Download Swallow – Book Launch, 23 September 2012 Good evening. My

Swallow – Book Launch, 23 September 2012
Good evening. My name is Mara Grunau; I am from the Centre for Suicide Prevention. It is a privilege to
be here tonight to represent my organization at Theanna’s request and initiative. Thank you, Theanna, for
choosing us as your recipient charitable agency. But more importantly, thank you, for personifying the
statistics of suicide because that is what they are: people. Each one with a different backstory and their
own struggles but each one an individual person. Thank you for creating their stories for us. Much
gratitude also goes to Pages Booksellers who is donating 10% of all of tonight’s book sales to CSP as
well.
Many of us do not realize the prevalence of suicide in our society. Let me give you an analogy. Imagine a
747 airplane crashing. Everyone on board dies. Now imagine that happening again next month. And
again next month. And the next month. Until it happens every month for a whole year. That is how many
people in Canada die each and every year by suicide: about 400 a month or 4800 a year. In Alberta
alone, more than 1 person dies by suicide every day.
When an airplane falls out of the sky people are up in arms. They demand aviation safety investigations
and governments launch them. People are held responsible, lessons are learned, standards are made
more rigorous. And yet with suicide, we are silent.
Mental health in general and suicide in particular suffer from stigmatization. This stigmatization prevents
many of the people who are at risk of suicide from getting the help they need and this is the crux: suicide
is preventable. Most people at risk of suicide display some characteristic warning signs. When trained to
identify warning signs, regular everyday people can successfully intervene and stop someone from killing
themselves.
The fact that regular people can successfully intervene is critical to suicide prevention. Just like any one
of us can learn first aid skills, every one of us can learn suicide intervention skills. Neither first aid nor
suicide intervention is left to professionals alone; we can all play a role. Think for a moment of some of
the signs and symptoms to which we have all become attuned: the universal sign for choking, symptoms
of cardiac arrest, and stroke. We know all those …. Yet how many of us know what someone at risk of
suicide looks like? And how many of us are committed to finding out?
There is a belief in our society and many societies the world over that mental health and mental illness
are self-inflicted. The prevailing view is that physical illness is often not controllable but mental illness is.
Even healthy people get cancer … much heart disease is hereditary. Society works hard to help victims of
these diseases because no one would want cancer or heart disease … but many people believe that
suicide is in a different category. Many of us believe that suicide is a choice, it’s for the weak, those who
give up, those looking for an easy way out or those who are so self-serving they don’t care about how
other people feel. Nothing could be further from the truth. In his landmark documentary, The Bridge, film
maker Eric Steel interviewed people who jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. Each
person interviewed said that as soon as they jumped …. they regretted it: they did not want to die.
Suicide is complex. People are complex. People become at risk of suicide from a variety of factors but
one thing is consistent. People at risk of suicide are in tremendous pain; more pain than most of us can
imagine. What they want more than anything else is for that pain to end. They do not necessarily want to
die but death presents itself as the solution to eradicating that pain.
Theanna’s novel, Swallow, powerfully depicts this phenomenon. One of the characters suffers from major
depressive episodes throughout her life - seemingly alone. She receives diagnoses for all types of
physical illnesses while the mental illness remains veiled and yet arguably this is the root of most of her
physical symptoms. She seeks help the best she can from various sources but to limited avail. How
different would her life have been if her depression could have been stabilized? If her mental health was
addressed directly, most likely her suicide ideation would have been identified.
What’s more is that we know of the generational aspects of mental health; families are often affected one
generation to the next. Theanna’s Swallow clearly illustrates this pattern. The lack of identification of
mental illness in one character reduces the likelihood of signs and symptoms being identified in her kin. If
society was more attuned to mental illness in general and indicators of suicide ideation in particular, this
family may have been offered direct supports instead of having their cries for help swept under the carpet.
Their tragedy could have been averted. But what’s more is that Theanna’s novel does not only illustrate a
family struggling with mental illness and suicide ideation, it also reveals society’s views, values,
knowledge and understanding of mental illness and suicide ideation: most of us do not know what to look
for and how to help.
How can we help those around us who live in the shadow of mental illness and suicidality? What can
regular, everyday people do? The answer is education. Together we must learn to identify those around
us who are at risk of suicide and confidently offer help. Together we can prevent suicide.