With the suicides of Kate Spade a few days ago and now Anthony Bourdain today, I was reminded of something I heard some moron media person-thingy say a while back. He referred to the fact that the suicide of a celebrity is often followed by an uptick in other suicides as “Copycat Suicides.”
I want to find that asshole and PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE.
That completely tone-deaf, not to mention utterly ignorant and misleading “copycat” nomenclature flies directly in the face of everything we need in mental health Care and Awareness. The words we use matter. If a celebrity dies of cancer and the rate of cancer deaths happens to go up in the following days, would you refer to those as “Copycat Cancer Deaths?” Of freaking course not, because that is asinine.
The “Copycat” label is a derogatory reference to the term “Copycat Murders,” wherein someone replicates the MO of very high profile killer in order to garner attention for their own actions. What Mr. Copycat The Asshole up there was saying was that people who commit suicide after a high profile suicide are just seeking fame and attention in own their death. It’s the whole “mental illness isn’t a disease it’s a choice” bullshit.
Because, obviously. Who wouldn’t choose this living hell?
Now I am NOT stupid enough to stand here and say no one commits suicide for ‘attention’; anytime you make an absolute statement like that you might as well throw your own point/argument off the cliff before someone else does it for you – because they will. But there is a very different reality at play here for many, if not most of these unfortunate deaths. Try and imagine: A person is already locked in the depths of hell of their own mind; in constant pain, suffering from something they cannot run away from because it is inside of them. They already think that their life is and will always be terrible and that they should just give up and make the pain stop. They are clinging by their fingernails to a reason to keep going. Then they see a celebrity commit suicide. A celebrity who ‘has everything’ – they are rich and famous and beautiful and talented. It can be really hard, if not actually impossible not to think “if their life wasn’t even worth living with as awesome and perfect as it was, there is no point in my even trying when my life is already such shit compared to theirs, when I am already shit compared to them.” Something like this happening can simple push that one last fingernail out of the hold it was struggling to keep.
(And DO NOT say anything stupid about the ‘obligation celebrities have since people look up to them’ in relation to suicide or I will send Sparky up there to find you for a barbeque.)
The big part of the reason why we have an increase in suicides is not because people want attention; it is because of assholes like Mr. Copycat The Asshole who make these poor g-damned people believe that mental illness isn’t an illness at all. People with mental illness are ‘choosing’ to kill themselves because life got ‘too hard’ and they weren’t ‘strong enough’ to deal with it or ‘good enough’ to make life better – so they took the ‘easy’ way out.
Now I am going to own up to something: I was flat out angry that everyone was so sad when Robin Williams died and so “at least he’s at peace now” about it. Back then I thought – yes he was sick and yes it must have been horrible – but in the end he still gave up. He ‘had everything’ and ‘threw it away’ and ‘left his poor family’ to have deal with it; that it wasn’t tragic, it was selfish. Four years ago, I DIDN’T GET IT EITHER. I hadn’t yet acknowledged my own mental health issues, and probably even more importantly, I’d just gone through a very terrifying personal and in-my-face experience with nearly losing someone very close to me to suicide. That combined with the, well basically brainwashing, we’ve gotten about mental illness left me unable to be empathetic towards him in his death.
Of course I get it now – I’ve been on the other side, I’ve been the one to literally see no other option for myself or for the good of my family but suicide. Now I know our mentally ill brains lie to us. But obviously everyone can’t come to understand this by these means (thank god!) It’s going to take ceaseless education and a unending determination to change our culture so that we ALL understand – Mental Illness Is A Disease.
The last thing the world needs is anymore “Mr. Copycats.”
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Anthony and Kate and all the other’s who’s names I don’t know – the world was lucky to have you and is a little less bright for your loss. Rest in peace.