In Search of New Language
02/05/12 05:37
Note: There are no photographs with today’s blog. The visual images that come to my mind should not be shared. Some topics require words for communication to take place.
The English language is constantly evolving. New words emerge. Old words have their meanings change. My grandparents used the word “gay” in their everyday conversation without making any connection to sexuality or sexual orientation. These days the word seems to have lost the meaning of “full of joy, merry, light-hearted, carefree.” There are many other words whose meaning has evolved as time has passed.
I think that we are about due for a new word that describes the action of taking one’s own life as the result of a mental illness. The commonly accepted term is “suicide.” The problem with the use of that word in describing the effects of mental illness is that it carries with it a host of associations with illegal behavior. People commonly say a person “committed suicide” just like we say “committed murder.” The word “committed” implies a willful act with the intention of causing harm. Death by suicide does involve specific actions taken by the individual, but those who have attempted suicide and not died often describe the self harm as something that could not be controlled or as the “only option” to end pain.
If it were only the associated verb, however, we could easily modify our language. I am careful to never say “committed suicide.” Instead I say, “died by suicide,” that hints at my sense that suicide is often the result of illness and that just like cancer or heart disease, depression has its victims, some of whom die. Furthermore, some of the deaths could be prevented if we were to dedicate sufficient funds to early detection, treatment and prevention.
Such usage, however, does not remove the stigma from the word “suicide.” The news media has already made an indelible connection between suicide and terrorism. An Internet search of the word suicide at news sites reveals how suicide is portrayed in the news:
I am not a psychologist. I do not understand terrorism. It is possible that those who commit acts of terror are suffering from mental illnesses. But I do know that highly personal acts of desperation to end one’s life are very different from acts of terrorism intended to kill as many others as possible.
I also know that survivors of suicide – the families and loved ones of those who die by suicide – go through years of anguish, often without the support of the community because of the stigma attached to death by suicide.
We need a separation of language. We need a new term for personal death as a result of chronic mental illness and an attack designed to create death and terror in support of a political ideology. They simply are not the same.
The problem is that I do not know what that new word might be. Perhaps the best word is no word at all. After all, we don’t have a special word to describe the death process of those who die as a result of the ravages of cancer. We don’t have a special word for the death of one who suffers congestive heart failure. We simply say that the person died. Sometimes we say they died “of cancer” or “of heart disease.” I’ve read many obituaries that say a person “died after a long battle with cancer.” I’ve never read one that said someone “died after a long battle with chronic depression.” Maybe it is time for a new way of describing what has occurred.
Along with the shift in language, we need to shift our perceptions. One thing that needs to be changed is the sense of fatalism that surrounds death by suicide. Too often I’ve heard it said, “There is nothing that could have been done.” While I do not want to add guilt to the other burdens born by survivors, I do want to challenge that assumption. Obviously those who loved the person who died would have done anything to prevent the death. Too often they did not see any warning signs. In other cases, they did everything they knew to try to help the person. But we, as a society, could do a lot more to prevent death by suicide.
Accurate statistics are difficult to obtain, but look at this comparison: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is the widely accepted response to heart failure. In an incident where someone dials 911 and the ambulance crew arrives and begins CPR, about 15% of the victims experience return of spontaneous circulation. Only about 2% actually recover from the attack. It can easily be argued that those are unusual circumstances and that CPR was started too late. Survival does increase when CPR is started sooner. In a witnessed cardiac arrest that takes place in the hospital, the victim has a 48% chance of restored heartbeat. About 22% of victims survive such situations. If you add the use of defibrillation within the first 3 minutes, the survival rate goes up to about 30%.
Those survival rates – at best 30% - are clearly worth all of the education and all of the expense of placing automatic electronic defibrillators in public places. It isn’t hard to raise funds and awareness to increase the number of people who are trained in those life-saving techniques.
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) is the standard training for lifesaving for those who are at risk of dying by suicide. Like CPR, ASIST is a research-based, internationally recognized program. Intervention by someone trained in ASIST is over 80% effective in preventing death by suicide within the first weeks following the intervention. Nearly 75% of those who receive intervention from an ASIST-trained person do not die by suicide. Intervention works.
While every ambulance driver, firefighter, police and sheriff’s deputy in our community is trained in CPR, only a few are trained in ASIST. Not one of our city’s ambulance drivers or attendants is ASIST trained.
Clearly we need to find the words to talk about and prevent unnecessary death.
The English language is constantly evolving. New words emerge. Old words have their meanings change. My grandparents used the word “gay” in their everyday conversation without making any connection to sexuality or sexual orientation. These days the word seems to have lost the meaning of “full of joy, merry, light-hearted, carefree.” There are many other words whose meaning has evolved as time has passed.
I think that we are about due for a new word that describes the action of taking one’s own life as the result of a mental illness. The commonly accepted term is “suicide.” The problem with the use of that word in describing the effects of mental illness is that it carries with it a host of associations with illegal behavior. People commonly say a person “committed suicide” just like we say “committed murder.” The word “committed” implies a willful act with the intention of causing harm. Death by suicide does involve specific actions taken by the individual, but those who have attempted suicide and not died often describe the self harm as something that could not be controlled or as the “only option” to end pain.
If it were only the associated verb, however, we could easily modify our language. I am careful to never say “committed suicide.” Instead I say, “died by suicide,” that hints at my sense that suicide is often the result of illness and that just like cancer or heart disease, depression has its victims, some of whom die. Furthermore, some of the deaths could be prevented if we were to dedicate sufficient funds to early detection, treatment and prevention.
Such usage, however, does not remove the stigma from the word “suicide.” The news media has already made an indelible connection between suicide and terrorism. An Internet search of the word suicide at news sites reveals how suicide is portrayed in the news:
- 7 Afghans Die as Suicide Attacker Strikes in Kabul – New York Times – 4 hours ago
• Suicide Bomber Kills MP:’s in Central Somalia – Reuters – 18 hours ago
• New York Man Convicted in Subway Suicide Bomb Plot – Reuters – 15 hours ago
• 10 Killed in Suicide Blast in Northeast Nigeria – Deseret News – 5 hours ago
I am not a psychologist. I do not understand terrorism. It is possible that those who commit acts of terror are suffering from mental illnesses. But I do know that highly personal acts of desperation to end one’s life are very different from acts of terrorism intended to kill as many others as possible.
I also know that survivors of suicide – the families and loved ones of those who die by suicide – go through years of anguish, often without the support of the community because of the stigma attached to death by suicide.
We need a separation of language. We need a new term for personal death as a result of chronic mental illness and an attack designed to create death and terror in support of a political ideology. They simply are not the same.
The problem is that I do not know what that new word might be. Perhaps the best word is no word at all. After all, we don’t have a special word to describe the death process of those who die as a result of the ravages of cancer. We don’t have a special word for the death of one who suffers congestive heart failure. We simply say that the person died. Sometimes we say they died “of cancer” or “of heart disease.” I’ve read many obituaries that say a person “died after a long battle with cancer.” I’ve never read one that said someone “died after a long battle with chronic depression.” Maybe it is time for a new way of describing what has occurred.
Along with the shift in language, we need to shift our perceptions. One thing that needs to be changed is the sense of fatalism that surrounds death by suicide. Too often I’ve heard it said, “There is nothing that could have been done.” While I do not want to add guilt to the other burdens born by survivors, I do want to challenge that assumption. Obviously those who loved the person who died would have done anything to prevent the death. Too often they did not see any warning signs. In other cases, they did everything they knew to try to help the person. But we, as a society, could do a lot more to prevent death by suicide.
Accurate statistics are difficult to obtain, but look at this comparison: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is the widely accepted response to heart failure. In an incident where someone dials 911 and the ambulance crew arrives and begins CPR, about 15% of the victims experience return of spontaneous circulation. Only about 2% actually recover from the attack. It can easily be argued that those are unusual circumstances and that CPR was started too late. Survival does increase when CPR is started sooner. In a witnessed cardiac arrest that takes place in the hospital, the victim has a 48% chance of restored heartbeat. About 22% of victims survive such situations. If you add the use of defibrillation within the first 3 minutes, the survival rate goes up to about 30%.
Those survival rates – at best 30% - are clearly worth all of the education and all of the expense of placing automatic electronic defibrillators in public places. It isn’t hard to raise funds and awareness to increase the number of people who are trained in those life-saving techniques.
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) is the standard training for lifesaving for those who are at risk of dying by suicide. Like CPR, ASIST is a research-based, internationally recognized program. Intervention by someone trained in ASIST is over 80% effective in preventing death by suicide within the first weeks following the intervention. Nearly 75% of those who receive intervention from an ASIST-trained person do not die by suicide. Intervention works.
While every ambulance driver, firefighter, police and sheriff’s deputy in our community is trained in CPR, only a few are trained in ASIST. Not one of our city’s ambulance drivers or attendants is ASIST trained.
Clearly we need to find the words to talk about and prevent unnecessary death.