Richard A. Heckler - Waking Up, Alive: The Descent, The Suicide Attempt... and the Return to Life.

Preface to the Second Edition

One crisp autumn morning, at six-thirty a.m., I sat in the Green Room at ABC studios in New York City, waiting to be interviewed live on Good Morning America , about the book I had just written, Waking Up, Alive . My appearance reflected the best and worst of the nations understanding or misunderstanding of suicide.

Just weeks prior, the major television networks had somehow decided that I had found a cure for suicide. A firestorm of phone calls erupted in my publishers office, everyone wanting to be the first to interview the countrys latest psychological avatar. I despaired the probable effect of rectifying that misconception. Would they turn away, quickly absorbed in the next news cycle? Would the opportunity to have a cogent national conversation about suicide be lost?

This happened for some networks, but wiser heads prevailed at ABC, where Charles Gibson wanted to interview me. It wasnt my best appearance, I was very much a deer in the headlights, as it was my very first interview since the books publication and I was hardly practiced in the art of sound bites and four minute interviews, especially with regard to perhaps the most complex and vexing of all human conditions.

Nevertheless, as the segment began, I witnessed an astonishing and momentous thing. Charlie Gibson looked straight at the camera, into the homes of millions, and said, Everyone one of us, at some point in our lives, has thought about suicide. To my knowledge, it was the first time this had ever been acknowledged on national television. Despite the early morning hour, I was told afterward that indeed, a larger conversation had begun. During that four and a half minute segment, and in the thirty minutes that followed, over 19,000 calls were made to suicide hotlines across the country.

In the time since Waking Up, Alive was published, Presidents have come and gone. The major political parties have enjoyed dominion over one another. The art of governance has devolved into fractiousness to the point of despair. Technology we couldnt fathom at the end of the last century is ubiquitous today, simultaneously making life easier and more complex. While climate change and gun violence were barely a blip in the national conversation, theyve become central in our thoughts. Over these years, the suicide rate would drop significantly, and then rise again.

Today, there is barely an issue of national importance that does not involve the epidemic of suicide. Over the last ten years we have witnessed the suicide rate in the military double. Indeed, more U.S. military personnel in the war in Afghanistan have died by suicide than those who have died fighting there.

These statistics have unhappy ancestors. We lost over 58,000 American lives in Vietnam, but another 100,000 committed suicide, most after coming home. The data becoming available for the two Iraq wars and the ongoing one in Afghanistan, shows the trend continuing. We lose more men and women to suicide than battle. One soldier of modern combat commits suicide every 80 minutes graphic and irrefutable testimony that we are sending our young and impressionable into unimaginable chaos and danger, subjecting them to hemorrhaging psychological trauma that few are able to outrun.

Here are some other facts concerning suicide:

• Suicide has surpassed motor-vehicle accidents in the United States as the leading cause of death by injury.
• Firearms account for fifty percent of all suicides, and more firearms are used in suicides than are used to commit homicides. Although most gun owners say they keep a firearm in their home for protection or self-defense, 83% of gun-related deaths are by suicide, many times committed by someone other than the gun owner. Indeed, death by firearms is the fastest growing method of suicide in the United States.
• As a national culture struggles to free itself from intolerance, suicide figures prominently in discussions about adolescent bullying and sexual preference. Youth who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are more than three times more likely to seriously consider suicide than their straight peers.
• Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people between the ages of 15 and 24.
• Adults over 85 have a 36% higher rate of suicide than people under 85.
• The rugged intermountain states of Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico have the highest suicide rates in the nation.

Amid all of these discouraging statistics one extremely important fact emerges: ninety percent of all people who die by suicide are battling diagnosable and treatable emotional or psychological challenges at the time of their death. Usually this refers to depression, among the most treatable of psychological/psychiatric conditions, or trauma PTSD - where enormously creative innovations in treatment are proving more successful than ever before.

Experts in suicide come from many disciplines. It is perhaps the most multi-disciplinary field in modern health care, as a comprehensive portrait of suicide involves understanding not only biological and psychological factors, but sociological, cultural, economic, religious, and alternative life-style choices as well. The spectrum of specializations of these professionals are as diverse as the people they help, but these scientists all share one salient quality they are masters at searching for and finding, new avenues to explore and new possibilities for healing despite how formidably the statistics may trend.