Eric Marcus - Why Suicide?: Questions and Answers About Suicide, Suicide Prevention, and Coping with the Suicide of Someone You Know

For Martin Stephen Frommer

Im sorry that you have any reason to read this book. But the sad fact is that almost everyone is touched at some point in life by suicide, whether its the suicide or attempted suicide of someone we know or our own passing self-destructive thoughts.

No matter what the circumstances, there are always questions for those of us who are affected by suicide. When I was twelve, my father took his life. His death was devastating, the circumstances painfully perplexing and embarrassing. I was hurt, angry, guilt-ridden, and ashamed, and I didnt know why. I had so many questions, but there was no one who could provide the answers and perspective I desperately needed. The adults in my life didnt have the answers to give and, as I later learned, had few places in 1970 to find them even if they had looked. And to be fair, most of them were devastated themselves and had little emotional energy or wherewithal to consider what was going on for a well-behaved and outwardly brave little boy who didnt shed a tear at his fathers funeral.

From the start of my writing career, I was determined to create the kind of book that would have enabled my family to help me cope with the circumstances of my fathers death. I also wanted to write a book that could serve as a broad resource for anyone whose life has been touched by suicide.

Inevitably, the experience of writing the original Why Suicide?and then revisiting the book fourteen years later to prepare this new editionhas helped me find answers to many of the unanswered questions about suicide that I carried with me for years. Writing this book gave me the excuse I needed to ask the questions I was afraid to ask and to find answers when there were answers to be found. And it certainly gave me the excuse to talk to family members, track down my fathers old friends, and subsequently fill in as many blanks as I could about what was going on in my fathers mind and in his life at the time he killed himself. Through my research I also had the opportunity to speak with many people who have lived through a similar experience. Perhaps that was most comforting of allto discover that I wasnt alone, that there are plenty of people in the world who understand in a visceral way what it is like to live through (and with) the trauma of a loved ones suicide.

I dont pretend to be an expert on the subject of suicide. And Im not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or social worker. Im a journalist by training. So in researching this book I did what journalists do and interviewed a lot of people, including many experts. I read magazine and newspaper articles, scanned the pages of numerous books, and searched the Web. I also watched educational videos and documentary films about suicide.

What I learned about suicide, youll find in the pages that follow. Ive included a broad range of questions, from the very basic to the extremely specific. In response to these questions, youll find brief answers, long answers, anecdotes, opinion, and conjecture. A few questions will leave you with more questions, because Ive included some that dont yet have definitive answers. And in the end you may not find the answers you were looking for because, as I discovered in my own search for answers, its almost impossible to find satisfying or complete answers to the question of why someone we care about would take his or her life.

Youll meet many different people in Why Suicide? Some give answers to questions; others provide stories that help support a point. When Ive used quotes or anecdotes from experts and those whose stories have already been made public, Ive used complete names. When Ive quoted private citizens or used their anecdotessome of which are composites drawn from several different peopleIve used only first names and altered identifying characteristics when asked to protect the privacy of the people Im quoting. (Several of the private citizens I interviewed were perfectly comfortable using their full names, but I wasnt comfortable putting them in the public eye.)

Why Suicide? includes scores of questions, but not all the possible questions are here, nor are all the answers. My goal in writing this book was to create a resource that would be easy to read, easy to digest, and not overwhelming in details or length. There are plenty of other books on this subject that provide in-depth and very detailed information about suicide, and many of them were very useful resources for me in writing this one. (For a list of these books, please have a look at the bibliography). But if theres a question Ive missed that you would like answered, or if you have an answer to a question that I didnt have an answer for or that you feel I didnt answer adequately, write to me at eric@ericmarcus.com or through my Web site, www.whysuicidebook.com, and I promise that I will write you back with the information you need or recommend a resource that can be of help.

I hope that the questions and answers in Why Suicide? bring understanding and comfort for all of you who have in some way been touched by suicide.

Eric Marcus

I began my search for answers to basic questions about suicide during my lunch hour on a spring day in 1987. As an associate producer for ABC TVs Good Morning America, I spent part of every day in our cramped, windowless library searching through the extensive clip files, preparing background information for the stories that were assigned to me. (This was back when actual newspaper and magazine clips were sorted by subject and kept in huge filing cabinets in the heart of a long-gone office building on Sixty-sixth Street and Broadway in New York City.)

I had already decided by then that I was going to write a book about suicide and figured the best way to start was to see what we had on file. I wasnt looking for anything specific. And I wasnt counting on finding anything that I thought would help me sort out why my father had killed himself seventeen years before. I was simply doing what a journalist does when he sets out to write a book or an article. I was after the five Ws: Who? What? Where? When? Why?

But as I started pulling articles and, for the first time, reading stories about suicideabout people who took their lives, suicide prevention, theories, statistical analysis, history, religious viewsI found something I didnt expect to find. Comfort. For one thing, I could see that I was far from alone in my experience. And I also found that with each bit of information I gathered and every heartbreaking story I read I was able to begin filling in some of the empty spaces in my understanding of my fathers suicide and my own experience in the aftermath of his shocking death. Ive come to accept that in life there are many mysteries, but my fathers suicide left mysteries that plagued me. So by learning about suicide in general, I began demystifying my fathers death in particular.

Not everyone will want to know every answer to every basic question that youll find in the pages that follow. And I cant claim that the information I offer is anywhere near exhaustive or complete, but once youve read this first chapter you will probably know a lot more than before you started, and I hope that will be as helpfuland comfortingto you as it was to me when I began my search for answers.

Suicide is the act of killing oneself on purpose. The word suicide comes from the Latin sui, meaning self, and caedere, which means to kill. But this definition is deceptively simple, because in reality suicide is many things to different people: tragic, shocking, horrifying, enraging, mysterious, a relief, shameful, stigmatizing, a shattering legacy, a cry for help, a release from pain, selfish, heroic, insane, the last word, punishment, revenge, a protest, a weapon, a political statement, tempting, desperate, upsetting, unsettling, a mistake, infuriating, hurtful, dramatic, a cop-out, devastating, and unforgivable.