I was doing what everyone does with their phones when they’re bored – refreshing social media feeds to the point where minutes turn to hours and suddenly it’s 3am and you’re eating cereal – when I saw Chester Bennington’s name trending. I scanned for facts hoping that his reported suicide was another sick example of fake news being spread on social media.
Bennington took his own life just months after his close friend Chris Cornell of the band Soundgarden died by suicide, and I’m sure it’s no coincidence that it also happened to be Cornell’s birthday when Bennington was found dead at his home in California. Bennington’s death prompted an outpouring of posts from fans online: many of them accounts by people whose lives were touched by his lyrics, his humanity and his passion.
They swept me back in time to a place in my past that I’d happily forget. Five years ago, I was at the tail end of being bed-bound for nine months and I’d lost all sense of rationality. My memory of this period is patchy and blurred but my severe depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) had deteriorated and I was suicidal. I was trapped by my mind, constantly listening and falling prey to lie after lie, following the thoughts as far down as I possibly could, engulfed by their ever-growing shadow. When you’re mentally ill, “normality” becomes meaningless and the world reflects the distorted and warped version of reality you project through bloodshot eyes.
This situation became so unmanageable that my father also experienced a breakdown. He couldn’t bear to see his son, his only child, wasting away in front of him. With tears streaming down his face, unable to hug me because my OCD prevented me from touching anyone or anything, he asked if it wouldn’t be better if he ended both of our lives. He had run out of hope and was desperate for an end to my pain and suffering, as well as his own. I can’t even begin to fathom what he must have been going through as a parent; that he even briefly imagined that a suicide pact with his child was the only answer, fills me with overwhelming sadness.
Suicide is the biggest killer of men in Britain between the ages of 20 and 50, but we seem only to talk about it when famous men die. When my father’s friend – a trained counsellor who had a loving family and caring mates – stepped off the edge of a platform and took his own life, there was no outcry. OK he wasn’t famous, so no hashtags, no retweets, no vigils, memorials or concerts. But more importantly, nobody seemed to be asking how someone who had a seemingly great support network could wind up on the platform’s edge. And while it’s progress that we talk about male suicide when the Robin Williamses or the Chester Benningtons of this world take their own lives, if we don’t carry on the conversation, if the hashtags only last a day or two, then I think we’re failing. We need to open the conversation for everyone and retrain the way we all think about suicide.
Men who speak up about depression or illness and talk about what’s going on in their heads are usually the exceptions. But a lot of the blame for the silence lies with us as more broadly as a society. Online, behind the comfort of a screen, people will say that it’s OK for young men to cry – it’s OK not to be OK seems to be the buzz phrase of late – but when it comes to listening to men or giving them practical help, the support is non-existent. Aside from the Samaritans and Calm , I can’t think of anywhere you can go to seek urgent help when you’re feeling suicidal without becoming caught up in the NHS conveyor belt of woe and misery. I’ve been on the seemingly endless waiting lists, I’ve sat in dreary GP waiting rooms and been told that “a place in a support group is waiting for me”. We’re being told to do an awful lot of waiting when we frankly don’t have much time to waste. What’s the point in telling men it’s OK not to be OK if we fail to lift them out of the fog?
In my case, I now know that talking with my father about our joint experience of a life event that was truly horrific will be the beginning of a recovery process and the best way to start healing the intangible wounds.
Only months before taking his own life, Chester Bennington gave an interview in which he was clearly articulating that he was suffering, that he needed help. However, no one seemed to notice until it was too late.
Where are we going wrong? Do we fear seeing the men in our lives as weak and vulnerable? Is the problem the ongoing taboo and stigma attached to discussing suicide? Is it that human compassion is sometimes so absent that people complain about their train being late rather than trying to imagine how hopeless, desperate and isolated the person on the tracks must have felt before they jumped? I think it’s a sorrowful cocktail of all the above. Yet one thing I know from my bones, is that everyone has a duty to talk to the men in their lives and let them know that you will listen. Let them know that talking about suicidal feelings isn’t cowardly. Talking about your feelings is an incredibly brave thing to do. Let them know there is always hope, there is always another way.
In the UK and Ireland, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. Papyrus are contactable on 0800 068 41 41 or by texting 07786 209 697, or emailing pat@papyrus-uk.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.
• Richard Taylor is chair of the youth advisory panel at OCD Action (voluntary)
