There is something about a soldiers experience that diminishes the will to live, something that’s unlikely to be physiological, something that’s taking a toll. Then there’s something fabulous about John Birmingham’s response to learning about extraordinary suicide rate among veterans, and the considered (thinky) sharing of his thoughts…

I don’t know which stats he read but I wrote about some figures a year ago, the suicide rate of veterans was estimated as between two and four times higher than the same population of civilians. I saw John Birmingham’s tweet and read his blog and reweeted his original statement, glad that the issue was receiving some mainstream attention.

Now I am writing a blog entry about his blog entry, I don’t know another way, maybe my blog should share a coffee with his blog… I do think a lot about how to lift the darkness around suicide and make the risks more visible. Silence keeps things invisible.

I wonder if the story of this american soldier, originally cited in John Birmingham’s blog might have played out differently if the silence were broken. I can only hope so…

She felt frustrated by not having the language to avoid wading in to difficult scenarios and causing offence because she didn’t realise….

We sat across from each other.

“It’s not fair” she wailed, “why can’t people be normal?”
“It’s not fair” I echoed, but I did not empathise I just didn’t want to inflict hurt, she was already distressed.

What I didn’t say is that I have high expectations of others. I am not very forgiving of people who are unwilling to moderate how they interact – people who think their normal is normal and mine is not.

I don’t like to be regarded as dangerous and I used the analogy of a mine-field, so I acknowledge some degree of difficulty. I know I am a little dangerous for some. Experiences I have integrated as normal are somewhat shocking and unexpected to many. In my favour it is also true that sometimes being in my company provides more and not less safety.

What is unfair is to expect me to skate over my experience and sensitivity. Let me bring my whole self to any situation, both wounds and tenacity – sensitivity and resilience. Please don’t think of me as not normal.

The story reads as a complicated and distressing scenario. The Portland Major described the shooting as a ‘tragic mistake’. The police chief said the situation was a ‘terrible tragedy’. What went wrong – probably a lot of things…

One thing reported as wrong was that the police officer’s gun was loaded with inappropriate ammunition, more dangerous shots than it was supposed to use. Lethal rounds were loaded in a less-than-lethal-gun, something strictly against standard police procedures.

“It was human error that caused this tragedy,” the Police Chief said, “we are human.” That’s a statement that upsets me, the man who was reported as “acting in a peculiar manner” is also human. I expect more from the police and I know it is complex and dangerous for both sides. Mental illness is not a policing problem, necessarily, and it is obviously a policing problem, even with just this one story as evidence.

The policing of people with mental is recognised as a significant challenge, and one that has fallen to the police. It is not ideal but who else can help?

Perhaps the police are called to often, because the average person in the street is too readily unsettled by someone behaving a manner deemed somewhat odd, peculiar or disturbing.

This report notes that in confrontations the safety of the police and the person are jeopardised: “In 1998, people with mental illnesses killed law enforcement officers at a rate 5.5 times greater than the rest of the population.” and “People with severe mental illnesses are killed by police in justifiable homicides at a rate nearly four times greater than the general public.”

If you ever encounter the police in heated situation you should know it is not a fair fight, the police are trained to win the battle. In their role as protectors of the public they have to win. We, the public, expect that. Interactions are between more than the police and the person, the are public are inevitably involved. Tense situations involve bystanders. The police carry a lot of responsibility, and as a bystander I’d like them to be more responsible.

The man who was shot is described as critically wounded. As a bystander, I am alarmed and concerned.

Part of my concern is that this incidence was in Portland where, in 2006 after a man with a schizophrenia diagnosis died in police detention, the city took action to change police responses. I know a little of Portland and I know that there is ongoing concern to do things better . The Portland Police introduced some reforms in 2007, including a training program, Project Respond. There’s a radio discussion of that training here thanks to Madness Radio. I am distressed that this recent incident happened in Portland with their training efforts and their want to police better. The issue is not Portland’s alone, or even a US one. Similar tragedies happen here in Australia.

The police need support around crisis intervention how to step in to tense situations without unnecessary force. All of us need more freedom to do peculiar things without someone calling the police to sort it out. More tolerance, more empathy rather than more control? I don’t know but any police shooting is a tragedy for all of us.

I know I need greater mental health awareness, the police need to feel less threatened by someone in an altered state. So do I.

The investigation was a formal and unhurried process. The Notice of Completion of the Corner’s Investigation arrived on 8 October almost 7 months after Mottsu’s death. It included the Record of Investigation into Death, an unemotional report of the facts, it was destitute of adjectives or embellishment.

The Coroner looks at the statements contained in the brief of evidence compiled by the police and establishes a cause of death. The Coroner’s determination sets out the facts of the case based on a toxicology report and the conclusions of the police investigation.

That day, even with letter from the Coroner in hand, there was no comfort in knowing that Mottsu’s death, an event that was still incomprehensible to me, had been investigated to the satisfaction of the official bodies.

The Coroner had warned me by mail that a finding would be forwarded by 7 October. Even so the report was unexpected when it arrived a day late. Standing in front of my house, in the weak sunshine of a cold October day, I scanned the letter before losing focus. The light dimmed and the dark type became indistinguishable from the white pages. My physical reaction to what I read was immediate, a creeping chill surfaced from somewhere within and I started to shiver.

My already dulled heart slowed as I realised things that I have wondered about myself were being confirmed as true. I didn’t know him, I didn’t understand him and I didn’t help him. Guilt and blame welled up in me and I turned as cold on the inside as my shivering exterior.

There’s nothing about his last day and the act of drowning that I hadn’t explored in repeated deranged imaginings. I know it takes up to 87 seconds to drown, before air is expelled from a drowning person’s lungs and painfully replaced with water. I’ve imagined myself sitting on the riverbank numb and confused as he did. I’ve wondered what sort of determination it took to make a step into the murky water. He took his shoes off, left his glasses on, and kept his wallet along with the car key in his pockets. Incredibly, Mottsu left his glasses on, he was blind without them, he saw what he was doing. There is no question of anything accidental.

His house keys were left at home, when he drove off serious and unsmiling that last morning. He knew he would not return and would not need to open the front door.

It shouldn’t be possible to discover unknown territories of someone so dearly loved. I thought I knew him, It’s not the clinical facts of his death that caught me by surprise as much as an unknown piece of his past. The Coroner stunned me with something I didn’t know and hadn’t imagined, and not about his death, but from a time before we met. “Mr Mottsu suffered a major depressive episode in his early adulthood which required hospitalisation and did not wish his current episode to end in a similar fashion”. I’m overcome by the force of that sentence, Mottsu had never disclosed a hospitalisation to me. I don’t know how such a significant event might have been left out, not shared. Was it not important enough or perhaps too important to have confided about or even hinted at in 18 years? It was a significant episode, and one that he took deliberate measures to avoid again. He hadn’t told me, his parents had no knowledge of it, but he had confided in someone – that fact was recorded in the Coroner’s Notice of Completion.

There is a little more to this story mostly my own reactions to learning about somebody and what they were struggling through when it is too late to change anything.
Right now writing that part is feeling very heavy to do, I need to stop and breathe. Reading it might not be easy either – there’s another post to complete this story.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

You can recover from depression. With support, treatment and care, it is possible to recover. Recovery is an option. “To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better.” said Abraham Lincoln.

Suicide is preventable. I hope so, that is not my experience so I can’t say for sure. Reading the story in the Australian, I caught the part, about guilt. There is a guilt shared by people touched by a death by suicide. Prevention efforts and campaigns have high visibility and lend support to the premise that suicide is preventable. Is the burden for prevention to be shouldered by those with the closest relationships? The wife, mother, sister, daughter, the best friend?

It might be more truthful to say that suicide in not inevitable. I don’t know if that is closer to the truth. To believe suicide is preventable belies the numbed, detached state of the suicidal. If suicide is preventable there are many, like me, who failed in that task. The shadow of guilt, cast by not having prevented a death, is a big part of the stigma that holds back conversations about suicide.

I feel implicated by various reactions of disbelief and horror, and the lack of discussion and the reluctance to engage on the topic. It is funny how upsetting others can be when they don’t want to upset me.

I may not be guilty for Mottsu’s suicide, the super pillow incident notwithstanding, certainly not to blame. Blameless? That’s a whole other conversation for another blog post. I am guilty of not having prevented his suicide, for not knowing it was even a possibility. I am guilty for underestimating the possible outcomes of his depression.

Here are a few ideas quickly thrown together that may help in traumatic situations, things I have found useful over the years of working with “hot spot” kinds of situations. I want to write these up quickly because of all the calls I am getting about dealing with trauma. Sorry I did not do this earlier. Everyone should add their tips if they have some. May these ideas be of help. I have not published this material, I am just sharing this out of good feeling for all those in the midst of, or going through trauma including victims, eye-witnesses, rescuers, and everyone included.

Love arny
p.s. excuse me for haste and incompleteness I just wanted to get this out now. There are many good teachers about these subjects such as Emetchi!

Sylvia Plath was found dead around midday on Monday 11 February 1963, the poem was written in the aftermath, decades ago. I look forward to the publication of Ted Hughes poem, even though it is being described as ‘uncooked’, a shared experience is a consolation of sorts.

It’s called Last Letter and it opens ”What happened that night? Your final night”. I can’t think how often I have asked the same, there’s no reconciling with the last moments of someone who dies by suicide.

It brings on wretchedness to think on those last moments and it’s impossible not to dwell on them. I know the torment induced by trying to comprehend what is mostly incomprehensible. The decision and the execution.

I have wailed that Mottsu took away my beautiful life as well as his own, an agony without consolation. I am trying to understand. I do know it was worse for him than me and I still grieve and regret.

Why? (I didn’t know anything was wrong)

Why didn’t he tell me? (I could have done something)

If only I’d known. (I could have done something)

What happened? (I don’t know)

Why?

I am chastened and reminded that not every loved and missing man is a suicide. Whatever the circumstances, each is a tragic loss for their families.

E arisposeno tutti: E vvero, e vvero.
And all the people said it’s true it’s true

Giuseppe Gioachino Belli 1832

Mottsu drove away on a Monday morning. I expected him home by lunch although he hadn’t stated an ETA. Lunch passed, the day slid into late afternoon. I rang his psychologist, the appointment he had left the house for. There had been no appointment.

From there everything unravelled. I contacted friends, reported him missing to the police, at night I sat up looking out the window case he drove by.

I rang his work. Debated with myself about when, if ever to share my concerns with his family, or my family. I wept and I answered the phone. Calls came in as concern spread, and there was no news of his whereabouts, it is difficult to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.

Friends wondered whether I was over-reacting, I’m grateful that the police treated my concerns seriously.

Wednesday, day 3, and C. Robin did a mercy dash from interstate. I had told him not to hurry and I was glad he hurried. He insisted I get out of the house and accompany him on a walk around the block.

I left a post-it note on the front door, so Mottsu would know I would be right back. Something told me it was futile, and I also could not bear him coming home, with me not there to embrace him.

I staggered around the block, one unsteady step at a time, almost needing the support of a walking frame. I had C. Robin’s support and the world at large was unfamiliar and swirling. I felt so lost. The police rang to check bank account details, to let me know they were doing all they could, and there was no news.

The newspaper he worked for considered printing a paragraph describing the car and saying that concerns were held for him. That’s when I contacted family, the distressing news would come from me, not another source.

The paper held off. Confident he would return? Not wanting to have created a fuss that Mottsu might have to live down when he returned. I only wanted him found. Fuss could be dealt with. It was unbearable to have Mottsu missing.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. C.S. Lewis

When police came to the door late on the evening of day 4, I was relieved. Mottsu’s body had been found and recovered from the river. There were no suspicious circumstances, police-speak for suicide. He was no longer missing, he was gone.