Reply #39: I have, indeed, thought of [View All]

[liberalhistorian]

suicide in the past; it actually turned out to be a blessing because I was finally diagnosed as moderately bipolar with a strong tendency toward depression and got the treatment I so desperately needed and which will continue for a lifetime. I am well aware of the all-consuming, overwhelming, unbearable pain involved when considering suicide and I agree that no one can truly understand it until and unless they actually experience it themselves.

But that doesn't mean that the pain of those left behind is any less strong or important. I've been on both sides, thinking of it to the point of almost going through with it and experiencing a family member's suicide in my young nephew. Don't discount the pain of the family just because the pain of the suicidal person is so intense. I consider my nephew's suicide to be a total waste that could have easily been prevented had his schizophrenia not been so badly stigmatized and misunderstood by too many in his own family. T

here was help available for him, and to this day I blame my sister and her husband and his family for their treatment and stigmatization of him, and I blame myself for not doing more to get him the help he so badly needed. He was only 21 years old, for God's sake, an extremely intelligent, funny, friendly, talented boy.