Hope Is the Answer at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital Conference

We all need humility when we speak of suicidal ideation

After the passings of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade in 2018, I appeared on KTLA, a local TV station in the Los Angeles area.

The first question that I was asked was, “What is the biggest misconception about suicide?”

I answered that the biggest misconception about suicide is unfortunately that some people view it as “romantic.”

Alluding to the number of individuals who had taken their lives by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, I mentioned that some people have perhaps even viewed suicide as an “aesthetic” experience.

As someone who has lost three members of my family to suicide and as someone who himself was suicidal in the late 1990s, I then emphasized there is nothing remotely romantic or aesthetic about suicide.

For several decades, even before I first wrote about mental illness for the L.A. Times in my 2005 op-ed, “Shedding Stigma of the ‘Psycho’ Straitjacket,” I have been writing and speaking on this subject with the goals of shedding the stigma of mental illness and getting people to talk more openly not only about mental health challenges but also about suicidal ideation.

It takes strength, not weakness, to tell others that you are suicidal and that you need help, as I have long contended.

I would never claim that I know all the answers.

And I have never been afraid to admit when I am wrong or to apologize when I have been insensitive and hurt the feelings of others.

I am often wrong and have made many mistakes, including in my writing and speeches.

It is also true that I am open to learning, and I want to become a better and more informed person.

When you attend a conference on the subject of suicide awareness and prevention, as Carol, my angelic wife, and I did this Saturday, Sept. 6, it is important to do so with a great deal of humility.

As Sandi Kramer, senior director of training and community engagement at Didi Hirsch’s Suicide Prevention Center, said at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital’s 10^th annual conference, we need to be “culturally humble” on the subject of suicidal ideation because each person who has experienced it is his or her own expert.

At a time when the world is dealing with A.I. chatbots, climate change, a wannabe dictator, numerous wars, deportations in our country, and the denial of due process to many people living here and elsewhere, we as a species are all facing stressors that we might not have faced before or with the same severity.

Nearly 50,000 people died by suicide in the U.S. in 2023, according to the CDC.

And there is no question that we have a mental health crisis in this country.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among those 15-24 years old in America.

Yet there is hope, which was the theme of the 10^th annual conference on suicide awareness and prevention at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, co-sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

I have used the term, “commit suicide,” in the past, and I am sorry that I did so.

I was aware that many people even 10 years ago were no longer using that expression, but I still sometimes did use the verb, “commit,” in my speeches and articles.

The reason why I did so was because I wanted everyone to know that the power to survive, the power to go on, the power “to hold on,” in the words of Kipling, rests with the individual.

My father, who lost his father to suicide, often read the poem, “If,” by Kipling, for comfort after his father’s passing.

And I have read the poem, too.

I certainly agree that we want to comfort the loved ones and family members, who have lost someone to suicide, and it helps to use the expression, “die by suicide.”

We can all agree that no one wants the surviving family members and loved ones or the person or persons whom we have lost to suffer any more than all of us already have.

We do not want our loved ones, whom we have lost, or us to be in pain.

It is also true that we do not want to glamorize suicide, nor do we want anyone to think that it is okay to die by suicide.

Clearly, any and every suicide is a tragedy. It is a life cut short.

We want everyone to persist, to persevere, to “hold on,” and to subdue the depression or PTSD or other underlying conditions and/or to counter the stressors that might be leading us to feel suicidal.

Another speaker at the 10^th annual conference, Nathan Lichtman, who, like Sandi Kramer, is also a director of training and community engagement at Didi Hirsch’s Suicide Prevention Center, indicated that professionals in the field all want to “empower” people, who are suicidal, to get better.

I would add that we all want people to realize, as articulated by another speaker, James Espinoza, a veteran and former law enforcement officer, that the power to live comes from love, which is another way of saying that it comes from free will, or the Holy Spirit, with which God has blessed all of us.

Irrespective of our religious beliefs, whether we are agnostic or atheist or whether we believe in God, we can all summon that love, summon that free will, and reconfigure our lives, so that we can be safer and happier and more productive and help others.

If we have made mistakes, we can correct those mistakes, too.

Sometimes, those mistakes do come from language.

As I indicated earlier, I am sorry that I have used the words, “commit suicide,” and other terms that have seemed hurtful or insensitive.

I was indeed wrong to do so.

Let me point out again that my message, like the message of many of the speakers at the conference, has always been one of empowerment, of summoning the free will, the love, within us.

I cited Hamlet in my speech on this subject nine years ago at the inaugural conference on suicide awareness and prevention at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, and when I did, I alluded to a passage from the “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy, in which the prince of Denmark says that we should “rather bears those ills we have than fly to others we know not of.”

The “To Be or Not To Be” speech is not and never has been only or even mostly about suicide. It is about many things.

But the overriding message is that we should choose life, as Hamlet makes very clear, particularly later in the play, when the melancholy Dane, mortally ill, wrests a poisoned goblet from Horatio, his best friend, his only friend, who is suicidal and cannot bear to live without the prince.

In an act of extraordinary heroism, Hamlet prevents his dear friend from dying by suicide.

We can all grow as human beings and subdue what ails us.

Though we are all flawed, we can all summon the free will to live and to do good deeds.

Flawed as we all are, flawed as I am, I remain hopeful about our future on this planet.

I remain hopeful about the human condition.

And I remain hopeful that we can give hope to people who are suffering from stressors and mental health challenges, from depression and anxiety and PTSD and psychosis and suicidal ideation.

We can indeed all persevere throughout our lives, whatever has befallen us.

Kipling makes this point time and again in “If,” when for instance he tells us, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.”

We all fail at times, but, as I have written before, we can learn more from failure than from anything else. We always have the power to change our lives, and to do so for the better.

To return to my appearance on KTLA in 2018, I noted at that time that there was a study conducted by the Univ. of California-Berkeley in the 1970s, a study about those who had survived their attempts at suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

As I recall from reading an article in The New Yorker years ago, the researchers at Berkeley found, if I am remembering correctly, that every single one of the survivors said that he or she regretted jumping off the bridge.

The survivors interviewed in fact said that they regretted their attempts when they were mid-air, in essence, as soon as they jumped.

Fortunately, those individuals survived their suicide attempts and lived to tell us that life is worth living, as it always is.

I too was suicidal in 1997 and 1999 when I was hospitalized at the USC and UCLA psych wards respectively.

While I never actually attempted suicide, I did have suicidal ideation.

I am, of course, grateful to be alive. I am grateful to be with Carol, my bride, who is a former nurse and a remarkable healer.

And I hope, as I always have, that I can help others with my message of shedding the stigma of mental illness, of having open and “courageous conversations” about suicidal ideation, the theme of the inaugural conference in 2016 at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, and of summoning the free will, the love, in all of us.

And this is true even if people do not believe in God.

Tapping into love is the most empowering act of all.

To quote Hamlet once again, as I did nine years ago, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, roughhew them how we will.”

If you or someone you know needs support now, call or text 988, or chat 988lifeline.org.