning, no sign. It was sudden, over and done with in 2 minutes, and it single handedly ruined the rest of our childhoods. It destroyed my mother's emotional and mental health. It plunged us as a family in to economic hardship from which my mum has never recovered. I would say it's actually probably ruined the rest of my sibling's life because he's never been able to mentally recover from it.
And my mum's best friend, who I was close to, took her own life with a 3 year old daughter. She had severe post natal depression. Needless to say, her daughter has grown up devastated.
I think what I've learned is that suicide causes lifelong intense grieving and guilt for loved ones.
I spend most days wondering how all those 3 loved ones would be today if they'd lived and got through what they were feeling at the time. If they could look back and say "I went through a really dark time then, but I'm so glad I got through it".
Might be because of my personal experience, but I think suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness; I believe that at that time, how they are feeling is all consuming and they can think of nothing else.

Edited

I am sorry you have experience of the effect this has on people.
But to say it is selfish shows how little you understand people. You don't have to be having MH issues to want to end your life. Anything, illness, grief, boredom, alcoholism, drug addiction, can make you consider options
But we all should have the right to determine our time, place and manner of death (where possible), and it is more selfish for friends/relatives to make/want people who want to die, stay alive

Riverlee · 16/01/2024 08:55

Sorry if I read the room wrong with my trigger warning suggestion. Thought I was trying to be helpful. No need for all the sarcastic comments. (Especially on a thread with this subject matter).

quisensoucie · 16/01/2024 08:52

biscuitnut · 15/01/2024 22:01

Suicidal feelings are usually temporary. If you can hold on the feelings do pass. We all talk about mental health as if there is some magic potion the NHS can give us that will make it better, it’s not so simple. It takes a multi-factored approach starting with lending a listening ear.

That is not correct - unless of course, you can back the statement up with published, peer-reviewed articles

quisensoucie · 16/01/2024 08:50

gonetogreece · 15/01/2024 21:41

This thread needs a TW

No, it does not
Dear god

quisensoucie · 16/01/2024 08:48

Riverlee · 15/01/2024 21:27

Can mumsnet put a trigger warning on this - some people may find it upsetting.

Is there anything to be debated here that does not require a TW these days?

WhatsInStoreFor2024 · 16/01/2024 08:46

What mental health service.... with all the money in the world thrown at it....would work?

People say we have poor MH service. I don't know what would help....counselling seems a waste of time

ReachingForReacher · 16/01/2024 08:11

As a side note, I think it's the height of selfishness to expect someone to live in unbearable pain and distress for decades just to save you grieving.
It's a lot more than grieving.
People I love have died naturally, and my Dad killed himself. It's not the same process, at all.

My opinion is that it is a selfish thing to do. Some people think it isn't. We are all entitled to our thoughts.

Like a PP, my dad's suicide ruined the lives of my mother and sisters. I had a mental breakdown at 20 years old. My baby sister has been suicidal most of her life. The poverty we were plunged into, the social outcasts we become.

It's not easy being in a place where you think the only option is to end it all. It's also not easy being the person left behind. It's an awful life, full of guilt, unanswered questions, shame and much more.

But - there's no winners here, everybody loses.

Boomer55 · 16/01/2024 07:34

ToWhitToWhoo · 15/01/2024 23:21

While rates have gone up slightly recently, possibly due to the isolation and lack of MH support due to Covid, plus the economic crisis, rates were higher in the past. As PP have said, there was more of a stigma in the past, and suicides were reported as 'accidents' if at all possible. Until 1961, attempted suicide was treated as a criminal offence in the UK. So people often didn't talk about it.

Two of my mother's relatives took their own lives in separate incidents in the 1950s. At least one of my schoolmates died by suicide as a teenager in the 1970s. So did a close friend's father, also in the 70s. Three people whom I knew died by suicide in the 90s. And far more people whom I know tried unsuccessfully - most of them not that recently.

That's anecdote- but there is a lot of evidence that suicide rates are lower than a few decades ago. By far the highest rates in the last 100 years were during the Great Depression.

I think, decades ago, that it was also the policy that insurance firms didn’t pay out for life insurance, in suicide cases.

Families tried to get a different verdict, because as well as the stigma, the finances also came into play.

Youcannotbeseriousreally · 16/01/2024 07:13

WristCandy · 15/01/2024 22:56

Please tell me you don't work in mental healthcare?

Many, many people have no services because they ask and beg and reach out and there is nothing there except for a crisis line telling you to make a cup of tea or call Samaritans.

Many, many people have 'care' which is so appalling it is actively abusive.

Show quote history

I don’t. ( you’ll be pleased to know - how rude!)

I don’t actually have the job anymore. But essentially it was my job to review. I based my post on ACTUAL findings. Everything I said there was true.

Darkplace100 · 16/01/2024 05:02

In my case I'm not so much "thinking" blackness. I'm "feeling" and therefore "seeing" blackness. I hide away safe, focus my brain on that point in time and doing as little as possible, whilst the feeling subsides.

In my case I'm convinced it's my bodies reaction in some way to stress. Especially in the way it subsides gradually if I take "time out".

Darkplace100 · 16/01/2024 04:37

Thanks. Sadly I've reacted to medication prescribed before so I have to work on coping strategies and therapy when it gets bad.

TwoOfMine · 16/01/2024 02:51

I suppose if you've got money they're are places but even then not really

Somewhere safe, but not medical or where you will be judged

Somewhere to just be

TwoOfMine · 16/01/2024 02:49

There is nowhere for people to go

Nowhere

There are mental institutions / hospitals but there needs to be somewhere in-between you can go to just feel better

To just lie stare at the ceiling or walls till your brain sorts itself out

ithinkthatmaybeimdreaming · 16/01/2024 02:31

alltootired · 16/01/2024 01:23

Living independently until 98 is very rare.
Lots of people die in their seventies. It is not that young.

Lots of people also die in their 60s, 50s, 40s .....

Most people in their 70s are living full lives, some are still working. I really don't get this idea that someone of 75 is so old that life is not worth living. Many on MN seem to think that once you reach 60 it's all downhill and you might as well start packing your bags.

Incidentally, a woman I know recently celebrated her 101st birthday - she lives independently, and it's not really that unusual for people in their 90s to live alone, maybe with some help, maybe not.

thebestinterest · 16/01/2024 02:00

It’s not that the topic is talked about more; people are increasingly finding the demands of modern society difficult to cope with.

VivienneDelacroix · 16/01/2024 01:37

Suicide was very taboo until very recently. My dad didn't know that his grandfather died by suicide until 50+ years later. It was my dad's dad who found him, and yet he never once mentioned it.

Similarly, an uncle died by suicide and it was only talked about privately, never publicly or to people outside the family, it was hushed up and shameful.

kisstheblarney · 16/01/2024 01:30

IwouldntWorry · 15/01/2024 22:35

My ex died by suicide relatively recently. The guilt, pain and confusion will never leave me. My children’s lives came to a standstill, they were traumatised and their lives will never be what they would have been.

I swing between anger and sadness, between thinking he was completely selfish to my heart breaking for his pain. There is very little support for the people left behind.

Which in its self can lead to MH issues, it needs thousands more funding!

kisstheblarney · 16/01/2024 01:29

Thmssngvwlsrnd · 15/01/2024 22:25

I don't see it as selfishness at all. I think suicidal people are not in their right mind and can't make rational decisions. They're not able to consider their loved ones' feelings in that state.

They also truly believe the world would be a better place without term.

I get so angry with people who trot out it's selfish!

Selfish??

Do they say that to people dying from other illnesses? People who have heart attacks?

No, I didn't think so.

When people start realising mental health illness is not a choice, then maybe it will be recognised as an illness the same as cancer and diabetes and more treatment available.

The body goes a bit haywire - sympathy and hospital admission

The mind goes a bit haywire - it's ignored, no services are available and when the ultimate happens, they're called selfish.

It's awful.

alltootired · 16/01/2024 01:23

Living independently until 98 is very rare.
Lots of people die in their seventies. It is not that young.

CustardySergeant · 16/01/2024 01:05

YouJustDoYou · 15/01/2024 21:27

My life limit is 75. I will see how am doing then, then decide how I will proceed. I refuse to rot with my choices taken from me in a carehome etc,

My mother didn't need to go into a care home until she was 98. She lived alone perfectly well until then. The care home was lovely btw.
I am 70 next month. I think having a "life limit" of 75 is a bit young.

PanickingAgainNow · 16/01/2024 00:38

Justfinking · 15/01/2024 22:42

I've lost someone to this which was devastating. After many years I now have come to terms with it, and I actually think if you want to do it it should be your choice. Why should you have to be miserable each day. I appreciate the saying it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but I don't think this is always accurate as some people suffer from depression and bad luck and there doesn't ever seem to be a light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel

I agree. It isn’t really fair to expect someone to live in mental agony when every second is torture.