An ambulance delivered me to the emergency room, and after a nasty episode with activated charcoal and a tearful huddle with my Mom, I was sent to the psychiactric floor at the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster BC. It was 1986. The memories I have are murky, and some have disappeared altogether. I lied my way through just one visit with a psychiatrist. He asked about drugs, alcohol, and sex, and I just kept saying no, no, no. I don’t know if he met with my parents, or what he may have said to them. I was told to have a shower, and a nurse stayed in the room with me. I visited the smoking room (if you can imagine such a thing), and sat thigh to thigh on plastic chairs with mostly older, hospital-gowned men and women in various states of discombobulation. At one time I could remember what they spoke about: their stories, advice, and outbursts. Now, I just have an impression that I was scared, and that I wanted to go home. I’d like to think a young woman might have a different experience now: an opportunity to build rappport with mental health support, family involvement, aftercare, but I had none of that. What I did have was shame, deep self-hatred, and the sense that I was a failure. They sent me home after a few days, and my family and I never spoke about my suicide attempt again. I have little understanding of how I muddled through the next few years, except that I chose to return to school – college – and in the process, found a sense of belonging.
Uncategorized
Quietus
During my recent and frequent bouts of insomnia, I’ve been revisiting some favorite novels. Children of Men by P.D. James (1992), is set in 2021. The human race has stopped reproducing – no new babies have been born since 1995, and the aging population is looking for answers. A dictatorship now rules Britain, and the leader has implemented a series of unpalatable policies: frequent and humiliating fertility testing, widespread pornographic stimulation, and for those becoming a burden on society, an opportunity:
“By his decree the old are herded onto a ship for a seeming mass suicide, a ritual called the Quietus. But these people are in fact not suicides but victims — drugged and set adrift to drown. And Theodore Faron, trying to save one woman from the Quietus, is beaten senseless by a soldier of the state.” (O Brave New World, That Has No People In’t! March 28, 1993, Sunday, Late Edition – Final by Walter Wangerin Jr. New York Times)
James taps into something simmering in the temperament of western society in this year: 2022. How have we cared for our aging population? Are we doing better at this than generations before? It seems not. Given the disastrous outcomes for folks living in nursing homes as a result of the pandemic, and what we learned about such institutions, it seems we are doing far worse.
Many elderly folks suffered isolation, disruption of care, and needless worry due to poor planning, and inadequate crisis response in a seniors living communities at the beginning of the pandemic. Many died an untimely deaths as a direct result.
Has our state made adequate changes since the height of the crisis? Doubtful. It’s time to look to other cultures and their practices for caring for the elderly. We know there are countries and communities where senior citizens are treated respectfully, and cared for as a priority. Denmark provides one telling example, where municipalities are responsible for eldercare, nursing homes are integrated into public spaces, and new technologies are maximized. Read more here: https://www.cfn-nce.ca/impact/learning-from-the-leaders-a-knowledge-exchange-with-denmark/
Not applying similar principles here is on par with allowing our own Quietus.
Two Coffee Pots
1986. I was 18, and I wanted to die. I had graduated from high school with honors, but home had turned upside down, and so I moved out. Much, much too soon. The first job I had was waitressing at a cheap steak house. I moved into a ground floor, one-bedroom slum apartment on a main bus route in a depressed suburb with my best girlfriend and her boyfriend. They got the bedroom. I had undiagnosed anxiety, and struggled to do the waitressing job, only relaxing if a table with kids came in: that somehow put me at ease. At a cheap steak house, few people order wine or beer. Coffee, endless amounts of coffee, is the preferred beverage. This was a good decade before the you-know-who coffee people introduced the idea that there could be anything other than regular and decaf coffee, so we worked with a rotating series of glass bubble pots, trying to keep them full and fresh from restaurant opening (people will eat at a salad bar at ten minutes after eleven am, who knew?) until the very last plastic creamer splashed onto the plastic tablecloth. I didn’t drink coffee, but I knew that people who wanted decaf, REALLY wanted decaf, and that it was important not to confuse the pots. The decaf pot had an orange stripe painted around the glass, so I could handle that. What I couldn’t handle was carrying both pots at once. This, it turned out was an unexpected requirement of the job. The manager, who was probably called Cheryl, showed me, many times, how to gently grasp each handle with one hand, lifting the pots aloft in one elegant swoop, and thus saving “the trip” if someone wanted decaf. The total square footage of the restaurant could likely fit inside a contemporary double garage, so why saving time was such a frantic concern, I could never understand. In any case, delays were inevitably the fault of the kitchen staff. Never underestimate the work involved in keeping a salad bar stocked. Still, when Cheryl caught me with just the one pot, she would send me back to the coffee station for the other, and time after time CRACK! – the pots would come together and both smash to bits, hot coffee onto the carpeted floor, shards everywhere. I never got burned or cut myself, or anyone else, but I was mortified. At the end of my shift, I would step outside, perhaps walk across the street to the Shell Station for pack of cigarettes (two bucks), and then walk the half kilometer to the apartment, often empty, and bereft of either food or comfort. I remember feeling incredibly lonely, stupid, angry, confused, and of course, afraid. I think I broke eight coffee pots before I decided I was unfit for waitressing. I quit. The coffee pots were just a small thing, but for me seemed a sign that I was useless. You know where else folks drink a lot of coffee? On a psychiatric ward. No glass pots there though. Styrofoam cups. Plastic lids. Stay tuned.
Moderator Positionality Statement
Stepping into a professional role that involves suicide prevention is a full-circle experience for me. I am both a suicide attempt survivor, and a suicide loss survivor. These experiences enhance and inform my commitment to suicide prevention and make me emotionally vulnerable both within and on behalf of this work. Additionally, I have an invisible disability: anxiety disorder. I am both insider and researcher.
I am a third- generation Caucasian settler and guest of T’kemlups te Secwepemc. My great-grandparents arrived in Toronto from England (maternal) and Scotland (paternal) early in the 20th century. They built their lives primarily in Victoria on Vancouver Island, B.C.. I am also distantly related to settlers from Scotland who chose South American destinations, instead of Canada, as their new home. I was raised in what was then the working-class town of Port Moody a (now-gentrified) suburb of Vancouver, B.C. by card-carrying union workers. Connection to history and community are important aspects of this work.
I feel deeply connected to nature, and in particular, the ocean. This comes from many childhood excursions by sailboat through British Columbia’s inside passage, and as far north as Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands). I have lived in T’kemlups/Kamloops since 2006, and have come to know and love this terrain, and these lakes and rivers. I acknowledge nature as a significant source of healing. Connecting wellness to nature is important to this work.
I have benefitted from generational wealth, and although a first-generation university graduate, my access to higher education, including graduate studies, can also be traced to class and economic privilege. Still, I feel myself an academic outsider, unable to secure a permanent faculty position, and therefore, to formally contribute to scholarship. Awareness of systemic barriers is important to this work.
Politically, I am a feminist and aspiring ally. I am part of an inter-racial family, and an interest in cultural diversity informs how I wish to experience the world. I am an artist and writer. Self-awareness and reflexivity are important to this work.
Finally, I am an upper middle-class, married, heterosexual white woman, and I benefit from all the cultural privileges that come with those categories. Humility is important to this work.
Pamela Fry, July 21, 2021
- Document
Monday Melancholy
I learned that there was a sexual assault on the campus recently. It is information that I must know, but that also hurts to know. I must know because my role is to understand issues that may lead to suicidality. It hurts to know because my daughter, and the other students on campus are not safe there, not entirely, and I feel helpless to do anything about it.
I imagine, for those whose loved ones die by suicide, it is a similar set of complex feelings. It is not always obvious if an individual has deliberately chosen to die, and even skilled professionals struggle to deliniate between, for example, an accidental overdose with a known-to-be-deadly opiod and suicide, or a sexual misadventure and suicide. Still, for those families and friends dealing with grief and shock, knowing the truth about how their loved one died can eventually lead to healing. Still, information like this must be delivered cautiously, and only to those who request it. The details of a death-by-suicide should, in my opinion, belong to the family, and never be shared without permission. However, the fact of a suicide is a different matter. Stigma about suicide thrives where there is silence and falsehoods.
Take care of eachother out there!
Learn more:
Coluccia, A., Gabbrielli, M., Gualtieri, G., Ferretti, F., Pozza, A., & Fagiolini, A. (2016). Sexual Masochism Disorder with Asphyxiophilia: A Deadly yet Underrecognized Disease. Case Reports in Psychiatry, 2016, 5474862. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/5474862
Dworkin, E. R., DeCou, C. R., & Fitzpatrick, S. (2020). Associations between sexual assault and suicidal thoughts and behavior: A meta-analysis. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000570
Oquendo, M. M.D.,Ph.D., Volkow, N. M.D (2018) “Suicide: A Silent Contributor to Opioid-Overdose Deaths”, Perspective.
N Engl J Med 2018; 378:1567-1569
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1801417
First Post!
This is my first post as administrator for the Suicide Prevention Studies website. Thank you for visiting my work in progress!