Robin Williams’ suicide: Yes, it was a choice.
Yes I know I’m a bit late to the party. Or on to the bandwagon.
My blogs are often like people in my head. And though I’ve tried to write this one about 3 times I still felt resistant to publishing it…probably because of the topic and how passionate people can be about it. The problem is though that this particular blog is at the front of the queue and none of the others can get out until he has…and they are all making a lot of noise back there.
So here it is: my two cents.
It’s been almost a month since Robin Williams’ death, and though all of the initial noise has calmed down there was a lot of coverage to begin with. Articles everywhere, Facebook and twitter feeds filled with comments, love, shock, sorrow. And over the couple of weeks that followed there was a lot of talk about the why, the what, the who was to blame, deeper discussions around suicide and depression…..and one particular line of thinking that was coming over a lot that I found particularly worrying.
This was the idea that Robin Williams’ death should not be called a suicide as he didn’t end his own life, but that depression did. And, for this reason, that it was not a choice.
I think I get where people are coming from here – it’s a defence of Williams. Not just of him but of those in our own lives who have been depressed, hurt themselves, hurt others, thought about suicide, tried to suicide, or suicided. And it’s a defence of ourselves for the same reason. It’s a defence against those who would say ‘how could he be so selfish to do this to his family?’, ‘ he couldn’t handle life’, ‘he was weak’, or ‘he took the easy way out’. (Before you climb through your computer and jump on me…no, I don’t believe any of those things. The fact that when someone has reached a point where they are so deeply unhappy and desperate that one of their options…and seemingly the better one…is to cut their wrists and hang themselves – that the word ‘easy’ even shows up anywhere in the conversation here is utterly ludicrous. There is nothing easy about being in that space. And nothing easy about choosing to…or choosing not to).
So I think by saying depression killed him and that it wasn’t a choice this is a way of saying he wasn’t to blame, he isn’t at fault, he didn’t mean to leave or hurt anyone.
I get that.
But there are three big problems with this line of thinking. And before I give you them let me state for the record, as I’ve seen so many people saying that unless you know what depression and serious suicidal thought are first-hand then you have no right to comment, that I do have the relevant ‘qualifications’. And then let me state very clearly, also for the record, that I think that the idea that you can only comment if you’ve been there…is bullshit. Death is a universal topic and suicide is a part of that. Suicide affects so many of us and most of us know people who have suicided and most people (if not all) have had suicidal thoughts at times in our lives. This is not some exclusive conversation that ought to be limited to those with the right story and background. Quit trying to make it one – this only isolates and alienates. In Australia, where I currently am, it’s estimated that up to half of adults will go through what doctors call depression in their lives. It’s probably more. But it doesn’t matter if you’ve been seriously depressed or had serious suicidal thoughts or not – depression, death, suicide…these are topics that affect all of society. This is a topic of universal importance. So you do have the right to get involved in the conversation. Scratch that…you have the responsibility.
Right, the 3 reasons…
1. The whole ‘it wasn’t suicide, it was depression, and it wasn’t a choice’ thing adds to the taboo around suicide, rather than reducing it.
The very fact that people are defending Williams by saying ‘it wasn’t suicide’ makes suicide a ‘bad’ thing. We only need to defend when someone is accused of something ‘bad’. Think about that. Ask yourself what’s so wrong with just saying ‘he suicided’? Why is that a bad thing? He did. Suicide is when you die by your own hand on purpose….and this is what happened. Of course there are reasons why he did that, things that led him to that point. That’s how life works – the law of cause and effect. But just because there is a cause doesn’t mean you cancel out that the effect even happened.
To need to defend someone from the idea that they suicided is to condemn the act of suicide..and how does that help?
And the bigger problem is there is a denial going on here. I am in love with the Death Cafe movement because it is about getting people to face death and talk about it openly. No more euphemisms, no more denial, no more hiding. We need to do the same with suicide. We cannot have open and clear conversations about it if we cannot even bear to say the word, even when it so clearly applies. Because if Williams’ death wasn’t suicide…then whose was? Because most people who suicide will come from a story of deep unhappiness….so does this mean that no-one chooses it? that all suicides are actually death-by-depression?
How on earth can we have discussions about why people choose suicide, and how we can help them to choose another option (if they wish) if we cannot admit to suicide and we don’t even believe it’s a choice at all anyway. Very simply, we can’t.
How can you openly discuss the topic with those who are contemplating suicide when you are so busy trying to deny the fact of it? You can’t.
Like with death in general, we need to stop the hiding from suicide, face the reality, and have the open conversations. Anything else, no matter how well-meaning, ‘kind’, or ‘gentle’, adds to the taboo and adds to culture of shame and condemnation around it.
2. We don’t talk about physical pain the same way
I think it would be incredibly useful for society if we started looking at emotional pain more the way we look at physical pain. Examining to find where the pain comes from (instead of being diagnosed with ‘depression’ and just believing that it’s something that randomly happened to you, has no deeper cause than chemistry, and can’t be treated any way but with medication). Talking about it in more practical terms instead of the poetic, almost romantic, way we talk about emotional pain…..and, as is most relevant to this topic, looked at suicide as we do assisted suicide.
Have a think about what we do around assisted suicide. If someone has been say diagnosed with a terminal and wasting illness/disease, or lives in excruciating ongoing pain, we now campaign to allow them the right to end their own life if they wish to and have assistance in doing so without legal repercussion. We understand that the pain is so unbearable that it ought to be up to them if they wish to end it or keep going through it. In this case we very specifically use the word choice as a tool of empowerment. We talk about them having a choice and that they ought to get to choose. I personally haven’t read anywhere someone saying ‘it’s not a choice, they have no choice. It’s not assisted suicide. It was cancer that killed them’.
We don’t do this because in these situations we don’t need to defend and protect them…because we don’t ask ‘why did they leave? Didn’t they know they were loved? How could they do this to those left behind?’ because we know it isn’t about that. They aren’t wishing to die to get away from those in their life. They are choosing not to live anymore because of the pain or physical circumstances they are in…and no-one can bear those for them. It’s not a matter of whether they love those around them or were loved enough. We don’t hear the same accusations of ‘weakness’ or ‘taking the easy way out’. It may seem that this is different to someone with a terminal illness/disease, as someone who chooses suicide out of emotional rather than physical agony could have a very different future…but clearly they don’t see that or feel that way to have made the decision they did.
Take this into regular suicide. Would we think and talk about it differently if we understood that it was a reaction to an extreme amount of pain? Would we still believe that if only they loved more or were loved more things could have been different? Or would we understand that it is the person in pain that has to bear it and decide what to do about it. And that this choice is not a reflection of their external world. They say happiness is an inside job…and they’re right. And so is deep deep unhappiness. More external love, more money, more great stuff happening outside of a person are not going to stop suicide, in much the same way as all the external ‘bad’ things are not going to cause it (for those blaming external events in Williams’ life for his death).
If we looked at suicide the way we look at assisted suicide it would allow us to do so in a more practical, compassionate, and accepting way, and it would allow us to better understand this choice in those who have made it in the past and honour them i.e. those who have suicided, instead of living on in regret, with pity, thinking things could’ve/should’ve/would’ve been different if only. This is no way to remember those we love.
….
And if you think that through not condemning suicide (which I don’t) that I am not only condoning it but encouraging it…then here is my last and most important point, the point which inspired this whole blog and the main reason the whole ‘not a choice’ argument bothers me so deeply…and why this damn blog just wouldn’t leave me alone until it got written. Because…
3. to say it isn’t a choice is to deeply disempower those who will be faced with this choice
As someone who spent years seriously depressed and, at times, suicidal…as someone who knows many people in the same situation…as someone who has worked with and works now with many who feel very depressed and at times flirt/dance/hop right into bed with the possibility of suicide……I think that the idea that it isn’t a choice is one of the most disempowering messages out there around depression.
Suicide IS a choice. So is not-suiciding. If one is true, the other is as well.
Think about what message that idea sends to those who suffer from the deepest unhappiness they could imagine – because when you tell them suicide is not a choice, then the other side of that is of course that not-to-suicide is also not a choice. Basically the message is that at some point, if things get so terribly bad for you, you may not have a choice, suicide will happen. So really all we can do is cross our fingers and hope you don’t get there…because if you do there is not much you’ll be able to do about it.
If you want people to know that not-to-suicide is a choice, then you have to admit that suicide is a choice too. Both are. Neither are easy choices…but both are choices nonetheless.
To believe you have no choices is to believe you have no options. And you do.
You always have a choice. Yes you. You who feel in desperate pain and wonder if things can get better, if there are other options. Yes there are. No matter how bad things get, you have a choice. And if one day suicide is your choice, I will fight for your right to be remembered, loved and honoured as you are and for how your life ended and for the choice you made (rather than it be seen as bad, shameful or taboo in any way). I won’t defend you against the word ‘suicide’ because I won’t condemn you for it in any way…like I don’t condemn Williams for his choice and his suicide. And in the same way I’ll fight to let you know that you can choose not-to-suicide.
I and many, many, many I know have made the journey from extreme unbearable pain, diagnosed by a medical profession blind to the options that aren’t chemicals, believing yourself stuck, lost, flawed, broken, not being able to imagine a different future, and thinking your choice is simply to cope with the pain or end it…..to a place where life is so different to what you could even imagine, where the pain still happens (this is part of life and growth) but what it does to you, and what you do to it, is very different. Where you no longer feel broken, flawed, lost or hopeless every time life hurts you…and where ‘down’ doesn’t automatically turn into ‘all the way down into the deepest pit’. To where even when you find yourself in the deepest pit, you know you can get out and you know how. It takes work to get there…but you know what? To do that work is a choice too.
You have a choice. You have options. Always.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, whether they mean well or not.
So yes. Yes, it was a choice. And it was suicide. That isn’t a condemnation, a criticism, or a compliment. It’s a simple fact.
Kristie
xx
{ 18 comments }
Dear Kirstie,
Suicide may be a choice, but who has chosen it? Is it chosen in sound mind? Or is it an act of desperation, a mounting desperation which acts in secret or isolation from others?
I believe the psyche is a complex thing and one can be in two minds, two very different minds. One may suggest that the best option is to die, another may consider that life instead, even if it is difficult.
When one state of mind takes over, the driven, animal instinctual one, it pushes out the relational self who is able to think and reflect and take the longer view. In this driven state of mind, suicide can be an act of desperation. The driven mind can only act on its own behalf and not think about impact on others.
I do not believe that we always have a choice. We can get over taken by that particular, driven state of mind which persuades that such and such is the only option. There is no sense of choice.
It is the reflective mind which is able to take the longer view and think of others which can weigh things up and make choices. Being in your right mind one can make a choice for suicide. That is a person who may talk with their loved ones about their choice, prepare them and help them understand. This is the case for instance in assisted dying, where a terminally ill person discusses their choice of suicide with their doctor.
Last week a neighbour told me that a friend here in Oregon chose assisted dying as her option. In “1997 Oregon enacted the Death with Dignity Act which allows terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose.” (Wikipedia)
The friend died peacefully surrounded by friends and family. It was an induced death, much like an induced birth. The moment was expected, but the time was chosen.
I think a conscious choice of suicide with a goodbye that includes loved ones is a different matter. The question is can we allow people the right to die who are not physically terminally ill?
Good wishes,
Josefine
Thank you, Kristie, for a brilliant, courageous, and well argued article. You are absolutely right. You’ve expressed so many things that I was feeling and failed to find the words for. Just wonderful.
Hi Kristie,
Thanks for your post. My attitude to anyone reacting to a famous persons death always bothers me, firstly because we didn’t know them, we knew their character or persona. Secondly, there are so many people who die that don’t have any acknowledgement of who they are, namely those who live and die alone, and thirdly, I loathe the swamp of opinions that come out when the famous person dies/suicides and then soon recedes. Once people are dead, there is little to be done, but we can understand our own lives and those of others and perhaps this is why we explore the topic of why people suicide. To state the obvious, death happens to us all and should someone take their own life sooner rather than later, I feel we should accept that the pain they were in was part of their life when they were alive and after they are gone. There is so much said on the topic but not from the mouths of the dead, unless a note was left. We all live in altering mental states, illusiveness, adjustments, transformations, reflections, always searching for the centre, to be steady, to be sane, according to the opinion of the day. I applaud your views and feel that the topic of suicide will always be one best left to those who take it with them.
A refreshing article Kristie which does give me a lot of thought. Too true the discussions around suicide are generally rather hushed. We are imperfect of course as a human race and anything which increases our compassion and understanding of one another is helpful and I think your article blows a fresh breeze over a subject which needs to come so much more into our everyday discussions. Thus enabling us to be able to respond more helpfully when we are faced with our own depressions and hopelessness and those of our friends and family.
Hi Kristie – wow, you really went for this one! Good for you.
I totally agree that suicide is a choice. Always there is choice. Although I am certain that many people do not realise what the choices available to them are. To me the most important choice is not whether to live or die but rather what we consciously give our attention to.
In my experience of many years of often suicidal depression – all in the past now – there is always a kernal of peace living at the very heart, or centre, of the pain.
We can choose to give our attention to the thoughts that create our suffering. Or we can turn attention to the peace living within. We can literally “Rest in Peace” (R.I.P.) while still alive. This peace is the pure intelligence of our Being, which could also be called kindness or freedom.
I’ve found that when we give our attention to this peace, the real and original yogic meaning of “the law of attraction” kicks in because what we give our attention to grows, is attracted into our life, and is who we become. We literally attract, or invite, the vast kind intelligence of Being – whose nature is peace – into our lives.
From this point on the healing process happens spontaneously. Being itself clears the thoughts that created our pain, leaving us free. I’ve experienced this happening so intensely that it can feel like a living miracle. And perhaps it is …
blessings to you dear friend,
Leo
Hi Josefine,
The question isn’t whether we can ‘allow people the right to die who are not terminally ill.’ The terminally ill often need assistance…hence the need for the right. The rest of us can (and do) just do it if we want. So no right needs to be granted. The question is how we can support their decision (as, once again, they don’t need the right and it isn’t up to us to allow it) and how we honour and love them (and their decision) afterwards, and whether we use their death to further important discussions around very important topics such as this one.
Welcome Annie!
Hi Helen,
you’re absolutely right about the strange world of celebrity – most of the public have never met them yet feel like they know them personally. And their deaths capture a lot of media interest so can seem to be shown as more important that ‘normal’ people’s deaths. I’ve read lots of stuff that tries to explain what it was and who it was that was to blame i.e. what the causes were, of his suicide. Which of course is pure speculation.
At the same time I think it is important for the public to discuss this issue. Someone like Robin Williams lived (and died) very much in the public eye, and his death has brought suicide, depression and related matters into the forefront of many people’s minds…at least for a short time.
Doing the work I do I get to see daily the profound repercussions of a society who don’t deal well or naturally with any element of death…so to my mind any opportunity that brings up death, including suicide, and gets people looking at it and talking about it should be taken.
Glad it resonates Sue. 🙂
Hi Leo,
Nah – it went for me!
Absolutely – there are choices and so many don’t know what they are. I look back and know that I had no idea back then of the options I understand now. It all starts with a willingness to find something, doesn’t it? which is what I had. A desire to believe that there must be something more, something better, something different out there.
I love your description of Rest in Peace. xx
Kristie,
How does one “live in the moment” to be present in their life when they are depressed?
When you are depressed you have to have hope that you will feel better, yes?
We still don’t discuss or treat mental illness on the same level as physical ailments.
I am grateful to the internet that we can have this dialogue across many oceans.
Lois
Thank you Kristie, for your brilliant and thoughtful post.
This is such a difficult subject – I end up keeping my opinion to myself, and I’m so thankful when someone (like you!) takes the time to carefully present a beautifully articulated statement in defense of suicide. I believe that we should be allowed to take control of our death when faced with future pain and suffering. There seems to be a misguided belief in our society that suffering is noble. It is NOT.
My grandmother suffered for years before she decided to commit suicide. The thing that makes me sad is that she had to hide her decision – it wasn’t something she could discuss ahead of time because everyone would have attempted to talk her out of it. I wish we could discuss this decision openly, and even stage it in a way that’s beautiful, compassionate and memorable for everyone.
Thanks again for your wonderful post!
I must admit, today I have been researching which tablets i could overdose on.
I am glad i read this article. Perhaps my future holds less pain.
So glad to read this Tingly. Things can be very different. Feel free to write to me directly if you’d like any tips on what you can do. kristie@kristiewest.com
xx
I totally agree Shirley. I recently learnt from someone who used to work on an anonymous suicide hotline that if someone who is suicidal calls, and has the clear intent to suicide and just wants someone to be there with them while they do, they are to just stay on the phone with them while they do it. I think this is very powerful. If they were to try and immediately talk them out of it, this particular type of person who has decided and simply wants to have someone with them, will have no choice but to get off the phone and be alone as they suicide, which was not what they wished.
Naturally when someone wishes for intervention and help they are given it and should be supported through whatever is happening to them…but in a clear case where they have made their decision and do not wish to discuss it but simply to have some company…I believe they should be supported in that.
Most people’s immediate reaction is to find any way to prevent death, particularly suicide…which comes largely from our deeply death-denying/fearing society having an instant knee-jerk reaction to the idea of death.
How different it would have been if your grandmother could have discussed her feelings and decision with her family, in the way that someone would with assisted suicide, and then either be helped/assisted to a different way of living…or supported in her choice to suicide – whichever she wished. The reality is that for some people when they have well and truly decided, then that is it and no amount of help/hand-wringing/pleading will change anything – it will just ensure that they are alone with their choice and with their actions.
Hi Lois,
I totally get your question. How can someone sit totally in the present when it seems like the best thing is to look forward and know things can be better?
What I’ve come to understand about depression though is that, when there, you are nowhere near being in the moment. Depression is all about being totally tied up in pain, guilt, disappointment from the past, and fear of what the future holds. To sit totally in the present moment (and I think I am in line with what Leo is saying) would mean a dropping away of lot of what is creating depression in the first place. It’s taken me a great many years to finally understand that and to be able to feel the immeasurable difference it makes.
xx
Thank you for your article Kristie – we certainly do need to make this topic less taboo and I commend you from this perspective. But I do agree with Josefine too: if suicide is a decision, is it chosen in sound mind. My mother took her own life 6 weeks ago. She had recently been discharged from hospital where she had been admitted to undergo rapid detoxification from valium. She was managed poorly by the ‘addiction speclialist’ – he declared her withdrawal symptoms simply a manifestation of her anxiety and largely ignored her deterioration, with fatal consequences. What is my point? Most suicides are written off as due to “depression/anxiety” but there are often more complex stories to be considered. Many modern day psychiatric drugs cause patients terrible reactions (e.g. SSRIs cause suicidal and homicidal ideation in a minor – but still significant – percentage of patients). These people are not choosing suicide and their plight should not continue to be ignored (see “Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Robert Whitaker. Thanks
Apologies for the typos. I’ve just read your post on the Antidepressant Epidemic – well said!