What can one say about an attempted suicide?
- It is important to mention that a person who is talking about suicide needs help.
- But, someone with suicidal feelings should know that those feelings can often pass and that their condition is treatable.
- There are people out there who know how to help so ‘you are not alone.’
What not to say about a suicide.
- One should never say; ‘He/she committed suicide. Say rather, ‘He/she died by suicide.’ I am guilty of saying this when not thinking and concentrating, and I apologize.
- Journalists often give far too much information about the actual suicide or even about the place where it occurred, which is not only unnecessary, but which may put ideas into the mind of someone in distress.
- The less detail given, the better. It is unnecessary to glorify or romanticize a suicide.
- I have read accounts of suicides where the journalist has portrayed suicide as heroic. Why would anyone do this?
- It is not a good idea to say that suicide ends a person’s pain because I think that one has to be very much alive to feel any relief from pain.
- It sounds wrong to read ‘it was a failed suicide.’ Much more realistic to say, ‘it was a ‘suicide attempt.’
- If there have been a few suicide attempts, I have read bold headlines stating; ‘There has been an epidemic of suicides.’ Much more humane to say that the suicide rates are ‘falling’ or ‘rising.’
