When people die from protracted physical illnesses, they are often assigned valiance, as they are thought to have fought bravely to beat off whatever debilitating physical conditions they suffered. We glibly say that they were defeated by something beyond their physical capabilities.
True or otherwise, I do not know. But for some elusive reasons, to me at least, people nudged towards suicide by depressive disorders are denied such empathy. They are assumed to have simply given up, putting up zero resistance.
This assumption, ignorant and unfortunate to the hilt, is responsible for the mockery of the depressive disorder victims, who attempt suicide, successfully or otherwise.
The latest is the 45-year-old female accountant with a telco. I am unsure which is sadder between her death and the profusion of hideous jibes it has provoked in comment sections of online publications and social media platforms.
That she was unmarried was a reason to blame her suicide on loneliness. Single women hardly enjoy sympathy, even if they have been massively luckless in love. Social media platforms brim with memes and gags about single-women with or without children. That she died childless was another source of jokes and snideness. Being a committed member of a church was similarly mocked, as that was thought to have stopped her from clubbing and generally having fun, which would have prevented her from killing herself. She was laughed at for choosing a career over making a family, as though mockers knew. Perhaps, the meanest and daftest was the claim that she was sexually dispossessed, as she was said not to have had sex for seven years. A commenter actually suggested that he could have been of help by providing regular sex — the scum.
How we are sure of these things, sans suicide note, is two mysteries and a half. Marriage, having kids, daily mind-blowing sex and clubbing non-stop do not insulate from depression. The comfortable, soul-of-the-party type with a family life we consider great can slip into depression and worse.
“Suicide is not an option” is a line frequently trotted out whenever we have an unfortunate incident such as this. I do not have a doubt that it is meant to encourage, but I doubt it is a treatment for depressive disorders.
Generally, we are a society that seems to believe that mental ill-health is symptomized only by conversations with self, picking stuff on the streets as well as donning rags and unkempt dreadlocks.
It is strange that our criteria have remained unchanged, given the routine rag-wearing, utterly bonkers-looking dreadlocks, including tiny ones that look like goat faeces; hairstyles with all the rainbow colours-all in a bid to speak the language of the hip culture.
This speaks to the fact that we know little (nothing perhaps) of mental ill-health and are mightily incurious about it. We actually do not think it is an illness. Our ignorance, abetted by acute lack of curiosity, makes us mock victims of depression, who likely have agony from viewing life’s balance sheet showing liabilities that greatly outstrip assets. As I argued on a Facebook thread, depressed people do not suddenly find death an appealing option.
A person on whom the walls are closing so tightly will naturally desire immediate relief from torment. If we were on the top floor of a burning 10-storey building, with thick smoke billowing, there would be no hesitation to leap from the window all the way down.
The tongues of fire and choking smoke would be as terrifying as the possibility of taking a leap and having our brains splattered on the concrete 10 floors below. In such a situation, however, the latter would appear less terrible than standing still and getting licked, especially with no one looking up from the ground and pleading that we should not take the leap. That is what I think people suicide victims face and it is beyond the ability of mockers reacting in beer parlour banter-style to suicide.
It is because they have neither faced nor have the capacity to envisage an option between death and demise. They should try working out the difference.
I keep seeing comments suggesting that the woman did not have people to share her agony with. Possible. As I write this, there are people in situations similar to hers reading those vile comments and wondering why they should invite mockery by speaking to utterly despicable people incapable of understanding that depression is an illness that is no respecter of status, including self-awarded spiritual strength, and requires expert care and management like physical ailments. Of course, those comments also indicate a total lack of compassion, as evidenced by the fact that people think depression is a fodder for gags.
Perhaps it is unsurprising that we mock victims of mental health, given our attitude to people with special needs, including children born with Down’s Syndrome or conditions from chromosomal abnormalities. I would not wish depression or suicide on the mockers. Suicide victims do not just take their own lives. They also take parts of the lives of family, friends and acquaintances.
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