Facing up to suicide

by Editor · June 1, 2005

About a year ago, a funeral service caused much uproar in a South African archdiocese. Burying a 14-year-old girl who had impulsively shot herself, the presiding priest in his sermon launched into a discourse on the sin of suicide, effectively leaving the bereaved family and friends with an impression that their lost girl would be denied access to the eternal life.

Rightly, the priest’s inappropriately dogmatic and insensitive sermon drew extensive censure from those who heard it, and many of those who were told about it. One hopes that this was a misjudged aberration that will find no echo.

Church teaching certainly proscribes suicide. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self.” It warns that the lives we live belong to God, that we are only “the stewards” of his gift. The Catechism also counsels that suicide breaks one’s obligations to others.

So much for the theory of suicide. In practice suicides are extreme decisions reached in response to unbearable despair. Suicide usually occurs when one’s pain exceeds one’s means of dealing with it.

The sociologist Emile Durkheim suggested that the sharp rise of suicide in the industrial age could be ascribed to a loss of personal “connectedness” with others, a consequence of the increasing individualism in societies where people no longer have the automatic support systems of extended family and community.

In other words, suicide often is caused by a loneliness that might not be immediately apparent.

Compounding the problem is the stigmatisation of the conditions that often drive people to thoughts of suicide. Many people who contemplate suicide will not seek help professionally or from family or friends because they are unwilling to face up to the stigma of mental health issues or substance abuses, which often is at the root of suicides.

Moreover, the incidence of clinical depression continues to be trivialised instead of being seen as a serious but treatable condition, deterring those affected by it from seeking help.

Statistics suggest that two-thirds of those with psychological problems never seek therapy. Many of these face a lone despair; some kill themselves.

The Catechism recognises that the responsibility of those who commit suicide can be diminished by “grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture.” It would be fair to suggest that most suicides fulfil these criteria.

Those whose lives are made so unbearable that they might contemplate ending it need our on-going prayers.

Still more is needed structurally from the Church, which emphasises its opposition to assisted suicide by those suffering physical agony, but has few programmes in place to help those suffering mental anguish.

Likewise, the spiritual counselling to those affected by suicide family, friends, even colleagues is left to parish priests who are not always adequately equipped to deal with that nature of bereavement. Indeed, as has been seen, some can cause appalling hurt in doing so.

The Church’s pastoral ministries extend across many fields. There is a need for it to show its spiritual solidarity and practical concern with those suffering mental anguish, those who are suicidal, and those who are touched by suicide.