MULLINGS
Easterine Kire
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ednesday was World Suicide prevention Day. A woman stood in the foyer handing out leaflets and a card with her phone number and name. She looked strangely familiar. It was the same woman whose picture was in the papers that morning. She had lost the father of her two children to suicide, and her experience showed her that there was a crying need for help. Families and individuals devastated by the suicide of a loved one needed help to go through the deep and alienating period of grief, and questioning that a suicide entails. Suicidal persons need concrete help so they do not cut their own lives short. It led her to establish a forum called LEVE (which means Live) reaching out to people struggling with suicidal thoughts. It was also for people who had lost loved ones to suicide.She spoke with a deep understanding of the situations that lead a person to take his or her own life. There was a quiet strength about her as she talked about the need to feel a sense of belonging in life. In the majority of cases, the ones who take the extreme step are those who fail to find a sense of belonging. That was her main focus. The platform LEVE on Facebook invites reflections on what belonging means, and what one would need from one’s surroundings to fulfill that need. The contributions by readers will be used to make a public campaign focusing on suicide prevention in 2014 and 2015.
I think this is a great effort which costs very little money to start. Yet it could save many lives. It is a gentle way of breaking the taboo around suicide. So long as the taboo exists, it hinders us from taking steps toward helping suicidal people. Suicide as a social problem needs to be acknowledged. By acknowledging it, we send out the signal that help is available. By bringing it out in the open, we unlock avenues of helping those suffering from suicidal tendencies.
When a suicide happens, we stand aside and condemn and criticize. That does not help anyone, definitely not the affected family members. We need to be more sensitive at detecting danger signals. We need to learn to give time to the vulnerable members of society who don’t know that they can get help. This is a job for the church, isn’t it? By that, I mean this is a job for people who want to do church. This reaching out to members of the society (who may not even be church-goers, but does that matter?) and meeting their emotional needs is the purest form of church I can imagine. There are practical ways of doing this. One is the SOS telephone services.
There are some churches offering SOS telephone services where anyone can call in and get a counsellor to talk about their problems. The counsellor gives advice to the caller and offers help of a compassionate nature. Many callers use the SOS services because it is convenient and manned in the evenings. SOS services have helped save lives, especially with understanding and loving counsellors who take the time to listen without condemnation.
The other thing we can do is spreading kind words and deeds. It does not cost us anything. But what if a kind word of yours can be used to prevent a person from committing suicide? Instead of lashing out at drivers on the street, or slow pedestrians, or workers in their different workplaces, if we reined in our impatient reactions, and used kind words instead, that would go a long way to making a person’s day. Continual kindness will go a long way to making the other person feel valued and positive.
Little steps like being aware of other people in the neighbourhood or the workplace, and stretching out a helping handis a way of gifting yourself in the best manner to others. Let’s open up the dialogue on preventing suicide. Let’s not just talk about it but, let’s start doing things that prevent suicide. Let us be less self-centered and more giving. We have nothing to lose by it.
