Suicide: When a Whole Being Cries Out Pain

This year, as part of the 28th National Suicide Prevention Week, the Association québécoise de la prévention du suicide and its partners are deploying the whole new awareness campaign under the theme "Talking About Suicide Saves Lives".

Suicide can be a delicate subject for some, difficult to understand for those with a light heart, an incomprehensible option for others, but for the person who suffers, it is a cry of distress. However, it is not always easy to hear, to listen to and to receive that intensity of suffering that pierces the heart. Suicidal ideation is a red flag that indicates that suffering has become intolerable and the means to cope are currently insufficient. Every day in Quebec, about three people take their own lives and nearly a dozen are hospitalized because they tried to take action.

One must have rubbed shoulders with death to know how much hopelessness is felt in the face of distress. Being a trained psychologist, I have accompanied several individuals in this great darkness trying to offer an empathic and validating presence, a look of compassion that relieves and helps heal the greatest wounds. I knew how to bring hope for a better tomorrow when my clients didn’t believe in it anymore so that they could keep hoping that someday the light would come. I accompanied them step by step, trying to capture their experience. I think I was doing pretty well. After all, I was well trained.

Then one day, the smell of death sneakily came into my house and got comfortable. Like a guest you don’t expect who takes up too much room, settles in without your approval. That same smell of death that was familiar to me because I had so often felt it in my consulting office. Suddenly, it was all unfamiliar to me and the more I breathed it, the least I recognized it. I lost all my benchmarks; I, the well-equipped psychologist who had always felt that she understood her clients and their families.

I understood viscerally the importance of being surrounded and supported crossing the storm of suicide the day my child wanted to die because he was suffering too much. I felt powerless, incompetent and without means. And that day, I understood how much this suffering is unbearable for those living it and for their relatives.

Mental health is everyone's business and today I choose to talk about it! Talk about saying no to isolation. Talk about stopping prejudices. Talk about it to get things moving and because we are all concerned with the well-being of our society. No one is immune to it, believe me! We must work together to implement accessibility to aid resources so that lives are preserved. People in distress who aren’t ready to go to the services must have access to a safety net to allow them, at the very least, to possibly ask for help.

Not waiting until it is too late. Acting before the crisis occurs. Providing tools to individuals suffering and directing them to existing resources. That is the mission of the Epsylio platform.

Indeed, Optania participates actively in the development of innovative tools using a caring technology to provide additional support to people in distress. The platforms designed by our team are always built with the concern to bring to users the sweetness of the empathy and compassion that our designers felt. The purpose and the strong motivation of the Epsylio platform are to attempt to provide an additional safety net to the population by responding specifically to their needs.

We must remember that suicide is never an option and that there are solutions. We have the individual and collective duty to work to improve access to resources and to offer maximum support by reaching out to the maximum number of people.