TABOO

 

“Suicide is a taboo topic because there is much misinformation about what would motivate someone to have suicidal thoughts or ideation,” Howell said. “It is often misconstrued as selfish and attention-seeking. Understanding the various motivations for such thought processes, which doesn’t all stem from bullying, and appreciating their complexity should be encouraged.”

 

Then why is the issue not being addressed in universities?

 

“Some universities are afraid it’ll ruin their image, or that it’ll make it worse,” said Ariel Cunningham, a Dearborn Heights senior.

 

“These universities should be using their large social media presence and a large population to be a voice for their students and faculty, and help get rid of the negative stigma around mental health and suicide,” she said.

 

People don’t know what to say and are afraid of making it worse, Cunningham said. People claim to support mental health awareness, but once a person begins showing actual symptoms, they remain quiet.

 

Once the negative stigma surrounding suicide is erased, people will openly discuss it which could help prevent it, she said.

 

“If people are comfortable talking about suicide in general, they may be more comfortable to ask questions, state they are having suicidal ideations and maybe even reach out for help,” she said.

 

Cunningham said Twitter is a platform that can be used to express mental health struggles and find resources while feeding into a person’s depression.

 

You begin to compare yourself to others more, she said, which causes some people to lash out and try to drag others down. She’s struggled with this herself, saying that it has a significant negative effect on her body image.

 

“We need to continue to use social media as a way to get resources out there,” Cunningham said. “We have to steer from trying to ‘fix’ everyone online and go toward increasing counseling services and get rid of the negative stigma around mental health, in the real world.”

 

The taboo stretches into college communities and CMU’s campus.

 

“Suicide is very difficult to talk about because it is an uncomfortable topic,” said Yvonne Ruiz, a professor at Salem State University and an expert on suicide. “There is a taboo in our society against harming oneself.”

 

She said the finality of suicide makes it a difficult subject. No one wants to think that someone they know is thinking about suicide.

 

The larger issue on the taboo of suicide is the people impacted. When a suicide happens, it impacts someone in some way and the less it is talked about the less aware people become.

 

“A lot of people have been affected by suicide one way or another whether they lost a family member, a friend to suicide, or if they themselves have been suicidal,” Kalamazoo senior Ashley Bergman said. “It is definitely a growing issue and it is not something that will go away on its own.”

 

 

LACK OF CONVERSATION

 

There has been progress, however, with different events helping open up the communication on the issue.

 

National Survivors of Suicide event brings those affected together and talking about it. It is for people who lost someone to suicide. It features several guest speakers and different agencies who provide services and licensed therapists in case someone needs any help or is distraught.

 

Ashley Bergman attended the event in Frankenmuth on Nov. 20, 2017, and appreciated the diversity of attendees.

 

“It was mixed up pretty well and the people who were going there for a long time could work with the people who were there for the first time,” Bergman said.

 

Most speakers were volunteers who have attended similar events and have lost people in the past. The speakers work to reassure the people attending the event that things get a little easier as time goes on.

 

“For me, someone who is practicing social work, it’s good to see how these events are run to knowing if that is something I’d want to send a potential client to,” Bergman said.

 

However, outside of these events the topic of suicide isn’t talked about enough, Bergman said.

 

 

 

REPORTING SUICIDE IN THE MEDIA

 

The Associated Press Style Guide, which is a writing and editing reference for journalists, says that journalists don’t often cover suicides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some are trying to stop using the word “committed” when talking about suicide completely because it makes the suicide look like a crime that was committed.

 

John Oliffe, a professor at the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia, is one of those people.  

 

Oliffe, who is also a founder and lead investigator of UBC’s Men’s Health Research program, said that he never tries to use the work commit when talking about suicide “because implied in that reference is that someone did some kind of crime.”

 

Oliffe has some complaints when it comes to using the word “committed” in the media.

 

“I think it’s really important that suicide is used as a verb,” he said. “I do see mistakes in the media in that regard because it’s incorrect.”

 

Steve Windom, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Area Director, Michigan, said that he thinks the media reports on suicide wrong majority of the time.

 

Windom and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention have worked with the Associated Press and has gotten the AP Style Guide to reword the word committed when reporting on suicide.

 

He said that the recommendation is to report on suicide as a health issue “just like you would if someone died from cancer… and not as a criminal act.”

 

“A lot of people who report on suicides are cop writers or beat writers for police or crime writers and so they are writing in a criminal fashion,” he said.

When reporters use the word committed, it becomes associated with a crime or a criminal act, Windom said.

 

Editors and experts aren’t the only ones that are thinking about how suicide is being reported. College newspapers and campus media, the future reporters, are involved in the conversation as well.

 

“I think given the nature of true journalism, it's easy to read about someone committing suicide and find the article a bit dehumanizing or unforgiving,” said Connor Doyle, editor-in-chief at The Valley Vanguard of Saginaw Valley State University. “That's something we have trouble with at The Vanguard when a student passes away. Due to the rigid structure of journalism and fact-based language we use, it is often difficult to express sympathy and sadness when writing stories about death, and suicide only magnifies those difficulties.”

 

Doyle said “true” journalistic outlets mostly “do the right thing” while reporting on suicide.

 

Steve Windom has one piece of advice for future journalists: Get educated.

 

“You’re only as good as all your tools and your kit,” he said. “There are many ways to be a good journalist but I think you got to get educated on what we are dealing with and what leads to a suicide so you can understand where this comes from and it’s not a crime...and it’s no single issue that causes a suicide.”

 

Even with the news media having some problems with talking about suicide, other forms of media are doing a good job at keeping suicide realistic.

 

Yvonne Ruiz, a professor at Salem State University and has studied suicide throughout her college and professional career, said she doesn’t think that the media glamorizes suicide.

 

She said suicide may be sensationalized when it involves someone famous, but this is the expectation.

 

PROFESSORS ON THE TOPIC OF SUICIDE

 

Jiafei Yin, a professor of journalism at Central Michigan University for 22 years, has become concerned of her student’s mental health.

 

“I think it’s huge to let students know that if they have a mental health issue, that it is okay,” Yin said.

 

Although suicide is not a regular discussion in journalism classes, she has had students work on projects discussing the mental health issues. This increased her awareness on the issue and she started to look for signs of students for if something was wrong outside of the classroom.

 

She would look for students that are not showing up for class anymore, not turning in assignments or if their assignments are being turned in late. When this would happen, she used to send her students an email reminding them of their grades.

 

Now Yin has changed her message she sends out to students.

 

“I realized that when there are these issues in class, that does not mean that they aren’t concerned, it means there are other things going on,” Yin said. “Then you don’t want to put more stress on them.”

 

Yin said her students discussing the issue has helped her understand that it is hard to tell what someone is going through outside of the classroom.

 

Other professors are confronting the issues of this topic in different ways.

 

Dean Lauterbach, professor of psychology at Eastern State University, discusses the topic of mental health and suicide often in his classes.

 

Lauterbach said that not avoiding the topic of suicide opens up the conversation and opening that conversation up doesn’t cause a suicide to happen, it opens up the issue.

 

In his class, students watch and discuss videos of people who have attempted suicide. They also do an online program called Kognito, which gives hands-on experiences on how to talk to someone who may be contemplating suicide.

 

On campus, at EMU they have options for folks that gather together that have been affected by suicide like the Send Silence Packing event. Send Silence Packing is a national program designed to present both information on suicide and public events to raise suicide awareness.

 

They also have National Depression Screening Day which is a day where professional organizations screen for depression and provide treatment referrals.

 

When it comes to coverage of these types of stories, Lauterbach worries about copycat suicides, which are often linked to specific descriptions of the suicide and similarities between the high profile person who committed suicide and the person copying it.

 

High-profile people who have committed suicide include Robin Williams, an actor, in 2014 or Kurt Cobain, a musician, in 1994, and after their suicide, more followed.

 

According to PLOS ONE, there was a rapid increase in suicides the months following the death of Robin Williams in the U.S.

 

The method Williams used also dramatically increased.

 

Clifford Broman, professor of sociology at Michigan State University, specializes in race and ethnicity, family and marriage, substance abuse and mental health.

 

The class he taught on mental health discussed suicide often.

 

“I think it can be prevented and I think talking about it can help prevent it,” Broman said.

 

Broman stopped teaching that class 8 years ago after the university canceled it. He wasn’t sure why it was actually canceled.

 

Although Allison Putnam, field director for the social work program at Central Michigan University, has witnessed the fault in no discussion, she has experienced first-hand of when it was handled well when one of her students died of suicide.

 

Her student killed himself a couple months before graduating. He was in the social work program and had been interning during his last semester. His name was not given.

 

Putnam got a call 5 minutes after 8 a.m. from his field instructor he was interning for. His instructor said that he had not showed up and that was not like him. Putnam just thought he was running late, but his field instructor eventually sent the sheriff over to his where he lived and the officer found him dead. His apartment was all clean and his stuff was packed up.

 

“There was no teaching that needed to be done that day. I don’t care what class it was and even if there was a final,” Putnam said. “No teaching needed to be done when a classmate of all these seniors getting ready to graduate in two months killed himself.”

 

The office made themselves available 12-hours a day for students in the program to talk. They opened up the conversation to the event and gave students a space to discuss it.

 

They had a vigil for the student at the funeral, with a candle light bowtie vigil because he always wore a bowtie.

 

The place he interned at stopped all work and brought in a care team, inviting Putnam to attend. It lasted four to six hours, and helped open the discussion to its attendants.

 

Putnam explained that they did different activities and talked about the person which is something that doesn’t always happen when someone dies of suicide. They had three therapists on site.

 

“The young man who killed himself, it really impacted me a lot, it really did,” Putnam said. “He was such a great kid, a great person and he was going to be a wonderful social worker some day. To think that he was that desperate that he thought it was the only thing that he could do, that is the scary part and it’s still very fresh for me even after three years.”