Recently there have been many encouraging responses to suicide. The recent death of Don Ritchie, the 'angel' of The Gap suicide spot in Sydney, reminded us of his faithfulness in talking so many people out of taking their lives. He simply invited them to a chat and a cup of tea.
Two recent films have treated the topic of depression and the spectre of suicide thoughtfully. And Nothing Prepared Me For This, a moving collection of writing by relatives and friends of people who had taken their own lives, has also been published.
A common public response to suicide is very similar to earlier attitudes to leprosy. The former makes silent people who need to speak. The latter makes invisible people who need to be seen.
I once visited a leper colony in Northern Thailand. Lepers and their families, traditionally excluded from villages, were here confined in a separate section of the camp for Hmong refugees. Many bore the deformities caused by injury and infection. The sisters who supported adult education in the camp had placed their computers and sewing machines in the lepers' section in order to encourage the other refugees to enter it.
In this place visibility dispelled fears and made for shared laughter.
In Western societies suicide has the same aura that leprosy once had. It also evokes the same fear, which in turn leads to exclusion and to silence. It is seen as the inexplicable rejection of the most fundamental human desire to live. This is the foundation stone of all attempts to find meaning and to shape a human society.
Perhaps this explains why in some cultures, which allowed human life to be taken with cavalier freedom judicially and militarily, the bodies of those who have taken their own lives were treated ignominiously. They were buried outside the common graveyards, and even subjected to ritual execution. It marks a fear that suicide may be contagious and corrode the fabric of society.
The families and friends of those who have taken their own lives suffer doubly from this exclusion. It is hard not to feel at times that people who have taken their own lives have rejected our love, and have chosen to exclude us from their lives. Because suicide is so inexplicable, relatives and friends also commonly feel excluded from conversation. They feel unable to speak about what matters to them.
In that respect they are like soldiers returning from war. A Vietnam