To feel very uncomfortable about this Guardian article?

[KingscoteStaff]

Front page of the 'Family' section. A grandfather talking about his 21 yo granddaughter who has just committed suicide.

It just doesn't feel real. Could it be some sort of exercise in writing the most unsympathetic narrator ever?

"Arguably there are advantages in regarding the person who took their own life as the main agent in their own death."
Why not direct that anger where it belongs? At the illness which caused that person to commit suicide. Suicide is a manifestation of the symptoms of an illness, not a character flaw.

What a weird and poorly-written article. Were the editors (of style and sense) off sick that day?

What about respect for Emma though Yello? Since she's 1. Dead and 2. Unable to defend herself.

I don't understand that lottie.

In law you can't slander the dead.

In real life family has a lot to work through. A lot to try to understand.

One of those things is that the dead person was flawed, was not perfect (oh how I hate the revisionists... She was a wonderful woman.. was she hell!!) was not who we thought they were.

From my perspective respecting the dead is about being able to see them as they were, as they touched you, not being ultra careful not to say anything negative about them, ever, anywhere, anyhow!

Again, that is a matter for each individual, no way of dealing with it is more right or wrong.

Yello and Blanche - make good points about the modern way we speak about the dead.

It disrespects them and those who lived with them

It's a very Victorian thing, I think. A time of great changes in social mores, conspicuous emotions, etc. You only have to look in older graveyards and see the difference pre- and post-Victorian era memorials.

Gloria you have one interpretation of his article other pp have seen it in a different light

And an awful lot of posters, I think the majority, have interpreted it the same way as me.

You have entirely missed the point of my post which was not that those left behind should not feel anger, the issue is on the quality and direction of the anger.

You say that all onlookers can do is let the mentally ill person know they care. But the only detail we have of the writer's interaction with his gd when she was ill was criticising her for use of a word that made her so upset she cried. There is little evidence that he cared about her much at all other than minding the distress and inconvenience she caused her family. (Not saying he didn't, simply there isn't much evidence of it in the text.) Quite apart from the hypocrisy of criticising her for use of 'retards' as offensive and judgemental, then labelling her an attention-seeking bad seed.

Imo there is a right and a wrong way to write about a dead woman in a national newspaper. Not like this.

I don't think it has anything to do with slander.

Why not direct that anger where it belongs? At the illness which caused that person to commit suicide. Suicide is a manifestation of the symptoms of an illness, not a character flaw.

Exactly.

It's the direction of the anger that's the issue.

Well, I like this article a whole lot more just because it spawned this thread and opened up this conversation. I feel that a lot of the issues that have been discussed on this thread could be helped by more conversations like this.

There is a lack of awareness around mental health of both the effect on people suffering with mental health problems and on the families and friends who are touched by it. It is still a taboo topic that is too often subject to judgement and stereotyping. This does not help anyone.

I have said up thread that I do not like this article. My view of it is filtered through the lense of my own mental health issues as well as my experience of friends and family members who have struggled. Over the past day I have thought a lot about my reaction to it and why I feel the way I do and have realised that for me it reflects back my own sense of shame both about some of the things I did when ill and my own perceived failings at 'doing the right thing' for ill family.

In the past I have done things that people would be shocked and appalled at. I would most certainly be judged harshly for the actions I took and the choices I made. It has taken me many, many years to accept that what I did was a form of self harm. I have learnt to take ownership of these actions, while also understanding that when I acted I was not in a position to understand the consequences of what I did. I was for all intents and purposes delusional about what I was doing and my reasons for doing it. I did it, but I did not act with full reason.

When someone is suffering a mental illness there is often no clear line that says all of these actions belong to this person and all of these actions belong to the illness. It is hard to untangle. It is a world of grey areas, littered with shame and blame on all sides.

I am well aware of the risk of triteness when I say this, but I think it is only through careful, honest and open conversations that we can come to some sort of understanding and awareness. I feel very lucky to have a place where this can happen.

Once again, mumsnet proves its awesomeness :)

Gloria go back and have a re-read. I know I have typed it, iPost and others too, I think.

We have acknowledged that the anger is misdirected and that it can take quite some time to work through. That was my original post, 20 pages ago. That had I read this piece all those years ago I would have realised that my feelings were 'normal' that I wasn't a monster for having them and that I would be able to work through them far more effectively!

Irritating as that may be...

I think its badly written and shows a lack of love. Yes, grief hits you in many ways and phases - shock, anger, hurt, guilt, sorrow - so to be charitable I'd say he was at one of those points. But he doesn't seem to have extended much charity to his granddaughter or to have tried to understand her condition at all. (Simply that she was wheedling and tricking professionals). I think he may live to regret writing this (and packing in way too many words), since he doesn't demonstrate his love for this tragic young person and could very well be inflicting further hurt on her parents by writing it.

Jeepers precisely!

he has nothing to justify

why does he have to justify how he feels

I have worked as a bereavement counsellor what he has written I have heard over and over again but in others stories personal to them so the experiences are unique to them but the feelings of what he has expressed, the trying to make sense of what has happened and not being able to are very similar to some but not to all

Who is saying he should justify his feelings?

I doubt your clients publish their thoughts in a national newspaper because counselling is where these kinds of feelings are best expressed.

Blanche

My post was a direct response to another poster who said:

So to say someone shouldn't be feeling anger and disillusionment after the death of a loved one from suicide, seems especially cruel

This is the second time that you've taken my comment to another poster and made it about you. Please understand that not all the posts on this thread are directed at you.

Quite apart from making an article about a dead woman all about you too.

What a person says in the privacy of a counselling session is a separate issue to how he writes about it in a national newspaper.

If you want to have a private conversation then have one, Gloria.

But
a) the 'irritating' post was seen as being in response to me by other posters...

b) I think you will find that any poster can respond to any post. If you don't want to read other people's opinions then don't. But my response to your post is still valid.

As for that last bit. I am stunned that you need to make such ridiculous statements, to attempt to be so personally insulting.

Unless, of course, you do what I did when I made the same error, here in this thread. Accept that that is unacceptable behaviour and apologise!

yy to garlicsapphire

It was actually a response to iPost in fact.

Confused by the fact that when you answered it I thought you were the same poster.

Never mind Gloria.

We seem to have different ways of using a forum too

Are people reading a different article to me? I just don't understand how people can say he's not blaming her:

' the girl who refused to let joy into her life'

'She was hell-bent on self harm'

'She punished [her body] without remission'

'She extended the maltreatment to her immediate family'

'spent the next subsidised 18 months resisting every available mode of occupation or trade or pastime'

'where the seeds of persecution and victimisation were allegedly sown'

'so that she could starve herself into the commencement of the next cycle. Every tactic contradictory, every endeavour repercussive, obviously she was on the path to self-destruction.'

'her glib protest was accepted. She...was released, doubtless to the sound of a vast institutional sigh.'

'Emma’s default vision was black. It was where she felt most comfortable'

'she’d subjected ecstasy to her typical revisionism. By the time she emerged from the back seat, the excursion had been converted into “the worst experience of my whole entire life"'.

'Once again, she’d consumed pleasure at the moment of delivery and then divested herself of its nutritional value'

'reportedly vigilant of insect life and its poisonous sting'

'She rarely completed any project'

'her wonted course … the spiral to despair.'

'she spun the incident'

It's just blame, blame, blame. He doesn't see her illness as an illness, he sees it as a conscious decision she made.

The other thing that strikes me is that every time she expresses a feeling she's told it's wrong. Her parents were great, anything else is lying; she wasn't scared of bugs, she was making it up; she wasn't too sick to work, she was resisting it to be difficult; she loved the bird and was just pretending she didn't like it; her saying he'd upset her with his criticism was 'spin'; her criticism of classmates was 'judgemental'. This denying of feelings is typical of abusive families and is a recognised factor of several MH problems including BPD and eating disorders as it causes children to lose any sense of themselves as individuals.

It's ironic he is so desperate to blame Emma whilst also displaying behaviour which may well have been the real root of her problems.

But I fail to see how anyone can say that this article doesn't blame when it explicitly blames her for her own illness several times and characterises it as something she chose to do.

Bill yes, he is.

Some of us have acknowledged that we felt the same when our loved ones committed suicide.

Others find that reprehensible or unimaginable.

But yes, we are all reading the same article. And interpreting each and every thing you have quoted, the parts you find objectionable, each according to our own lights!

I think the only part of the article where you get a glimpse of his own actual grieving is where he talks about her scrapbook. 'Unbearably normal' - because she was so ill most of the time that it was diffcult to read. OTOH he does also seem to be saying 'why couldn't she have been like that all the time?'

So generally I agree with BillSykes that most of the language in the article, expresses at best that he doesn't understand mental illness at all. At worst, he does seem to direct a lot of blame towards her and I don't see much evidence that he loved her.

I think its badly written and shows a lack of love

Maybe he didn't love her.

It is quite likely that he hated what she was doing to herself and her immediate family so much that he was unable to see past that and separate Emma from the illness.

Tough.

We shouldn't judge people for being honest in their emotions - the way we feel can at times be very uncomfortable and not in line with social 'norms' about how people are meant to react