Synaptic Silence

Two years ago, I authored an editorial in the Oregonian citing the courage of Senator Gordon Smith for speaking openly about his son’s suicide and highlighting the serious problems facing the mentally ill.  As a mental health investigator who works daily with the most seriously mentally ill in our society, I was deeply moved by his willingness to take a public stand for something terribly painful and difficult for him and his family.

I’m writing now to challenge our state and federal legislators to be equally courageous in confronting the tragedy of the war in Iraq.  And I have earned the right to make such a challenge.Prior to my retirement in 1993, I was a Chief Master Sergeant with a 21-year career in military intelligence as a foreign linguist, intelligence analyst, and intelligence operations superintendent.  I loved the volunteer military.  It gave me a career, maturity, and education beyond anything I foresaw when I enlisted in 1972.  But I honestly fear we’ve all but destroyed the soul of the volunteer force in which I was so honored to serve. We are rapidly approaching a tipping point where those remaining in the military will be the ones who have to serve to maintain their families and gain an opportunity to improve themselves, rather than those who serve because they are willing to stand the line for the rest of their countrymen.  My friends still in the military tell me that the best and the brightest are leaving the force at the first opportunity–not because they’ve lost their sense of duty to this country, but because they don’t believe the rest of the country truly shares in their sacrifice.

It isn’t hard to understand.  We pay no additional taxes, don’t volunteer our time, yell “bring ‘em on”, and think that a yellow ribbon on the trunk of our car is all it takes to prove we have their backs.

Well before my article about Garrett Smith’s suicide and before our actual invasion of Iraq, I authored another op-ed in the Oregonian.  I think time has only proven the basic truth it pointed to at the time–that our volunteer force has been tacitly translated by our lack of personal involvement and investment into a foreign legion. 

The only difference is that, rather than recruiting from abroad, we recruit from the sectors of our own society where the military may be the only opportunity for a new life.  Freed from any personal risk by their willingness to fight in our stead, we can send them off to war assured that our lives and the lives of our children won’t be disturbed in any way at all.

I was impressed with Senator Smith’s willingness to open himself up to the country about a personal crisis in an effort to help others understand the hidden epidemic of depression and suicide.  I believe Senator Smith and all our legislators must be just as courageous now.  They must lead the country to do the right thing to resolve this hidden crisis faced by our military men and women—to move citizens to truly share in their sacrifice, to cease funding an illegal and immoral war, and to bring our service members home immediately to the honor and homage they deserve.  The clock is at the hour where decisive action is necessary to save the best military the world has ever seen

The testimony before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore, concerning the suicide of his son, Garrett, was truly courageous. Suicide of a loved one is a subject that is extremely difficult for most people to discuss in private among trusted friends, much less in a public forum where the inevitable criticisms of what the senator and his family might have done to prevent Garrett’s death will inevitably arise.

Smith’s public airing of his and his family’s grief, his poignant description of their search to find meaning in this most personal of tragedies, and his pledge to help other families prevent further needless deaths are selfless actions that represent the highest and best use of his public office.

His story was particularly poignant for me. I work as a mental health investigator for Washington County. It is a job that few people know about outside the rather insular world of others in similar positions. Every day, suicidal individuals suffering from depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other mental conditions come or are brought to emergency rooms across the state.

Many are seeking help to keep them from acting on their suicidal impulses and are willing to do whatever is required to keep themselves safe. Many others, however, arrive at the hospital having just attempted to kill themselves or with imminent plans to do so, yet are unwilling to voluntarily accept treatment to keep them from completing the act.

The latter are the people we see every day. Our job is to determine whether they are truly likely to attempt to take their own lives if no outside intervention is brought to bear. But what we do is not the focus here. They are. We see them in the moment, often just hours after taking an overdose, cutting their wrists or stabbing themselves, shooting themselves or intentionally placing themselves in potentially lethal situations that have resulted in serious or disabling injuries.

We also see their families, most of whom are devastated by something that they cannot truly comprehend.

I admit that I still struggle with the issue. I likely always will—in spite of an excellent education; more than 13 years as a mental health professional; past work counseling people who have lost relatives to suicide; my own continuing struggle with bouts of major depression; and the past three years dealing daily with people who have tried to take their own lives and often are sorry they didn’t succeed. If the will to live is a basic tenet of human experience that most of us accept without question, the will to die is an idea we are most comfortable ignoring.

Ignorance, though, is something we cannot afford when the subject is suicide. Unselfish disclosures like those by Gordon Smith are crucial in helping us to combat our self-defensive tendencies and to bring the problem into the light. We have to push ourselves beyond our revered societal norms of bootstrapping and independence to realize that mental illness can completely rob people of their abilities to achieve self-reliance.

Left alone, kept at a safe distance out of our own need for personal comfort, they can and do kill themselves—leaving us to attempt to reconcile our own blindness and inaction with the overwhelming grief, loss and responsibility we bear as a result.

There is hope, however, as Smith reminded us. Modern medications have proven extremely effective in combating the depression and psychotic symptoms that often move people to commit suicide.

Research is ongoing into more reliable means of identifying and recognizing those who are prone to harm themselves. But the true hope isn’t in a pill or a syringe or inside a psychiatric ward somewhere. Rather, it lies in our willingness to admit our own inherent vulnerability to despair and surrender to the darker elements of our lives—to realize that we’re not so different as we might think from those who actually kill themselves.

And to let others in our lives know that we care for them and are there for them, if for no other reason than that every human life is precious in and of itself. That’s a goal we call all embrace and one that, even if it saves just one life along the way.