I’ve heard and read the comment that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem a great deal recently. What I want to know is what is classed as temporary? Three months, a year, five years or thirty years?

I get the impression that some of the people who make this remark think that the person’s first thought when confronted by the situation was to kill themselves. This, I believe, is rarely the case.

People have often been suffering for months if not years. Sometimes they are riddled with shame and guilt which has made it impossible for them to speak out. Some of them have spoken out and been derided, rejected or there simply isn’t the support out there to help them find their way through.

Some have only ever been given different types of medication that often doesn’t help at all, works for a very short time or worst of all, makes things even worse. Medication is not the solution for everyone. It certainly wasn’t for me and a good few people that I know and yet for a long time, it was all that we were offered.

People, I believe, end up killing themselves because it is the only way to get the pain to stop. They may also see how much of an impact their suffering has on those around them and start to believe that killing themselves is the only way to get that to stop as well. I remember vividly how much pain trying to get help for my sister and rarely succeeding caused my mother. It was so painful to watch.

All I ask is that anyone who thinks the problems that have driven someone to kill themselves were only temporary, remember that you don’t know just how long someone was suffering for or how hard they may have tried to resolve their issues before restoring to suicide.

Written By Lorna Smart

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