Lets talk about suicide: Survivors tell their stories

By the dozens,survivors of attempted suicide across the United States are volunteering to be part of a project by a New York-based photographer,DeseRae Stage,called Live Through This.

Its one of several new initiatives transforming the nations suicide prevention community as more survivors find the courage to speak out and more experts make efforts to learn from them. Theres a new survivors task force,an array of blogs,some riveting YouTube clips,all with the goal of stripping away anonymity,stigma and shame.

Everyone feels like they have to walk on egg shells, says Stage,who once tried to kill herself. Were not that fragile. We have to figure out how to talk about it,rather than avoiding it.

In January,the American Association of Suicidology launched a website called What Happens Now?described as the first sustained effort by a national organisation to engage survivors in a public forum. It features a blog,updated weekly,with contributions from survivors sharing their experiences and often using their real names.

In one of the latest posts,the founder of a respite home for suicidal people writes powerfully about her own suicide attempt eight years ago,involving both pills and a kitchen knife.

Survivors have a unique perspective on what lifes like down in the deep,dark hole, writes Sabrina Strong,executive director of Waking Up Alive in New Mexico.

Seeking to encourage those types of contributions,the federal-funded National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention has formed a first-of-its-kind task force comprising prevention experts and survivors. It plans to issue recommendations this year for how practitioners and organisations can engage and empower suicide attempt

survivors.

One of the task force co-chairs is psychologist John Draper,project director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. According to studies cited by Draper,about 7 per cent of survivors later kill themselves,a far higher rate than for other groups. Yet that means 93 per cent go on to live out their lives, he said. Weve got to talk to them,engage them,find out what is bringing them hope and keeping them alive.

In past decades,the stigma surrounding suicide was intense. There was far more involvement in the prevention movement by bereaved relatives of people who completed a suicide. Over the years,individuals who had attempted suicide would surface but occasionally,writing books or going on the public-speaking circuit. Whats new in the past couple of years is a broader phenomenona surge of collective projects by survivors.

The voices of people who have thought about suicide and possibly attempted suicide have been largely absent from public conversations about suicide and what should be done about it, says Karen Butler Easter,president of the National Association of Crisis Center Directors.

One asset that survivors say they can supply is candour. We understand that we do others a disservice by providing whitewashed advice from the school of magical thinkingThings will get better. Everythings all right.8230; Sometimes things dont get better,at least not right away, writes Sabrina Strong in her recent blog post.

Historically,prevention specialists made relatively little effort to seek input from people who tried to kill themselves. But thats now changing.

In the two years shes been working on Live Through This,DeseRae Stage says only one of her subjects has had a change of heart and asked not to be publicly identified. Meanwhile,she says she now has a waiting list of 200 suicide attempt survivors who want to participate.

Stage began taking photographs for Live Through This in 2011. Shes ready to spend another year or more on the project,noting that suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US.

Im convinced that the simple act of getting people to talk about it will save lives, she writes. Its a serious public health issue,and one we can do something about if we can just set our fears aside.