suicidal thoughts
Introduction
The Office for National Statistics released on December 2, 2016, report on suicides in the UK in 2015 and it also included other factors that are relevant to suicidal thoughts. The report provided information about sex, age, area of residence and method by which the person committed a suicide. This article briefly describes the tragic information from the report as well as my views formed from clinical and personal experience about suicide and suicidal thoughts.
‘I almost tried to commit suicide before I came to see Leona, I had no one, after a few sessions, I have learned a lot of stuff that I never thought would be possible to help, surprisingly, I was not depressed for three weeks’.
Suicidal Thoughts Are Not Uncommon But The Highest Suicide Rate Is Among Middle-Aged Men
The report on suicides in the UK is based on statistics per 100,000 population and it revealed that in 2015 there were in total 6188 suicides out of which 75% were males and 25% females. The age range among males with highest suicide rate (22.3) was 45 – 59 and this could tell us something about a developmental psychology of males of that age category. I recall from developmental psychology studies that depression in old age is not unusual. The depression in the middle-age could be a result of poor coping life strategies, aging, and loss of job, divorce, financial stress, bereavements, and illnesses. I cannot comment on motives that drove those middle-aged people to suicide. Having said that, as a woman in her 40s with overall positive attitude and stable moods but without particular material luxuries or assets, I can confirm that one of the biggest challenges of being in my 40s was discovering that it is rather hard to find positive people in my personal life. I do not give up as I insist on having happy friends in my personal life. I took it for granted that in my 20s and in my 30s it was normal to be constantly surrounded by old or new positive friends that were enjoying their lives.
Get The Right Support, Do Not Assume That The Help Is Not Here
My private practice attracts people with depressions and suicidal thoughts among other issues that accompany human suffering. I am deeply passionate about my job and helping my depressed or suicidal clients beating their depression and resolving their suicidal thoughts and I see that it works. I have worked with many clients with resistant depression, chronic depression that resisted antidepressants, suicidal thoughts and I feel proud that majority of my clients recovered and no one yet committed a suicide in my care. My clinical experiences of work with suicidal and depressed clients include also one middle-aged client who following a child sexual abuse, an abusive marriage that ended in divorce begged me persistently to give him a permission to commit a suicide. I never did and I had never given up on him. In the end, he recovered from his depression with suicidal thoughts and his personal and professional life improved. When he refers a couple of times per year for a follow-up session, I am pleased to see him venting about the stressors in his life, in charge of our session but sounding overall well. However, despite helping my clients recovering from their depressions regardless of their age category and seeing them restoring the joy in their lives, I cannot ignore in my personal life the fact that I am aware that people in their 40s appear to be more negative. This fact could reflect the above statistics describing that middle-aged men represent the highest suicide rate category and this could be perhaps a good idea for an ambitious junior researcher to investigate academically.
Never Underestimate Suicidal Thoughts And Help Others and Yourself
What is important to mention from the clinical point of view that despite the tragic statistics on suicide in the UK in 2015, regardless of the age suicidal sufferer, the suicidal thoughts are not unusual and many people experience them. What should not be normal, are people becoming oblivious to the human suffering and undermining or dismissing chronic suicidal feelings that will intensify the motivation for the suicidal sufferer to die. How do we become unwittingly oblivious and how could we unwittingly co-create the chronic suicidal feelings? I would like to now address a lack of support that could deepen sufferer’s suicidal thoughts. Firstly, let’s start with what are suicidal thoughts. I had observed that majority of my clients that are living with friends or relatives that complain of suicidal thoughts do not know what to do with it mostly because they do not know what suicidal thoughts are or question whether their relative might be simply attention seeking individual. The suicidal thoughts are simply feelings of a chronic sense of helplessness or hopelessness about one’s own issues. In order to stop the suicidal thoughts, the sufferer needs to be provided with a solution to their issue or alternatively with a hope that there would be a solution to their issue. Once the hopelessness and helplessness will be eliminated the suicidal thoughts should disappear, it as simple as that. Also, I believe that happy people simply enjoy their lives and therefore as far as the credibility of the suicidal thoughts goes, I would never undermine anyone talking about suicidal thoughts. I appreciate that not everyone is psychologist or counsellor and that this can be confusing and anxiety provoking looking after a friend or relative with suicidal thoughts so the least we can do for such friends or relatives is to emphasise to them that we feel concerned and that we insist that they should start as soon as possible a psychotherapy.
The Solution to Suicidal Thoughts
I am confident that if we follow these simple steps that I suggested in this article we could prevent a lot of deaths caused by suicide. As for the suicidal sufferers who may find it hard to open up, feel ashamed to open up to their friends or relatives about having suicidal thoughts, or assume there is no help or have a truly unsupportive family, be assured that the help is here. So, if you are feeling suicidal and have no one to talk to why not to try and contact me, Leona Sears on 07 505 124 933 to see if we can schedule an appointment and support you.