By Melissa Fay Greene

https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/a-mother-considers-her-sons-final-thoughts.html

 

Firstly, let me say how sorry I am for this mother’s loss.  Losing a child is always a heart wrenching experience, but especially to suicide.  That being said, there are so many erroneous or questionable aspects to this story.

 

The author states that there were no red flags prior to her son’s suicide, yet she mentions several in her story.  According to Ms. Greene, Sol went to college specifically to play soccer and then didn’t get off the bench.  Sol also asked his parents to stop coming to the soccer games.  These would be two big red flags to me.  I also have the feeling that there must have been some other “impulsive” activity in Sol’s life that is being left out of the story.

 

Ms. Greene writes about Anthony Bourdain and how his mother said she would never think of him as committing suicide.  Bourdain was an addict… who still drank alcohol.  Substance and alcohol addictions often start as maladaptive stress responses… and I would argue that suicide is also a maladaptive stress response.  Through the view of this new paradigm, so called “impulsive” suicides can be seen less as outliers of behavioral patterns.  Also, most of what I have read regarding impulsive suicides deals with young people, mostly teens.  I can’t remember reading anything about people in their 60’s committing impulsive suicide without a pattern of impulsive behavior.

 

Ms. Greene quotes Kevin Hines regarding his suicide attempt… “Kevin climbed over the railing, leaned back, let go, and felt, he says, ‘instant regret, powerful, overwhelming. As I fell, all I wanted to do was reach back to the rail, but it was gone.’  He plummetted [sic] 220 feet in four seconds, going 75 miles per hour and wracked by the thought all the way down: What have I just done? I don’t want to die. God, please save me… He wants everyone to know that the act of suicide leads not to a final sense of satisfaction and relief but to panic-stricken sorrow.”  When I shot myself through the heart with a 9mm handgun in November of 1998, it was one of the most peaceful things of my life.  After I shot myself, I fell to the ground.  I reached out for someone to hold my hand because I did not want to die alone… but I still wanted to die.  I was not sorry I had shot myself.  I was not “hanging on to life.”  Laying there on the ground bleeding and gasping… in the 60 seconds before I passed, was very calm and peaceful.  This fact always scared most therapists from working with me afterwards.