Living with the questions
27/02/14 05:35
I have been involved in working with survivors of suicide for many years now. The grief that accompanies a death by suicide is in many ways unique. Part of what makes the grief unique is the social stigma that is attached to mental illness and suicide in the community. There is often fear associated with things that we don’t understand. For generations, mental illness has had a hidden status in our culture. We didn’t talk about it openly. And we certainly didn’t understand it. Today with modern research into brain diseases, there is a growing field of evidence and information about how some diseases cause havoc with emotions and thought as they influence and at times control complex chemical and electrical reactions within the human brain. Great advances have been made in the treatment of mental illnesses. In well over 80% of cases where treatment is available, Depression can be treated successfully and the victim of the disease can live a productive life.
But there is much that remains unknown. Like many diseases, our understanding is incomplete and even though effective treatment is available for some diseases, it eludes us in other cases. With some diseases such as bipolar disorder, treatments that are effective for one person may not work at all for another. Treatments that are successful at one phase of a person’s life might stop working at another phase of the same person’s life.
Because of the fear associated with mental illness, it is difficult to secure funding for research that could lead to more effective treatment.
Our society continues to attach stigma to death by suicide. We speak of it as a “choice” as if the person who dies by suicide could have made a different choice and survived. Too often suicide is seen as a character flaw or a moral failing by those who don’t have much information about the nature of brain diseases.
A second factor that makes suicide grief unique is that significant evidence that might lead to understanding the death is destroyed by the death itself. Much of what we know about the nature of mental illness and its effect on its victims is the result of interviews with sufferers. Once a victim dies, there is no further opportunity to ask questions and receive answers. The ability to study the complex chemical and electrical reactions in the brain disappears with the death of the brain. Even a complex autopsy with a brain biopsy doesn’t provide much answer to the exact chain of events and processes that leads to death.
So one of the missions of my life has been to work to support scientific research and learning in brain disorders and diseases and to provide support, understanding and education for the public at large and for the families and friends who are left grieving when a suicide occurs.
There is another type of death that is often called suicide that I have avoided, however. I am not convinced that the mental and physical processes are directly related, but there are many documented cases of people, often young people, who willingly choose to died in defense of their comrades or a political idea. Is it different to sacrifice your life in pursuit of the defense of those you love or in defense of an ideal? Is there a higher level of choice and free will in operation in such a death? Frankly though I have briefly pondered these questions, I have avoided spending much time in research or thought about those who chose to die in defense of a political ideal. I think I have wanted to believe that it is a totally different category of thought and behavior. I have wanted to believe that fanaticism, while being labeled crazy, is not the same thing as a mental illness.
My thoughts were stirred recently when I read an article about Japan’s application to the United Nations for World Heritage status for a collection of letters written by kamikaze pilots who died during the Second World War. Tadamasa Itaitsu was himself a kamikaze pilot. He was scheduled for missions that would have resulted in his death twice. On the first mission, his plane experienced engine failure and he was forced to ditch in the ocean and was rescued. The second mission was scrubbed due to bad weather. He survived the war and now is 89 years old. It is one of the things that I noticed when I read the article. Kamikaze pilots were very young. Most were 17 to 20 years old. And they were volunteers. Although significant social pressure may have been applied it was possible to avoid being selected as a kamikaze.
I had believed that the young pilots were brainwashed. That they underwent an indoctrination process that made death into an honor and choosing to die for the emperor into something that was to be sought. But it appears, from the letters that Itaitsu has collected, that not all of the kamikaze pilots were of one mind. Many of the letters speak of honor and joy in death as one would suspect. They often appeal to family members not to grieve but to rejoice in a greater good that comes from the death. But one, written by a young lieutenant, Ryoji Uehara, shows a different perspective. Here is part of the translation:
“Tomorrow, one who believes in democracy will leave this world. He may look lonely but his heart is filled with satisfaction. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany have been defeated. Authoritarianism is like building a house with broken stones.”
The dynamics of this young man’s death are as complex and unfathomable as any other.
I guess that I will leave it to others to decide whether or not such letters deserve World Heritage status. But I do hope that they are preserved. When we encounter things that we don’t understand, it seems to always be a good idea to preserve evidence as best we are able. There might be information in those letters that will lead future generations to a more complete understanding.
For now it is a troubling mystery. And living with mysteries that we don’t understand is part of our lot in this life. As I have said many times to grieving families, “There are questions to which we will not find the answers, but you can live with the questions if you are honest about them. The questions that will cripple you are the ones that you pretend don’t exist.”
For now we live with the questions.
But there is much that remains unknown. Like many diseases, our understanding is incomplete and even though effective treatment is available for some diseases, it eludes us in other cases. With some diseases such as bipolar disorder, treatments that are effective for one person may not work at all for another. Treatments that are successful at one phase of a person’s life might stop working at another phase of the same person’s life.
Because of the fear associated with mental illness, it is difficult to secure funding for research that could lead to more effective treatment.
Our society continues to attach stigma to death by suicide. We speak of it as a “choice” as if the person who dies by suicide could have made a different choice and survived. Too often suicide is seen as a character flaw or a moral failing by those who don’t have much information about the nature of brain diseases.
A second factor that makes suicide grief unique is that significant evidence that might lead to understanding the death is destroyed by the death itself. Much of what we know about the nature of mental illness and its effect on its victims is the result of interviews with sufferers. Once a victim dies, there is no further opportunity to ask questions and receive answers. The ability to study the complex chemical and electrical reactions in the brain disappears with the death of the brain. Even a complex autopsy with a brain biopsy doesn’t provide much answer to the exact chain of events and processes that leads to death.
So one of the missions of my life has been to work to support scientific research and learning in brain disorders and diseases and to provide support, understanding and education for the public at large and for the families and friends who are left grieving when a suicide occurs.
There is another type of death that is often called suicide that I have avoided, however. I am not convinced that the mental and physical processes are directly related, but there are many documented cases of people, often young people, who willingly choose to died in defense of their comrades or a political idea. Is it different to sacrifice your life in pursuit of the defense of those you love or in defense of an ideal? Is there a higher level of choice and free will in operation in such a death? Frankly though I have briefly pondered these questions, I have avoided spending much time in research or thought about those who chose to die in defense of a political ideal. I think I have wanted to believe that it is a totally different category of thought and behavior. I have wanted to believe that fanaticism, while being labeled crazy, is not the same thing as a mental illness.
My thoughts were stirred recently when I read an article about Japan’s application to the United Nations for World Heritage status for a collection of letters written by kamikaze pilots who died during the Second World War. Tadamasa Itaitsu was himself a kamikaze pilot. He was scheduled for missions that would have resulted in his death twice. On the first mission, his plane experienced engine failure and he was forced to ditch in the ocean and was rescued. The second mission was scrubbed due to bad weather. He survived the war and now is 89 years old. It is one of the things that I noticed when I read the article. Kamikaze pilots were very young. Most were 17 to 20 years old. And they were volunteers. Although significant social pressure may have been applied it was possible to avoid being selected as a kamikaze.
I had believed that the young pilots were brainwashed. That they underwent an indoctrination process that made death into an honor and choosing to die for the emperor into something that was to be sought. But it appears, from the letters that Itaitsu has collected, that not all of the kamikaze pilots were of one mind. Many of the letters speak of honor and joy in death as one would suspect. They often appeal to family members not to grieve but to rejoice in a greater good that comes from the death. But one, written by a young lieutenant, Ryoji Uehara, shows a different perspective. Here is part of the translation:
“Tomorrow, one who believes in democracy will leave this world. He may look lonely but his heart is filled with satisfaction. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany have been defeated. Authoritarianism is like building a house with broken stones.”
The dynamics of this young man’s death are as complex and unfathomable as any other.
I guess that I will leave it to others to decide whether or not such letters deserve World Heritage status. But I do hope that they are preserved. When we encounter things that we don’t understand, it seems to always be a good idea to preserve evidence as best we are able. There might be information in those letters that will lead future generations to a more complete understanding.
For now it is a troubling mystery. And living with mysteries that we don’t understand is part of our lot in this life. As I have said many times to grieving families, “There are questions to which we will not find the answers, but you can live with the questions if you are honest about them. The questions that will cripple you are the ones that you pretend don’t exist.”
For now we live with the questions.