Suicide and language

In a recent article in the Financial Post, suicide was described as "the ultimate act of selfishness."' The author can have no understanding of the pain that drives someone to make this agonizing decision and then "execute" it. Often the decision to kill oneself is taken out of a distorted consideration for those one loves; the dislocation of emotion is so immense, the feelings of unworthiness so overwhelming, that the suicidal person believes that loved ones would fare better if he or she were no longer part of the world. The artide also stated that "the God of all the major faiths rejects suicide as a fundamental sin."2 It is true that, in the past, Jews who died by their own hand had to be buried on a remote edge of the cemetery and that Catholics could not be buried in consecrated ground. The act of self-killing was considered criminal because it was perceived as transgressing the moral authority of God and the righteous feelings of humankind. As recently as 2 generations ago, "it was a felony to attempt suicide in such countries as Britain, the United States and Canada. It was a reportable offense that nobody reported" (Dr. Isaac Sakinofsky, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto: personal communication, 1998). These attitudes of condemnation are beginning to change. As Rabbi Gunter Plant wrote with respect to the proposed chair in suicide studies, "We no longer punish, but try to understand... Since we are dealing with the very essence of existence, this whole scientific enterprise acquires the aura of a religious undertaking."3 Similarly, there is now greater understanding within the Catholic faith. The language we use to describe events not only reflects our own attitudes but influences those attitudes as well as the attitudes of others. A change in the words we use will not immediately dispel deep-seated prejudices, but it will inhibit their expression and, in so doing, prepare the ground for attitudinal change. When racist remarks are viewed as socially unacceptable, for example, the social environment becomes less hospitable to racism itself. The language of suicide, like the illness leading to suicide, are both mired in denial. The term "commit suicide" should be excised from the language. There are other and better alternatives: Hamlet's "self-slaughter," "death by one's own hand," "ended one's own life," "self-inflicted death," "a casualty of suicide" or the raw "killed oneself." Even the expression of a former Vietnamese prisoner of