4 August 2006 Sydney What would be really nice to see is some non-religious based (i.e. Non 12 steps) addiction recovery services. What about those of us who do not believe in fairy tales like religion?
14 August 2006 Qld I lost my beautiful husband three years ago to suicide and will never be the same again. So lovely to finally come across something special that understands this “forbidden” topic
17 August 2006 Australia I think this site is a most wonderful concept that reaches out and provides a shoulder from people of all walks of life with all different stories to tell. I am currently working with a number of families involved in a multiple Coronial Inquest who have all lost loved ones to suicide – the youngest being only 16 – and the failure of the Mental Heal System. Their stories are not at all unsimilar to some of those on your forum. As a consequence of my career choice, I am currently suffering depression from “jobs” that I have attended and things I have seen, and am still to this day trying to fight my way out of it. I know full well through my work what families left behind experience and it is with this knowledge that I am trying to help them with.
2 Sept 2006 Perth WA Hi People. I’d just like to say a big thank you to the wonderful emails I received from caring people from this website. It has been 11 months since my hubby suicided. The pain hasn’t got any easier. The worst day was watching my little girl have her first birthday without her dad here. People are right you just have to try and focus on other things and put your energy into taking your mind off “what could have been” and stop trying to second guess why they did what they did. Oh boy that’s easier to say than actually do! I’m really glad I found this site reading about people being depressed and having problems as we all do, but read the pain that us survivors are going through. My little girl will never know her dad and thanks to him not even his family as they choose to ignore us since this has happened. Life is very short embrace everyday and live life each day as if it’s your last. A friend once said to me walk outside the surroundings, really look at the colours, take note of what you see., listen to the sounds the birds make, now close your eyes and listen…Imagine this is your last day on earth..Try it, it’s very scary. Why would you not want to see, smell, touch and look at the beautiful things that surround us everyday and look at what nature has given us?.. Next Friday the 8 September would have been my husbands 33rd Birthday. I don’t know how I’ll be on that day or what I should do about it. Then on the 8th October will be his first anniversary of his death and my birthday the next day. Life does go on and I’ve been told it’s for the living. I have also been very lucky and have met a wonderful man. His wife also suicided and left him with three boys. So with my three girls we are the Aussie Brady Bunch trying to help each other through difficult time and making a solid future for all of us. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. The memories and pain will never go away as one day my little girl will want to know about her day and I know I don’t have the answers that she will be looking for as I don’t have them myself. Thanks again. x x
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PETER NEAME RESEARCH OFFICER
Violence, Murder, Crime and Suicide
A very significant proportion of the mentally ill are very violent and dangerous. Talk of “prejudice”, “stigma” and “labeling” is used very skillfully by academics, politicians, health administrators and defensive mental health clinicians to silence honest debate/discussion on these issues.
“Mainstreaming”, “Caring in the Community”, “Community Care”, “the Recovery Model” all part of the death seeking dogma of deinstitutionalization, means that you bring a large proportion of seriously violent people, some who are predators and mass killers to a place where there is a large number of sick and vulnerable people including mothers and newborn babies/a general hospital.
It is only a matter of time before there is a mass killing in a General Hospital in New Zealand or Australia. Violent attacks on hospital staff have gone up by thousands of percent.
“It is estimated that 17% of psychiatric emergency service patients are suicidal, 17% are homicidal and 5% are both suicidal and homicidal” (Douglas H Hughes MD, General Hospital Psychiatry, Suicide and Violence Assessment in Psychiatry, 1996). Note these figures are higher then Prof. Paul Mullen’s recent research showing that individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are 10 times or 1000% more likely to commit murder and that “5% to 10% of violent crime including homicide is attributable to the 0.5 to 0.6% of the population with schizophrenia”.
3000 years ago, the Greeks knew and talked about, suicide, murder, violence and criminality running in families and being related to brain function.
It has taken Prof. Paul Mullen the best part of 40 years to work out the old saying/adage that if you get the treatment of schizophrenia right almost everything else in mental health will improve. Schizophrenia, and in particular the 12,000 New Zealanders and 60,000 Australians who are so ill as to be a risk to themselves, risk to others, unable to care for themselves or in reality a mix of all three is where services must be concentrated. All government announcements/inquiries to date have totally ignored this group.
Dear Helpers
Have been recommended to contact you in relation to my son. My husband hung himself when my sons were 5 and 3 just on 20 years ago. My husband was 31 and I was 28...His mother killed herself as well. I have two sons to my late husband. Both of my sons are now 25 and 22 years old. The eldest boy went to Uni and now works as a business manager and the youngest boy has just completed his carpentry apprenticeship..His name is R***
R*** has been ringing me late at night when he is drunk telling me he wants to kill himself.
He says that he has been thinking of doing it for a while but doesn’t do it because of me.
I cannot take this anymore I am so distraught I can’t work properly. R*** needs help and I was wondering if you could help us as I don’t want to go through the shame of it again.
I thought we were over it and that it would never return to haunt me, but how wrong I was.
Do you have councellors and can I pay you to help me ...Am very upset about this as it is embarrassing. And nobody ever thinks it will happen until it's too late.
Yours Sincerely
LR
Hi, my name is E (I think my email thingy says it's K, so just to clarify). I'm 17 years old, living in Perth, and I'm interested in working as a volunteer for White Wreath.
It's something I've wanted to do for a few years, but the royal butt-pain that is the TEE has always gotten in the way until now, lol...
I have a lot of experience with mentally ill and suicidal people. Two of my best friends suffer from clinical depression and one has an anxiety disorder. Another has complex posttraumatic stress disorder from years of witnessing and being the victim of domestic violence. My mother suffers from (untreated, as she won't admit it - nature of the beast, I guess) bipolar disorder and I was in a 7-month relationship with a guy who, during that time, was diagnosed and re-diagnosed about 4 times. I also lost a friend to suicide about a year ago. So, yeah...
It frustrates me that so few people are aware of what a huge problem mental illness and suicide are, particularly for young people. I mean, maybe if people were conscious enough of it to actually do something...?
But yeah...if you could let me know of any way I can help out, that'd be awesome.
Thanks for your time and I'm sorry if this is kind of 'scattered', lol...it's pretty late.
E
Help Me Please
On the first of this month, my sister’s husband drove 130km from home, sent my sister an SMS “this is the last you’ll ever hear from me” – or some such line, and left a voice message on the phone to his two children “I love you Claire, I love you Matthew” and then put a gun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger! How can you be in a mind to do all that and even say your children’s names and still pull the trigger. He’s a f…. b…. for what he did. I don’t care that he was having problems and that he believed my sister was cheating on him (which is absolutely not true!) You hear of people’s different problems and the shitty cards that life has dealt them, yet they still survive and continue and focus on life! Everyone says he wasn’t in his right mind, that he had a breakdown – well, now he doesn’t feel anything I guess. But I hope he’s looking down from where-ever and really regretting what he did – what he has forced my sister and my family to now deal with. Thanks very f…. much! I don’t care if you’re reading this and judging me a heartless bitch, maybe I’m judging you – you lot of ‘suicidal’ people, wake up to yourselves. Apparently it’s pain that you feel, well what sort of pain do you think is felt when your family or friends have to go to the coroner’s office and identify your body. What pain do you think they will carry with them for eternity after seeing you lying there with a bullet hole in your head, or your wrists slashed or rope burn round your neck. Take a reality check! What pain do you think is felt for a wife to choose her husbands coffin, to sit there in the chapel and know that her husbands body lies cold in that box. To watch the friends that loved him dearly carry his body in that coffin. I bet he wasn’t thinking about that! I bet he wasn’t thinking how the hell is his wife going to tell their twin 18 month old children that daddy chose death instead of coming home to give them a cuddle and put them to bed.
This is bullshit – why am I even wasting my time sitting at this bloody computer when outside I can see a gorgeous clear blue sky. I can hear the leaves and trees rustling in the wind, birds calling and the occasional kookaburra laughing. The beach is close by….I haven’t been down there for a while. I love the sound of the surf pounding onto the sand and the fresh salty sea smell mixed with sun creams and tanning lotion. Smells good. And that soothing feeling as my feet sink into the sand. Might even get myself a delicious, creamy ferraro rocher flavoured gelati. Too bad those of you who choose death will never, ever, ever experience any of that or anything else ever again.
Well guess what – I CHOOSE LIFE! And so should you
Dear Sir/Dear Madam
Hello My name is Georgi. I am from, Bulgaria-and live in the City of Bourgas. I am aware that this letter might sound quite naive to you, however it depends, “I believe that in this World there are good persons and truth. I am approaching you, with all my respect to you with a request. This is an appeal for help and charity. I think it would be wise to consult you, if possible of course. I think you are quite knowledgeable and competent in your humanitarian profession, and you are humans dedicated to this magnanimous and noble cause and mission, wise people.
For nine years now I have been treated in relation to my psychic health here in Bulgaria. Then the harrowing of hell has begun for my good parents and for me. We have visited a neurologist at the beginning, then a free-lancer psychiatrist, fortune-tellers, extrasensory specialist, spell removal, imams, recently some homeopathy, herbal therapy.....etc. However we did not achieve a positive result. Thereafter I have been hospitalized four or five times at the Psychic hospital in, Bourgas City. There was a slight improvement, but I was not healed completely. I have been consulted and treated here by excellent and competent psychiatrist and the best/here/psychoanalytic, professors-medical doctors, etc. in Plovdiv (city) and Sofia.
Lately I was (2-times) in an "elite hospital"-state-owned, in Sofia. It has been a tormenting process of treatment there. My state deteriorated. Worse and more obtrusive thoughts were coming to my mind, it was unbearable. I was wondering-there is just one man, while there must have been billions. Sometimes I doubted whether reality was really it what I could see. No one was to blame, that was all they could do and finally it was my choice to go there for treatment. Since then I have been pondering over reality, there are lost of people, buildings, bad importunate thoughts, what's the matter with him, what does he think etc. It seems I am not in this broad world, I mean I m not well and my mental state kept on changing with time. I would like to know if there is a legal or some other way- a not-governmental organization, to get treated abroad. Is there an organization, association, or a foundation, union etc. that could help me get examined and diagnosed and consulted. I was given a CAT scan
ER, Doppler, EEG and all the results have been normal. My former diagnosis was Obsessive compulsive disorder, and the current one is not known to me, unfortunately.
My state is critical at the moment-I am nervous and uncontrollable at times. In moments like that I must take 2 to 3 pills of Diazepam to cool down a little. It seems I cannot perceive reality in the usual way, and I have taken numerous medicines, however in general I cannot tolerate neuroleptics. No medicine has been of any help for me until now. The most recent explanation was that I have had, theoretically, a biochemical disorder of the brain cells. I am afraid that if I get hospitalized here in Bourgas again, they might transfer me to the hospital in City Radnevo--a psychic hospital with a stringent regime, just like a prison. That is all for the time being. My head, my brain are confused. I am for, PEACE-MUST BE, AND JUSTICE FOR ALL! I do hope to receive an answer from you.
Here is my story:
English is not my first language; it is challenge for an international student “all by myself” in overseas where is a totally different language system and culture society. And, I was the worst; I was spoiled even I never take public transport once in my 18 years old life. I still remember many hopeless nights in the past that I felt stressed and sad because of the language problem and homesick. I didn't understand what people say and even I didn't know how to buy a sandwich. I was totally zero capability and at that time I was an only 19 years old girl. My family and friends were in far away Taiwan and I was hopeless. I was thinking about suicide many times as I feel depress and alone. As an only daughter in my family, I didn’t want to show my parents that I am not as good as my outstanding brothers. I didn’t want they think I am hopeless. I pretended. I am good to people, but later, there were more stress I had. Negative thinking’s were almost turning me down. I was lucky; I met many nice people from international student service, and friends to help me out of the situation. A year later, my language was improved and my life 'back to normal'. I got good marks from my studying, met many friends even got a part time job. I have many good memories in my university life.
Now, I have completed my Bachelor degree in….and am studying a certificate in accounting in …… (I moved down to …… couple months ago all by myself~).
I have many friends around and Australia has become like a second home to me.
Nobody in my class believes me that I had a hopeless past. People always say I am a positive person, polite and smile a lot. I am thank you for the people who helped me in my difficult time in the past. I am really enjoying my life now. The only thing I can return to them is going to help more people who need help. I was a volunteer in school festival and worked as a volunteer English teacher for children during university Christmas holiday in an 'English-helping' centre, in Taiwan.
I like to help people and really love to provide my passion to them and see them back on 'track'. Life is good if we know where the key of our happiness is. Many people lost their keys and they need someone to remind them.
I would like to be a volunteer any time, it really doesn't matter any positions even just a small position like collecting papers.
Fanita rang to ask me if I wished to add a footnote to “Belinda’s Journal” and I told her that there was actually a lot more if she was interested. The text already printed in the newsletters was written during the early months of 1998 when Belinda recalled happenings in her life during the previous 12 months when her life spiralled out of control. However in July of that year there was a breakthrough – Pam Burke
The journal recommences:
28/7/1998: Have decided to take the plunge and make a real effort to go clean. I’ve agreed to go into re-hab for a couple of weeks to go ‘cold turkey’. The thought of this makes me very nervous. It means no speed or pot whatsoever, ever again. Don’t know if I’ll cope but am nevertheless willing to give it a go. Have wished for a very long time to be able to be a ‘normal’ person again. I’ve been using pot now for 10 years, ecstacy for about 5 years and speed for 2 years. In fact it will be 2 yrs in 10 days. I had ‘my first bomb’ (term to describe swallowing speed in paper rolled into a ball) of speed on my 20th birthday. I’ll be 22 on the 7th August – 10 days time. I can’t really
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