How to Save a Life: Vital Clues From Men Who Have Attempted Suicide

2020 ◽  
pp. 104973232097574
Author(s):  
John L. Oliffe ◽  
Olivier Ferlatte ◽  
John S. Ogrodniczuk ◽  
Zac E. Seidler ◽  
David Kealy ◽  
...  

Male suicide rates are high and rising, and important insights can be gleaned from understanding the experiences of men who have attempted suicide. Drawing from a grounded theory photovoice study of diverse Canadian men, three intertwined thematic processes were derived: (a) preceding death struggles, (b) life-ending attempts and saving graces, and (c) managing to stay alive post suicide attempt. Preceding death struggles were characterized by cumulative injuries, intensifying internalized pain, isolation, and participant’s efforts for belongingness in diminishing their distress. Men’s life-ending attempts included overdosing and jumping from bridges; independent of method, men’s saving graces emerged as changing their minds or being saved by others. Managing to stay alive post suicide attempt relied on men’s acceptance that their mental illness was unending but amenable to effective self-management with professional mental health care. The findings offer vital clues about how male suicide might be prevented.

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari Siegloff ◽  
Rosalie Aroni

Current models of chronic disease self-management incorporate an understanding that people with chronic illnesses, their carers and clinicians need to work together in addressing illness management issues (Von Korff, Gruman, Schaefer, Curry, & Wagner, 1997) and that this process enhances personal control of health (Lorig, Ritter et al., 2000). The question we ask is whether the understandings in these models, both implicit and explicit, apply to those people living with mental illness in rural areas in Australia. In-depth interviews were used to explore and examine the way in which carers of people living with mental illness in rural Victoria experienced and perceived the nature of chronic disease self-management. Our findings indicate that illness management in rural areas occurs predominantly as a partnership between the person with mental illness and the family members who act as caregivers, rather than a partnership with health professionals. This confirms that the lack of resources in the rural mental health care system results in a crisis-oriented service rather than a service that is able to respond to preventative and ongoing mental health care. This is recognised as a considerable burden for many families and requires further examination. In addition, a finding of considerable clinical and policy importance in this arena is the experience of family caregivers as partners in not only the support of the ?management? aspects of self-management of mental illness, but also in supporting the person living with mental illness in the maintenance of the ?self? aspect of self-management.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
O. Lawrence ◽  
J.D. Gostin

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.


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