No hope, no future - thoughts on suicide prevention month
Here in the UK, September is suicide prevention month, while internationally it is restricted to a single day - September 10th. In either case, it represents a worthy ideal to hold on to and an important goal to aim for, and my Facebook feed is full of appropriate aphorisms and pithy one-liners all of which are posted with the very best of intentions. One of the most ubiquitous of these this year is this one: The sentiment is true of course, but doesn't tell the whole story. For it is not simply wanting the pain to stop that drives a person over the brink, but the belief that it never will. It is that complete loss of hope that grinds a person down, sending them spiralling downwards into the depths of a despair from which there can only be one release. The loss of hope extinguishes any light that there might have been at the end of the tunnel, plunging them into a darkness that I pray you and I will never have to experience. It is the loss of hope that is, quite literally, the kil...