Suicide

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Aftershock: Hope, Help, Healing in the Wake of Suicide

Day 2 of 3

Guest: David Cox

From the Series: Understanding the Suicidal Mind

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Bob: Suicide among teenagers is disproportionately high. As a parent, are there things to stay alert for? Here is David Cox.

David: The average teenager who becomes suicidal is above average in intelligence, is usually an over-achiever, might be a bit of a perfectionist, and, certainly, if you know what to look for, you can spot it.

The problem is that most teens talk to their friends more than they talk to mom and dad. So it might be a good friend that hears about it first.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, July 8th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We'll offer some strategies and suggestions today for parents who might think a child is suicidal.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us. I wonder if, in a Bible quiz, you could ask what do these people have in common, and if folks would know -- Abimelech, and Samson, King Saul, Saul's armor-bearer, Judas Iscariot -- what do those people have in common? And the interesting thing that ties all of them together is that all of them are biblical examples of people who took their own lives.

Dennis: And, Bob, this subject today is a growing concern for every parent and, for that matter, our entire culture, because suicide, in general, in the population as a whole, has increased about 40 percent since 1960. But among teenagers, it is today the leading cause of death. Now, think about that. For all of the concerns we have about how our kids drive and issues of drugs and alcohol, the number-one cause of death today in teenagers is suicide.

And I don't know of many parents who raise a teen all the way through the process who don't at one point or another worry a little bit about a child who withdraws or becomes a little depressed about what's going on in life. And so we looked around for a heaven-class resource for you, as a listener and your family, and found Dr. David Cox, who is a marriage and family counselor from Spartanburg, South Carolina. David, welcome back.

David: Thank you, Dennis. It's good to be here.

Dennis: And David himself is a personal survivor of suicide. His father committed suicide when he was nine years old, and David has done his postgraduate work in the area of counseling and suicide intervention and prevention, and we're grateful that, David, you've written a book called "Aftershock," along with Candy Arrington -- "Help, Hope, and Healing in the Wake of Suicide." And I have to ask you here at the start -- why does an individual take his life or her life? What's at the bottom of that?

David: I'm not sure anyone has ever really come up with an answer for that. Because for someone to be at that point, they are in such a place of despair that anyone who has never been there really cannot understand what that feels like. The common theme is hopelessness -- a sense that my problems will never get any better. Many people who are suicidal are under the myth that their family members would be better off without them. How tragic and how untrue that is.

Bob: Most of us have seen the Christmastime classic movie, "It's a Wonderful Life," where George Bailey finds himself facing financial ruin, despair, hopelessness. He comes home, the kids are driving him crazy, and he realizes that there's going to be great shame brought upon the family, and he grabs that life insurance policy and heads to the bridge and thinks, "I'd be better off dead. Everybody would be better off. It would be better for everyone else if I'd never been born."

It's interesting how that movie has become such a dominant part of the culture, even as we tend not to talk about suicide, we can all resonate, at some level, with what's going on in his soul, can't we?

David: We can, and I keep a copy of that movie on video in my desk to give out to very special people who I know that movie will speak to them in a very powerful way. I've only been able to watch that movie one time because it is so moving and so poignant.

Dennis: I've heard it said that suicide is the most selfish act a human being ever commits, and I think I would used to have said I would have subscribed to that, having been near some situations and some families where that had occurred. But then I hurt my neck one time digging some holes, and actually slipped a disk, number seven, and the pain was so intense, I could not get away from it. I would be driving down the road with my head cockeyed, trying to get it at an angle to reduce the pressure on that disk, and I began to get a little depressed, and the pain began to define my life to such a degree I went to see a physician. I said, "Cut on me. I don't care how long the sword is. Open me up and …

Bob: … take care of this thing …

Dennis: … fix the pain. And I've since reflected back on that experience. I didn't have to have surgery. I was able to rehab it and do some exercises that got me through it, but I've thought often -- you know what? When someone's in pain, and your life is defined by pain, I know it is selfish to want to be out from under that pain, but I'm not sure it's fair to characterize a man like your father who took his own life when you were nine years old as being selfish. What would you say about that?

David: I agree with that completely, Dennis. It is about self, but it's not selfish in the ways that we think of that word -- self-indulgent or me first or I want my needs met. In many ways, for the suicidal mind, it is almost an act of self-sacrifice. I believe in my father's case, he really believed that because of the magnitude of our financial problems, the only way out was his life insurance. So in his mind, as flawed as that was, and as much as we would have glad to have had him I lieu of any money that his death might have brought to...