Jokes about suicide in the office

[HuckleberryGin]

Two colleagues this morning who sit next to me discussing the traffic getting home last night. A road had been closed/delayed due to a woman sitting on a bridge, police and ambulances in attendance, due to a possible suicide attempt. They were obviously annoyed at the delay, but were saying (loudly and laughing) "oh I just wanted to shout, just get on with it" and "if you wanna kill yourself, fine, but don't get in other people's way" amongst other things. They were chatting and laughing for a while agreeing that if you want to kill yourself you shouldn't hold other people up and get in the way. Or that she didn't really mean it and was just attention seeking.

I have Bipolar disorder. They know this, as does everyone in office as I have some reasonable adjustments and I am very open about it. I also suffered from post natal psychosis and was suicidal- including standing on a bridge with my daughter as a baby (not with her she was in pram). They also know this as I did some fundraising for the Mother and Baby unit recently.

I am very upset, I actually had to go outside as was tearful and a bit panicky with breathing. I'm not sure if I'm being over sensitive or unreasonable to expect people not to talk like this in the office or in front of me.

PurpleAquilegia women with PND and Psychosis are more likely to kill themselves in highly violent ways, like trains and cars. They usually want to ensure that they are fully successful. Or another theory is that is a form of extra punishment on themselves, that they deserve a violent death.

I have spoken to line manager. Who isn't exactly effective, but sys she is going to have a word. She says they won't have meant to upset me. Which I realise.

Glad your line manager is taking it seriously. Whether they meant to upset you or anyone else who might be quietly affected is beside the point. I know we can't tiptoe around every issue out there for fear of offending someone but a little sensitivity and common sense goes a long way. I hope you're ok OP, I have been personally affected by suicide and find it touches a nerve when people make light of it and it drags a lot of old issues up for me. Don't let the narrow-minded few cause you any issues.

Some people are such cunts about suicide. Most people in that place as so severely mentally ill, that they have lost capacity for rational thought.

My dear best friend hung herself aged 19. It was clearly very distressing for the staff in the psychiatric ward who found her. I doubt she was thinking about that. I know she felt selfish for "wasting" NHS resources because she was struggling so much. I know she felt guilty because her parents were struggling to cope with her mental illness. I know she thought it was the least selfish option to die. Her diary was found later. I miss her immensely and feel huge pain, even after all these years.

Huckleberry I'm glad you said something. It is completely unacceptable in a professional environment.

She says they won't have meant to upset me. Which I realise.

Well done for speaking up. Whether they were intentionally being upsetting or not is totally irrelevant. What they were saying was completely inappropriate for the office.

My mother suffered from severe depression. She had good days and bad. At one point she was bemoaning something and I remember her father turning round and shouting that everything wasn't just about her. Other people have problems too.
Unfortunately the tube driver I knew had to give up his job and ended up on the sick . Totally wrecked his life.

*“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing.

The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors.

It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames.

And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”*

• David Foster Wallace, died by suicide 2008.

For anyone who thinks that "dramatic" forms of suicide are in some way for show, reflect on that quote. It's not that the person is selfish. It's that the thought of death, and the pain, is so strong that everything else pales.

I have been that person standing on a bridge or on the railway tracks. I was not in my right mind, not thinking of anyone or anything else, because I physically hurt more than I had ever hurt. All that was in my head was pain and I wanted to smash it out of me, and to make sure that my death was final. It is not about drama.

Additionally, men kill themselves violently in far greater numbers than women. To imply that these men are selfish is to do them a serious disservice, as their suicide tends to result from their lack of desire to burden other people with their problems.

They were being distasteful but I would just let it go. Not worth getting worked up about.

yellow Even if that is your opinion, how on earth could you write that post after listening to others express the heartache that they and their families have gone through in similar circumstances?! Horrible

Nasty little post yellow

And welcome to Mumsnet, the site where for every ten kind-hearted and sensitive individual, there will be at least one complete and utter fuckwit.

OP, I would probably have lost it with them. My friend committed suicide in a 'quiet manner' six years ago. She took a paracetamol overdose. She didn't want to 'make a mess'.

She was rushed to hospital and had her stomach pumped. Twenty four hours later, she was awake and talking. Her family assumed she had pulled through. She even apologised for what she had done. However, the amount she had taken caused massive liver failure and she died two days later.

I live near a railway crossing and there is a big sign for The Samaritans on the gate. My throat closes over every time I see it. I understand why we sometimes resort to black humour when faced with truly disturbing circumstances, but to make these jokes in front of someone with serious depression is bang out of order. I wish I lived nearby, because I'd be charging in there right now and saying something.

Well manager spoke to them and then they went off to chat about it in kitchen. They aren't happy with me. I've tried to explain that I know it wasn't intentional etc. One of them has told that she is just blunt and that's how it is, that she was being tongue in cheek and she won't apologise for it.

Which then upset me more. I shouldn't have said anything. I've been made to feel unreasonable, that if people don't mean it I can't get upset about it.

Oh yes. 'Blunt' and 'tongue in cheek', I.e 'thoughtless and insensitive'. I think you were right to complain. I hope this doesn't make life difficult for you, OP. Why can't she just apologise? How hard is that?

People like Yellow and your colleagues are scummy. They have never dealt with suicide. No, your relative suffering from depression is not the same. It doesn't mean you have insight and personal experience....in the same way that my dad's sprained wrist is not the same as the person who needed both arms amputated.

There are three or four issues here - all intertwined:
The appropriateness of the jokes - general agreement it was not appropriate
The motives and effects of suicides - difficult; distressing subject
The fact that we don't know the details of someone else's life - worth remembering
People are dying/hurting/suffering all the time - and we have always used humour to deal with it. Time and place might have been wrong but they were not monsters to joke about it.

How many LTB comments, "I'll kill you if you are late back" "I could have murdered him"! "God! I'm losing the will to live!" "Having kids has bankrupted me! Ha! Ha!" - all fine in context but there will always be someone for whom this is really not funny.

Maybe they're not monsters, but they're utter arseholes to refuse to apologise when they know they've hurt someone with their jokes.

Chikara but surely you wouldn't make those jokes whilst talking about an actual murder? In front of someone affected by those issues?

YANBU . It is not funny. whether it is a cry for help or whatever. I say that as someone who has lost 2 friends to suicide in the past few years.

I feel like I've made the situation soon much worse. I should have just kept quiet. One person was just upset that I hadn't did something directly, but I pointed out I was very upset. They've been talking about it with others so no doubt I will be seen as the pathetic PC one. It's quite a small office, less than 30 people.

The way to stop suicide is to vastly improve the standard of mental health care. So many people are dying because the system is so stretched that it can't offer the most basic support to many people. Thia would not be tolerated in any other part of the NHS.

OP, I also have bipolar and would be similarly affected by hearing that.

I call people on this sort of talk and "jokes". When a colleague moaned that someone jumping in front of a train and delaying our journey home was selfish, I told him that if you are at that point then you have no concept of selfishness. And how utterly selfish of him to complain about being home an hour late when somewhere a family is suffering so badly. He had nowhere to be, just his sofa in front of the TV.

It is just ignorance and stupidity. I have never been anywhere close to the point of suicide, yet I have enough intelligence to understand that when you are there, "normal" logic does not dictate your actions.

He had nowhere to be, just his sofa in front of the TV

by this statement, you are being as narrow-minded, ignorant and stupid as the colleague you are complaining about.

You might have nothing better to do with your life after you finish work, but other people are really suffering by being delay. If you can't show compassion for them, why do you expect sympathy from them?

I agree that it's a pity that the NHS is too stretched too help people, but when you see that there is no support for mothers with healthy babies, even if they have PND, (or available urgent medical treatment countrywide) I can't see any improvement anytime soon.

I'm originally from the town generally considered the suicide capital of Britain. People make cracks about it all the time. I have family, friends and neighbours who have committed suicide so I tend to react quite forcibly. I find most people are quite sheepish when called out on it.