WHY DO MEN KILL THEMSELVES
Suicide spoke to me from across the room and on the phone. All men. And all were, at some critical point, suicidal. None ever made an attempt. Was the therapy, even in conjunction with medication, the preventative? Probably.
Most people who do commit suicide do it without warning, without seeking help or have given up on "help" (such as Anthony Bourdain).The pain of depression can become so unbearable, so caustic, so relentlessly oppressive that only suicide seems to offer relief. And once a suicide plan has been fixed, the suffering individual typically feels better, looks better and, to his or her intimates, acts as if improved. Because relief is on its way.
The plan is kept secret so that it cannot be thwarted. Its execution is like the darkest glee."[P]sychological pain seems to run on the same neural tracks as physical pain." Although very depressed people (and others who have suffered unendurable losses) often speak of pain as equivalent to, though essentially different from, physical pain, it has always been dismissed by experts (scientists, physicians, psychiatrists). These experts have for a long time claimed that psychological pain was a metaphor for a form of psychic distress.Though people writing about extreme psychological pain insist on the word pain. The torment can become so excruciating, so relentless, so despairing, so hopeless that suicide no longer seems a harmful or violent or morbid act, but a salvation. This is what makes suicide so dangerous. It can become an unstoppable and only possible alternative..
"Often men do not even realize that they are depressed. A kind of linear thinking superimposes itself over subjective awareness of sadness or despair."
.Seeing someone hanging, done by their own hand, is proof that psychological pain can drive one to extremes that seem beyond healing, beyond enduring. Death was the only available method of relief. It was the last, the final intervention.The statistics about male suicide are truly astounding. Men account for 75% of suicides nationwide. Most suicides are white, male and between the ages of 45 and 65. The general consensus is that men get depressed but resist seeking help, professional or otherwise. They seem to want to spare their partners and family the burden of worrying about them. And they want to spare themselves the shame or humiliation of appearing weak, needy, vulnerable.Often men do not even realize that they are depressed.
A kind of linear thinking superimposes itself over subjective awareness of sadness or despair. The illogicality of depression supervenes so that the sense of failure, the negation of improvement becomes the men's new norm: I am of no use to anyone; I am toxic to those who are close to me; I do not deserve to be alive. In this state men do not appear sad or distraught. They may seem subdued, slowed down, lacking vigor and libido. But the grave state of depression would not be evident. And, if questioned, they will explain it all away. They will relate it to work pressure, financial difficulties, concern for family members.
Settling on the final solution—suicicde—breathes fresh air, a tonic to the man's spirit because suicide promises the alleviation of all that is bad about him and all the bad that he believes he is imposing on those around him. It seems to him like a logical, albeit severe, solution, a rational decision.
For men weakness and the shame that accompanies it are anathemas, to be avoided even—with terrible irony—at the cost of their lives. It's the sword of Damocles that has been hung over every male from early in his childhood. Hammered home is the message that boys don't cry, that defeat must be met with honorable acceptance, that cowardice is girly, that masculinity is mighty.The deep sadness of depression must therefore be avoided, transformed into a manly acceptance of defeat: I will die on my own sword. An almost heroic death.
“When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.”
To a man suicide is not a crash through death's door but a portal out of a living hell. There is a way out, before his boat has snapped loose. We need to loosen the yoke that binds men to the false pride of masculinity, that universal bullying of all boys that can leave men stranded. We need to spare all of ourselves the agony of suicide.It takes not an ounce but a pound of prevention.
