101 Alternatives to Suicide …

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#stayalive, Kate Bornstein, lgbqt, lgbqt teen suicide, lgbqt teens, suicide, suicide prevention, transgender issues, transgender suicide

Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide … by Kate Bornstein

… is the subtitle of my so-far favorite book on suicide prevention.

Author Kate Bornstein, a transgender performance artist, has assembled largely from personal experience an entertaining and fundamentally useful collection of “things to do today instead of killing myself.”

Bornstein invests the first 80 pages of the book in gender identity politics, which may or may not interest a particular reader. The remaining 160 pages are a brilliant compendium of 101 things a person could do today instead of dying.

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Five Signs You’re Mentally Ill — Or Human

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#changementalhealth, 5 signs, Campaign to Change Direction, five signs, suicide, suicide prevention

The new #changementalhealth Campaign to Change Direction is starting off with a graphic bang and big commitments by big organizations to make the “five signs” of diagnosible mental health conditions known to everyone.

Three of the five — withdrawal, failure to care for oneself, and a sense of hopelessness — are depression symptoms that can also match suicide precursors. Adding a sense of agitation to the mix makes suicide attempts more likely.

Suicide prevention is properly a major public health concern today, with more people in the U.S. dying from suicide than from auto accidents, HIV/AIDS, or homicides. Having such a huge public awareness campaign may help to reduce our staggeringly high rate of suicide death (39,000 annually) and attempts (about 130,000).

Handle 5 Signs With Care

At the same time, I hope people will be reasonable when they look at their friends and apply these 5 signs. Every introvert looks withdrawn to every extravert. Every person from New Jersey looks agitated to every person from Minnesota.

Suicide Prevention: Churches Provide Community and Meaning

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Anthony Pisani, suicide, suicide prevention, Thomas Joiner

Lately, I’ve been reading Thomas Joiner and Anthony Pisani on suicide and its prevention. They approach the subject from slightly different views, but at base have community- and person-focused theories. The key distinctive between their theories and most of what I’ve seen is they don’t assume a suicidal person is “mentally ill.”

Illness or Lack of Community?

Here’s the difference between the mainstream and how these two researchers approach the subject.
Mainstream theories – 90-95% of people who suicide suffer from 1 of these 4 mental illnesses: depression, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia.
Joiner / Pisani – People who suicide have reached a point where they cannot find meaning in life, lack a community where they feel valued, feel burdensome to those around them — and have also obtained the fearlessness, means, and skill to do the deed.

The Church’s Role in Suicide Prevention

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Anthony Pisani, authentic community, church, hiv/aids, homicide, lgbqt, madd, mental health, mental illness, mothers against drunk driving, suicide, suicide prevention, Thomas Joiner, violent crime

We face a mental health crisis today in a suicide rate that is among the 10 top causes of death nationwide — as high as top 3 for some age groups. Suicide kills more people than auto accidents, HIV/AIDS, or homicide. Suicide is killing bullied children, military veterans, and our older men deprived of meaningful work.

Among the reasons that the death rates are now relatively lower for auto accidents, HIV/AIDS, and homicide are hard work we have done, as citizens, as civic organizations, as government agencies, and as businesses.