It is so important to tell a person who threatens to take his/her life by suicide that there’s help out there.
It’s important to tell him/her that those feelings might very well pass, and, that their condition is treatable.
It’s so important to throw them a lifeline and repeat that there are people out there who know how to deal with their problems and help them.
It’s so important to stress that they are not alone and once again tell them that mental illness is treatable today.
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If we use the term committed suicide, it is not a correct description as committed means that one did something illegal like commit a crime. Saying ‘he/she died by suicide’ is far more correct and acceptable. (In the past, I used the wrong term to describe the act of taking one’s life and I apologize.)
Journalists often give far too much information about the actual suicide or even about the place where it occurred. All that is so unnecessary. The less detail given the better.
I have read accounts of suicides where the journalist has portrayed the act as heroic. Now why would anyone do that?
It is not a good idea to say that suicide ends a person’s pain because in my opinion, one has to be very much alive to feel any relief from pain.
It sounds so wrong to me when I read things like: ‘it was a failed suicide attempt.’ Isn’t it more realistic to say; ‘It was an attempted suicide?’
After there has been a spate of suicides, I’ve read bold headlines stating; ‘There has been an epidemic of suicides.’ Wouldn’t it be better to say that suicide rates are falling or rising?’
All that I have written here might sound simply like words, words and more words, but I truly believe that the way things are written, project certain results.