Trigger Warning [Adventure]

TW: Suicide discussed

[Adventure 167]

Recently on social media, a friend explained the preference for the language surrounding suicide to be "died by suicide" rather than "committed suicide." The former denotes the results of severe mental illness. The latter victim-blames. 

As someone who has had suicidal thoughts and has also attempted suicide, I can say that those two things are completely separate entities. There is a huge chasm between the mental state of someone thinking about / considering suicide as an option and someone who is in such a mental state that suicide seems the only viable and unselfish thing to do. When having suicidal thoughts, both suicide and living are options and one has the capability of making that decision. When actually suicidal, that capability disappears. 

As difficult as it is to imagine for many, a person can get to the point where they are fully consumed with their reality that they have no option but to kill themselves. Those are the people who die of suicide or come very close to doing so. Thank goodness most people don't get to that point.

When people come to me for support, I don't argue about word choices. I do pull from the hundreds of conversations I've had with people who have been suicidal and the conversations I've had with dozens of mental health care professionals about suicide and do what I can do help. I don't question their experience or whether or not they're making a choice, I believe them. I don't question the severity of their experience or intimate that I know what they're going through.

People who say that suicide is always a choice are voicing their opinion, but not the reality for many of us. Telling those of us whose mental illness has stripped us of that choice that suicide is always a choice is not support. It is harmful.

To those of us who have had the choice taken away by mental illness, there is a huge difference between victim-blaming language like "committing suicide" and mental illness acknowledging language like "died by suicide." Victim-blaming language is harmful and triggering to those of us who have been at the point where it was not a decision to be made; where rationality didn't exist; where there was no choice.