***TRIGGER WARNING***
This article discusses suicide and suicidal ideation and may not be suitable for all audiences.
Originally Published via Powerfully Pwerless https://powerfullypowerless.wordpress.com/2023/09/06/we-need-to-talk-about-the-intersectionality-between-disability-suicide/
For as long as I can remember I have dealt with suicidal ideation and have had several attempts at taking my own life. Most of the attempts I never realized were suicidal ideation because they took place when I was a toddler, preteen, as well as a teenager so I felt it couldn’t be that because I was so young, as if age has something to do with it. As I am an individual who lives with a disability I was born with, and the way society views that, plus the way the disability community views suicide it becomes a difficult subject to talk about.
When society deems suicide acceptable to consider, painting a narrative of a life not worth living because of a disability, and the community in which you belong demonizes assisted suicide, or fails to acknowledge that people with disabilities contemplate suicide, and fails to see this as blaming and shaming, there is a no-win situation created. Our community, and society in general, forget that there is a reality where people attempt to end their lives and the result is not death but permanent physical, sometimes cognitive, disability, and while people may not be physically able to independently play out the actions required, they can and do struggle with suicide, whether or not it is due to society seeing them as disposable or any other reason similar to anyone that isn’t disabled.
When you have any form of disability that requires adaptation or accommodations in order for you to actively take part in life, unfortunately, you are often met with hesitancy, reluctance, or plain unwillingness and rejection in all areas of life, including when seeking support as individuals dealing with these things
Also, unfair but true, is the reality that those who became disabled, mainly through accidental means or sickness, compared to those who have always been, can be treated very differently, seeming to be preferred. No matter what the reasons, and how justified they may be, there still remains the issue of a lack of support for those with disabilities in comparison to other groups in society. With the views that are held within the disability community around suicide, even though my disability wasn’t obtained through any attempt on my life, I can certainly relate to and empathize with the experience of becoming disabled as a result of an attempt and suddenly belonging to a community where I may not be welcomed, but feel blamed and shamed for the reasoning behind my disability. No matter who we are we all need to do better with this. Even though disability does, without a doubt, add more complexity, attempting to prevent suicide through blaming and shaming isn’t an okay way to go about it. Clearly, we can see that…Can’t we?
Far too often, in the name of prevention, we talk about the impact of such actions on those left behind. While indeed the people who have lost loved ones, through completing suicide, need and deserve support it is an entirely different experience from suicide itself. Suicide is not something one is capable of understanding unless one has been through it. To feel that suicide needs only to be prevented because of the impact it has on those left behind when it is seen as over for the life that’s been lost is truly selfish and disgusting. Okay, so depending on your belief system, death marks an end or something that is over, and of course, death doesn’t mean that one is forgotten or never thought about again. In fact, the opposite of the latter piece is very much untrue, regardless of how someone dies they can be, and are, memorialized in some way. Yet, I must ask what about those who have attempted suicide where the end was supposed to be death but turned out to be severe unending damage that forever changes a person? Are they any less deserving of support than those who have lost loved ones because you see them as doing something horribly wrong that hurts other people?
In this set of circumstances, the outcome mentioned above was not as intended. The way the individual may view this can be in two vastly different ways. Some may live through it coming out the other end feeling a renewed sense of living, dually feeling that the life ahead of them may be worse than what caused them to feel ending their life was the only option, others may feel a renewed sense for living, become advocates in suicide prevention, sharing their story as a means to do so, yet some will feel that whatever it was that caused them to feel like ending their life was the only option that the life they once knew, in comparison to their current reality, wasn’t as bad as they thought, given their current situation. While none of these reactions or responses to their personal situations are wrong and certainly not something to cause them to be shamed or blamed, in certain contexts they are harmful and problematic.
Unlike someone who has obtained their disability through attempted suicide, I am an individual with a disability that I’ve lived with my entire life. Because it is all I’ve ever known, it is not something I hold strong enough feelings toward to the point where, in and of itself, it’s the reason for my attempts. That said, that doesn’t mean there are never moments or aspects of my life relating to my disability that are not the cause of them in an indirect way. But, just because I’m disabled doesn’t mean that the reasons for my thinking the only way to end it are any different from anyone else. Even when there is an assumed or obvious similarity in something, that does not mean that it’s the same. Judgment in the name of prevention is harmful, but the impact of such things is only experienced and felt by the ones being judged, not those doing the judging. While we are out here navigating, in public and online spaces, in our attempts to advocate for prevention, can we please do so with a little awareness, compassion, empathy, and understanding of the complexities involved? Awareness and prevention slogans and campaigns with undertones of blame and shame toward the many who are still here, but nonetheless deal or have dealt with suicide on some level, are damaging. We need to start by asking why people come to these conclusions and feel like ending their lives seeing it as their only opinion because the reality, for many with disabilities in particular, is that it’s an enticing option due to the lack of support and resources and the specific barriers to society and accessing many aspects of life we face. Instead of seeing our lives as invalid and disposable, too complex and complicated, not your problem, or as something that doesn’t apply to you, or that part of the population makes up such a small portion of a larger one, you need to ask yourself the following things, what can you do to learn about, advocate for, change about yourself, and the environments that you work and exist in so that not only disabled but all people no longer have to draw the conclusion that the only way out is to end themselves. I’m sorry, but many aspects of the current forms of prevention and awareness merely aim to continue life, are about targeting and choosing who may or may not have a worthy or valuable quality of life, not putting an end to anything that leads people to suicide.
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Hi, my name is Destiny and I am a Certified Tauma Recovery Coach. I have a disability called Spina Bifida and I am also a trauma survivor. As I am not a person who particularly likes face to face interaction my writing is a vital part of what I do for my own mental health as well as professionally. Being a person with a disability has developed into coaching those who are also survivors of trauma and are disabled similar to myself. I do this using a virtual reality platform called Second Life. I also own a website and blog to help advocate, education, and rise awareness about disability, mental health, and trauma within the context of disability.
