Mary's Shortcut: About Suicide Bereavement

The first step to preventing suicide is questioning a depressed person about whether he or she is considering suicide, advises Paul Quinnett in his Question, Persuade, Refer strategy. “Giving a ‘yes’ answer to this question is often a release for the individual. It makes him or her feel better, not worse.”

Once the suicide question is under discussion, the questioner has a moral obligation to listen. “Listening is the greatest gift one human can give another,” writes Quinnett. “Advice tends to be easy, quick, cheap and wrong. Listening takes time, patience, and courage, but is always right. Give your full attention and don’t interrupt . . . judge or condemn. Listen for the problems death by suicide would solve” (Paul Quinnett, Ph.D, “QPR: Ask a Question. Save a life.” National Alliance on Mental Illness, Family-to-Family Education Program: 2012).

On the day before my daughter Mary’s suicide, I was questioning her, all right, but not about the one topic that might have saved her life. She had just come home from school that afternoon, and we talked for at least an hour about her school day, the weather, my sister’s upcoming birthday, the proper way to use a make-up brush, her skill as a math tutor to her younger sister, and other pleasant and lamentably pointless subjects. But I felt it was exactly the kind of positive, bonding conversation we needed on a day when Mary seemed to be recovering from major depression, and I think most mothers would have acted similarly.

I’m not dredging up that squandered opportunity to make myself feel bad seventeen years later. Mine was not a failure of love but, rather, a failure of knowledge. In other words, Quinnett’s Question, Persuade, Refer strategy is counterintuitive. It isn’t a process a mother (or anyone else) would instinctively figure out on the spot and put to use. It cuts against logic to bring up the word “suicide” with someone who is struggling with depression. That’s why grasping the system before it might be needed is vital and possibly life-saving. There is one last post to be offered on the subject.