In December 1996 my sister Jacqui killed herself. She was 50. Three years later our first cousin Andrew did the same thing. He was 33.
We do not want to admit that suicide has always been part of the human condition, but the first known suicide document is an Egyptian New Kingdom papyrus entitled 'Dialogue of a World-Weary Man with his Ba-Soul'.
Philosophers have debated the matter interminably, with many considering the act to be a paradox, for it is life's central issue: Wittgenstein considered it to be the pivot on which every ethical system turns, while Camus wrote that suicide 'is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art'.
When it comes to the matter of prevention, silence is a major problem. So is the fact of the sufferer's isolation in another space, in a land that remains foreign to the unafflicted, for the would-be suicide inhabits an ever-darkling plain that is swept by armies the rest of us know nothing of, whose powers we can only guess at.
And then even the armies disappear, I imagine, leaving the rubble of war, no man's land, and eventually the eternity of desert. No sign of green, no oasis, no hope. Then may ensue the weightiest of silences, Camus' silence of the heart, which has somehow to be broken. But in that breaking, other people's silences, other people's hearts, are broken, too.
*****
In 2006, 1799 Australians killed themselves, and for each of those deaths up to 50 people may have been affected. By contrast, road accidents claimed 1638 lives.
We hear a great deal about the alienating effects of city life, but approximately a thousand of the 2006 suicides took place in the bush, even while the nationwide incidence is decreasing. If you are a man aged between 18 and 44, if you live in a township with a population smaller than 4000, and if you are unemployed or an embattled farmer, you are in a high-risk category. Add the ready availability of firearms, and the potentiality for disaster is very great.
There are many more experts in the fields of depression and mental illness these days, and much more openness, but the stigma attached to these conditions still lingers. Country people, and men in particular, still cultivate the image of the strong, silent, coping male. Very often they self-medicate: dependence on alcohol has always