Why Suicide Needs to be Talked About

Over the past few days, we’ve had an influx of news surrounding Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah. One of the most devastating things which has come to light during the talk was that Meghan Markle was suicidal. What I found appalling was the British media and people on social media saying she is making it up and using suicide as a way to get attention. In this blog post I’m going to discuss why it’s wrong to make judgments about what is going on in someone else’s head and how we as a society should openly talk about suicide.

Firstly, no one understands what is going on in someone else’s head. We see pictures of famous people smiling and we instantly assume they’re having the time of their lives, but then it comes to light that suicide has crossed their mind, or they’ve passed away due to mental health issues. Normally when this happens everyone jumps to social media encouraging people to be kind. The problem I have with this is that we should always be encouraging kindness. I don’t understand how one minute we can promote kindness as a society, but as soon as a famous person does something wrong, whether it’s true or false, we decide to troll them.

People promote that everyone should speak out about their mental health in order to break the stigma but then attack someone who has openly admitted to feeling suicidal. This is a courageous thing for anyone to do, especially when Meghan has such a huge platform. By condemning her and labelling her as attention seeking, it only shows to the rest of society that if people are open about being suicidal, they will not be believed. This is sadly one of the main reasons people don’t speak out about their mental health.

All of this has brought to light that suicide needs to be talked about a lot more. This is so when someone does have these thoughts, they can talk to someone without being apprehensive of judgement. We can do this by not putting the blame on someone who feels suicidal, listening to them and encouraging them to get help. This could either be by talking to a counsellor or calling a suicide hotline such as the Samaritans. The horrendous truth is the more people stay silent, the more suicide rates will increase. Your actions could be the reason someone decides to live.

Resources:

Samaritans – 116 123

CALM – 0800 58 58 58

Papyrus – 0800 068 41 41

SOS – 0300 1020 505