Thank you for this! I really appreciate your article. I had been suicidal before and even tried to kill myself once in 1994. I still don’t have kids, though I have a dog and 3 cats as well as a husband. My depression was at its worst in ‘06 and ‘07, but I was fortunate that I didn’t become suicidal. I was soooo close to getting there, but I skimmed the edge. I’m doing a whole lot better now, though.

Thank you for your article. This is a vitally important issue for any parent who has ever had suicidal thoughts. I’d like to correct some of your information, however. Sylvia was 30 years old when she died of suicide. The fact that she died 46 years ago may be the source of your confusion. So Nick managed to live half again as long as his mother did. Also, Nick was thirteen months old, and Frieda almost three, when their mother died.

Although there currently is no scientific proof that suicide is hereditary, the fact that it can be contagious — in cultures, communities, and families — is undeniable.

More needs to be done to educate the public on this topic and change the healthcare system in this country to address mental illness with the same tenacity it does diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

Thanks for speaking out.

Just a general grammatical FYI, by the way — the proper conjugation of the verb “to hang” when used to mean killing someone is “hanged.” For example: “He hanged himself” but “We hung the drapes.”

Thanks.

Susan:
Thank you for your comments and corrections. You are right. I have made the changes. I appreciate your edit!

Just in general, not specifically in response to this particular article: thank you so much for your wonderful work. After reading some of your articles here, I went back and read your prior articles on Palm Beach Post. I’m so grateful to you for talking about mental illness, and particularly depression, in such an open way, and I’m especially grateful for how you share your experiences and your struggles. I struggle with depression too, and it’s helpful to me to read your articles and know that someone else has felt the same way. Thanks for all that you do, and keep up the good work!

The way I look at it is this: I bought that line too, about staying alive for one’s kids. I’m giving them three more years. They’ll be out of high school (my daughter will be 30) and that will just have to be enough.

Jude —

My mother died of cancer, not suicide, when I was twenty-five, and I can tell you from experience having a mother that long is not enough. Her death triggered my first episode of major depression, which lasted more than four excruciating years. Now that I have children of my own I miss my mother more than ever. My oldest child, a 4 1/2 year-old daughter, knows her grandmother died and whenever we talk about it, she starts to cry and sobs, “I miss her!” Even though they never met, her feelings toward my mother are genuine and deep. She understands there’s an absence in her life where another loving human being should be.

Just because your children may no longer need you in the sense that they rely on you to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, they neither need or deserve to be psychologically abandoned by you at any point in their lives. You’re kidding yourself if you think their loss of you by your own hand won’t scar them for life and that they’d be better off without you. Trust me, a depressed mother is better than no mother at all.

I consider myself to have survived two suicides — one occurred shortly before I was born, the other just recently. My entire life I’ve witnessed my father and grandmother attempt to deal with the bitterness, anger, confusion, sorrow, abandonment, grief, bewilderment and despair they were left with in the wake of the first suicide — the one that happened before I was born. That suicide robbed me of the people they were and would’ve been if the suicide hadn’t occurred.

As a result, I’ve decided to fight the contagion and break the cycle. I’ve vowed never to inflict that measure of undescribable, intractable pain on anyone I love. And frankly, the fact that I don’t have that option frightens me. I dread having to live through another relapse, I can’t imagine going through that kind of pain again, but I’m in talk therapy with a great psychiatrist, I’m finally on the right medication, and I’ve got a great support network in my friends, who are all well aware of my health problems. If you can, Jude, try erasing suicide from your list of options for finding relief from your psychic pain and start considering the choices that remain. Don’t just wait around passively until your kids graduate. Start going to therapy or get a new therapist; get on drugs or switch your prescription . . . just do something! And remember, as the tragic story of the Plath/Hughes family shows, if you kill yourself, your kids are more likely to do the same. That’s a terrible legacy to pass on.

Courage to you –

Susan

I agree with you-the idea of not having the option of suicide (because of my husband and son)is terrifying. Thank you, Susan, for putting words to this thought I’ve had buried inside me for so long.

Mary

If only we were as lucky as George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) in It’s A Wonderful Life. Remember when he jumped off the bridge on Christmas Eve because he thought his family would be better off without him? Wouldn’t it be great if we could all have an angel like Clarence to show us what the world would be like if we weren’t in it?

On this topic, see the editorial by Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of Anne Sexton, in Friday’s New York Times (April 4, 2009):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opinion/03sexton.html?scp=1&sq=linda%20gray%20sexton&st=cse

Thank you for the sentence “Don’t quit before the miracle” I am going to keep that one, maybe use it as my “crie de guerre”.