Suicide and the Mental Health Connection

What a word, suicide. There are so many of us people who think about this time and again. I know that it has crossed my mind a few times during my life so far. I think that most just talk about it to get attention from people. The thing about it is to me it is an easy way out. I have had three friends do it and getting over it is something that is hard. The many questions like could I have done something to stop it and when it happens we feel guilty. If you have never had to deal with it you can’t imagine what it is like.

The first time I was at that point I was seventeen and living in a small town in Saskatchewan. I was bullied every day for ten years by my peers and the families of the town. What I did is I road my bike out of town a few miles to the train tracks and I laid down across the track and waited for the train to run over me. At the moments before the train came I thought twice about what I was doing and what it would do to my family. I got off the tracks just in time. The second and third time was when I was living in Edmonton. I walked onto the High Level Bridge and was going to jump because I wanted the memories of my childhood to end. I blacked out both times just before I got to the edge. Each time I came to I was in a different part of the city. The last time was in Macklin when I was tired of battling with my Schizophrenia. I made the call to my mother and she got me into see the doctor in town. Then the next day I was taken back to the mental ward in North Battleford.

Since then I have looked at life in a different way and see that the people who I care about would be the ones left to wonder why I did it. There is a scary fact that most of those who take their own life suffer from some type of mental illness. These are the things that society doesn’t want to admit. There are so many things that society doesn’t want to deal with and this is one of the biggest things. It feels to me that they just want to put it in a dark room and it will go away. It is time that we as a people to start to look at the mentally ill and accept and help them. The only help that we get is the confines of the mental wards. The only thing that happens there is that we are drugged and labeled; I know this from my own experience where I have done my time three times in total.

The fact of the matter is that 3 out of 100 beds in hospitals are held for the mentally ill. It is time that we put some new thoughts on how we diagnose patients and treatments that is used. Still in this world there is ECT happening; for those who don’t know what that is it were electricity is passed through the brain, something that is brutal treatment. Then they wonder why so many of the mentally ill take their lives.

I just lost another friend in November of 2013 to suicide. He was manic and the doctors didn’t help him. I can’t complain because I have already accept that I have my illness and I know that as much I hate to take my pills they are giving me a normal or I should say giving me the ability to function. So many people who suffer from mental illness stop taking their pills because they feel better and then they go off the pills. I have been on that slope as well; I had to know and it took a good friend to tell me to go back on them.

The thing that has to change is the way the budget cutbacks in health care is always in the psychiatric division. This has proven in the last ten years that the people who need the help are denied and these are the ones who need the help the most. They say that a good percent of the homeless on the streets suffer from mental illness. These are the ones who are being forced out of the wards to make room for someone who is more acute. It is time that we look to the government to stop slashing the health care budgets because the more they slash it is the mental wards that are the true losers.

So for suicides as I say most have a mental health issue. Depression of any kind is a mental illness because it is a chemical imbalance in the brain. All mental illness is related to chemical imbalances. I am only touching two; Schizophrenia and Manic because these are the ones that need closer watching because normally to treat them it is a cocktail of drugs. There are other illness like ADD, ADHD, PTSD, and others. The real thing that I must say is that we only know ten percent of the brain and with the pills is just a hope that they work.

To end this I have to say that all mental illness is something that you are born with. Most of the mentally ill are highly intelligent because the brain in them is more developed. The saying that boarder line genus boarder line insane; just visit your local mental ward and then think of all those things you take for granted. All of those people were deemed mentally ill. What will come from the mentally ill now? Most will give up but the ones who find their way out will deliver the next step for society.

One more thing, the suicide rate is higher in the mentally ill than any other walk of life.