The S-Word

Outdated in more ways than one

And you wonder why there's still a stigma attached to depression and suicide? Jesus, I've just listened to a news story on a radio show which included the details of someone who committed suicide several years ago. Problem is that the entire story was discussed at length but without a single mention of the S-word. Instead the person who had taken an overdose was said to have "died from depression". Excuse me?
Look, while depression really is a matter of life and death how on earth did the brains behind this story manage to discuss suicide without actually mentioning suicide? That takes a certain kind of genius, like the nuts who produce tampon adverts without using the word 'period' or Tena Lady ads that never, ever refer to wee.
What in the fuck is wrong with using the word 'suicide' when talking about suicide? Apart from the fact that this Medieval approach to a modern problem simply bolsters its outdated stigma, do the producers actually realise the impact this has upon listeners? Anyone feeling suicidal or living through the suicide of someone else gets just one message from the refusal to use the S-word on a show like this and that's another S-word: shame. 
As if thinking about killing yourself doesn't feel mortifying enough, now there's some implied hush-hush about the issue on a radio show. It's like telling sufferers that just when they felt freaky enough, society can make them feel even freakier.
Anyway, what in the frig did the producers of this show think would happen if they mentioned suicide? That there'd be a wave of listeners stampede towards Beachy Head or a run on paracetamol in Tesco?
The point is that this sort of refusal to speak openly about suicide simply makes the problem worse. It encourages suffers to keep their feelings to themselves, to rebuff help and support and to just plough on until suicide becomes the only, and shameful, way out. Just when they feel at their lowest, society comes along and stamps a heavy, dark boot onto what's left of them.
Thank fuck, radio discussions like this one are on their way out. Increasingly the media is treating suicide with the sensitivity and honesty and acceptance that it deserves. It's clearly not enough yet though, is it? Let's hope that any sufferers who were privy to this show realise that there's a problem although, this time, it's not with them.

Scaredy Cats

Not in Kansas any more

If there’s one really bloody hideous thing that comes gift-wrapped with the onset of a breakdown it’s this: fear. And not just any fear. I mean the sort of fear that makes sweat run down your back and freeze in the crack of your arse. And once it has set in it isn’t half a bastard to shake off.

It’s only recently struck me that this hairy demon of terror pervaded my every waking – and unconscious – moment when I was in the midst of my nuclear size mental meltdown. There was the fear that I was going mad, that I’d already gone mad, that I was going to be locked up, that Kraken Junior would be taken away, that my family would abandon me, that I’d never recover, that my mates would turn their backs on me, that I would never work again, that I would never contribute to society again, that I would never feel happiness again, that I’d forever be branded a failure as a human being, that the Tories would drag me through the streets and rub my nose in my illness and that the next time I decided to make a cuppa my shrunken brain would fall out of one ear with the pressure of it all. And that’s just when I was awake. When I was asleep the nightmares took over wonderfully efficiently, thank you very much.

This fear was one of the worst things about being on the business end of a breakdown. I continuously felt as if I was one utterance away from being bundled into a hospital van or left to the terrifying earnestness of the Social Services. Each time I was met with support the black-hearted little bastard sitting on my shoulder would whisper fresh threats into my ear.  “The GP will think you’re nuts”, “You think that counsellor will let you walk out of here?”, “That psych’s going to call the police on you”, “You think the therapist will let you see your kid again?”.

Which, oddly, was how the darkness became punctuated with the tiniest shards of joy. I recall telling my counsellor that I was having suicidal thoughts and he received this news with such a stunning lack of shock that I almost inverted myself with relief. He didn’t call in an armed unit, the Social Services or even press any hidden panic buttons. He just said, “OK” and proceeded to chat about it as if we were discussing the scandalous price of chicken breasts in Tesco.

You know those films where the star can see a huge friendly rabbit or some other weird creature but no one else can? The fear is like that. You feel it, live it, eat it and sleep it but no one knows it’s there. Not a single soul. So telling someone that, if they look slightly to your left, they might see that frigging enormous black dog slobbering all over you is one fuck of a leap.

It’s a leap that’s worth, well, leaping though. With every admittance of my mental state the fear has gotten smaller and smaller. It’s still there, the hairy little bastard, but it’s got one of those stupid little Alvin and the Chipmunk voices now, rather than a booming James Earl Jones number. The cold sweat still runs down the crack of my arse from time to time but something I’ve learned keeps me ploughing on though it: all I’ve done is get sick. And now I’m getting better. Perhaps there really is nothing to fear but fear itself after all.