“Truths” about suicide

Dear Gabriel

I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to write about suicide without resorting to clichés. Do some people really attempt suicide as a cry for help or do they mean to do it but change their minds at the last minute? Or does it sometimes happen that they accidentally kill themselves when they really were just desperate for someone to reach out to them?

Susan

Dear Susan

As you can imagine it’s quite hard to generalise about suicide. And in many ways any psychologist or student of human psychology would be naïve to assert any absolute “truths” about this complex subject. I would not disagree with any of the statements you made – indeed probably all have some truth in them. After all in the case of those people who do kill themselves we will never know what was going through their minds and whether they really intended to take their own lives. It’s only the living, that is those who contemplated or survived suicide, who can really help us understand this phenomenon. And even then they may feel confused and ambivalent about their own motives or feelings.

If I was going to write about a suicidal character it might be useful to tease out whether there was some form of psychiatric illness (depression, psychosis, anxiety), a specific event which was a precipitant, an illness which had no hope of cure, an existential despair, a desire to assert control of some sort, or an intention to deliberately hurt or communicate to others.

And I would also explore the impact on those who are left behind if the person was successful. Precisely because suicide is so powerful and profound an act – after all the imperative to stay alive is so primal in humans – it is crucial that you try and show how it affects the living and can echo into their lives for a long time, perhaps forever. 

If you want to ask Gabriel a question about your fictional character please contact him on