• REBECCA YANKE

    @RebecaYanke

    Madrid

  • ILLUSTRATION: ULISES CULEBRO

Updated Friday,11August2023-09:44

  • Share on facebook
  • Share on twitter
  • Send by email

Comment

  • Childhood The complicated task in the classroom of detecting the risk of suicide: "They are our children, we see that they suffer, but where are the means? We need trained people"
  • Prevention Protect your life from suicidal ideation: "Seek help before distress blocks you, you are not alone"

It weighs on it all our history, from the Greeks to the modern age, passing through a significant Middle Ages, in which it was imposed that suicide was a sin. Countless currents of thought have flown over it, and all disciplines have tried to understand it: sociology, anthropology, philosophy, medicine... It is known that in each of our civilizations taking one's own life has its own nuances, from ancient societies in which voluntary suicide was accepted to convictions in relation to it related to honor. For example, known is the suicide of the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, but also that Plato spoke fiercely against taking his own life after his teacher, Socrates, voluntarily accepted a death by poison in Ancient Greece.

The result of this overwhelming residue is that, today, when Spain is facing alarming suicide rates, a large number of myths persist among us, in the form of phrases that are sometimes said without thinking, and that make it difficult to solve the problem. Meanwhile, professionals demand a national prevention plan that equals in endowment to the fight against gender violence and traffic accidents. Some of these ideas deeply inserted among us are "if he says it, he does not do it", "suicide is not talked about", "who takes his own life is because he is crazy", "he just wants to attract attention" or "you have to be very brave".

Associations and telephone numbers that offer help

Drop-down

-In case of imminent vital emergency call directly to the emergency telephone number 112.

-If you have suicidal ideation 024

- Telephone of Hope: 717.003.717.

- Suicide Prevention Telephone (Barcelona): 900.92.55.55.

-Telephone/Chat ANAR to Help Children and Adolescents 900 20 20 10

- Telephone Against Suicide- La Barandilla Association (Madrid): 911.385.385.

-- RedAIPIS-FAeDS Association

- Papageno 633 169 129 supervivientes@papageno.es

-The Yellow Girl Association

-P81 Social Association

- APSAV. Association for Suicide Prevention. Green hugs. Asturias.

- AFASIB (Familiars i Amics Supervivents per suïcidi de Les Illes Balears (Balearic Islands)

-AIDATU. Basque Association of Suicideology

- APSAS: Association for Suicide Prevention and Survivor Support. (Girona)

- APSU: Association for the prevention and support affected by suicide (Cdad. Valenciana)

- ASAM: (Burgos).

- BESARKADA-Embrazo: Navarra.

- BIZIRAUN: Basque Country

-BIDEGUIN: Basque Country

- After the Suicide: (Barcelona)

- Alaia Foundation (Madrid)

- Metta-Hospice Foundation (Valencia)

- Goizargi: Navarre

- Group Survivors of León.

- There is Exit, Suicide and Duel: (Cantabria)

- Ubuntu (Seville)

- Light in the Darkness Association (Tenerife)

-Asociación Volver a Vivir (Tenerife)

But those in our country who work on this issue point out many more and, above all, the importance of dismantling them as a giant step when it comes to getting fewer Spaniards to feel so much anguish as to think about leaving. "Suicidal motivations are steeped in cultural influences. And we do not understand it the same in the West as in the East," confirms Miguel Guerrero Díaz, clinical psychologist at the Community Mental Health Unit of Marbella and responsible for the Cicero Intensive Prevention and Intervention Program in Suicidal Behavior. As he explains, "the psychiatrization of suicide since the Enlightenment is decisive in the current vision we have of suicide."

Guerrero is also the author of an analysis, Reflections on suicide from the historical perspective, published in the Psychoevidence Bulletin in 2019, in which it is recalled that the motivations for taking one's life remain the same as thousands of years ago, and the publication in 1621 of the book Anatomy of melancholy, of Robert Burton, "first author to propose suicide as a result of an alteration", "It is a historical milestone to be considered an authentic precursor of the future scientific postulates of the nineteenth century. Burton cries out for tolerance and pity to the suicide by stating that there is no demonic possession, but a melancholy temper brought on by an excess of black bile."

Until between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), "thought of suicide not as an individual phenomenon but markedly social. The social causes (economic crises, poverty, isolation, social changes, excessive social regulation, etc.) and not the individual ones, originated the suicidal act.

Find out more

ELEVEN LIVES.

X-ray of suicide in Spain: more deaths, greater risk among young people and a growing but insufficient effort in prevention

  • Writing: YAIZA PERERA
  • Writing: INFOGRAPHIC: GABRIELA GALARZA Madrid

X-ray of suicide in Spain: more deaths, greater risk among young people and a growing but insufficient effort in prevention

Suicide prevention.

All reports from the series Eleven lives

All reports from the series Eleven lives

Pedro Martín-Barrajón, head of Emergencies of the Princess 81 Psychologists network, also points out that "outdated and obsolete ideas persist around suicide and mental illness that hinder its prevention and even increase the damage in survivors". Myths that are also still present among health workers and the medical community. "One of the real challenges is to get most people to stop thinking that 'that happens to others' and not in ordinary families like ours," warns this expert. With them and others working in the field, in addition to various investigations, we analyze the most common.

"If he says it he doesn't" / "He just wants to get attention"

Emergency firefighter Sergio Tubío says that "this type of assertion is a mistake." And that, before saying them, we should think that when "someone has suicidal ideation they value death as a way to escape hopelessness and suffering." In that distressing vital moment, "impulsivity arises, but also ambivalence", that is, there is a kind of balance within one between the "anchors to life" and the need to flee from pain. "Until the last moment the person can debate between dying and continuing to live," he says, "so you have to delve into the protective factors." Let him win in the balance what is good in that person's life. "Our job is to get him out of that 'tunnel vision' and desist from the attempt," adds Tubío.

In addition, according to the study conducted among health professionals by Martín-Barrajón in 2019, Presence of myths about suicide in emergency and emergency professionals, it is known that 41.9% of emergency professionals responded that this statement was true. On the contrary, "according to data from the Spanish Society of Suicidology, 18% of patients who committed suicide had consulted their primary care doctor on the same day, 66% had done so during the last month and 75% in the last three months." In addition, 60% asked for help during the last week. And about 40% of primary care physicians are unaware of patients' suicidal history, of whom between 1 and 10 have suicidal thoughts and intent."

"You have to be very brave to commit suicide"

Guidelines on how to communicate and report suicide are very clear in this regard. "Suicide is a source of suffering and is not related to moral values, or exemplary behaviors or behaviors that turn the suicidal person into someone to imitate."

42.9% of the specialists who responded to the survey on myths about suicide prepared by Martín-Barrajón validated the statement, and this professional insists on the error of "attributing to suicide stable and permanent characteristics of personality". "The literature on suicidology shows that suicide risk is much more universal, everyday, and at the same time unknown, since 50% of the general population (non-clinical), will experience moderate-severe suicidal tendencies, throughout their lives," he says.

"If he commits suicide, he is crazy"

The assumption that a person with suicidal ideation has a mental illness doesn't help either. Pernicious statements such as "would you be sick of the head" or "did you have depression? they are very frequent and popular," says Martín-Barrajón. And specialists have already shown that "there is a weak association between psychopathology and suicide." "For those who continue to doubt: you don't have to have a mental disorder to have suicidal behavior," insists the Princess 81 expert. Moreover, some studies show that only 46% of suicidal behaviors occurred in people with a psychological disturbance, and it was not always a concurrent disturbance with suicide.

"Suicide is inherited"

Miguel Guerrero Díaz draws attention to the belief that "suicide attempts are transmitted genetically, like the one inherited by green eyes." "No suicide genes have been identified," he says. Related to this topic is what specialists call "definition bias": "Thinking of suicide as the active search for death, when in reality it is a behavior that seeks to brake psychological pain." That is, it does not help either to persist in repeating that a person thinks about suicide because he wants to die, being more appropriate to say other statements, such as that he suffers so much that he has come to think about taking his own life.

"If you've tried once, you'll try it again"

Labeling people, and believing that whoever had a suicide attempt will always be suicidal is also deeply rooted socially. "Nothing could be further from the truth," say the experts, "while it is true that making an attempt is a powerful predictor of completed suicide (perhaps the most relevant risk factor), but the vast majority of people who have made an attempt will not die from this cause. The more care, support and humanized accompaniment we do with these people, the more prevention we will be doing."

"Suicide is not talked about"

Another of the myths that continues to do more damage is to believe that "talking about suicide can induce it, or be a stimulus". "Today we know that instead of encouraging suicidal behavior, addressing it responsibly in the media or in individual interviews with at-risk patients can give a person other options, or time to reframe their decision, and therefore prevent it. Empirical evidence shows that asking or talking about suicidal behaviors has no negative consequences in the general population or clinical population."

The same is true in relation to the publication of information about suicide. The idea that talking about suicidal ideation spreads the phenomenon is already obsolete. Now it is necessary to talk about it with extreme prudence and responsibility. "More than 20 years ago the WHO provided style guides," recalls Martín-Barrajón, "and in the Community of Madrid a specific one was published."

In fact, "silence and occultism around suicide are one of the main obstacles to prevention, and that most interferes in the request for help, and in the possibility of being able to provide it, because what is not known is not prevented".

"Suicide is a public health issue"

It is. But not only that: it is above all a social problem and one that we can all help to reduce. In that sense, on the presence of these myths among health workers, as mentioned, the specialist of the Cicero Program recalls that they are, after all, they are "people inserted in the same community with the same biases, myths, prejudices and erroneous beliefs". It encourages, however, to establish "an exercise of conscious self-exploration, without blaming ourselves, because we have been educated like this", in relation to what preconceived ideas we accumulate about suicide.

This report is part of the project 'Eleven lives' promoted by EL MUNDO for the prevention of suicide and of which Yaiza Perera, Rafa Álvarez, Rebeca Yanke and Santiago Saiz are part.

  • Mental health
  • Suicide Prevention
  • Articles Rebeca Yanke