In the USA, today marks the start of the National Suicide Prevention Week, organized by the AAS (American Association of Suicidology). For an overview with links to various Suicide Prevention Week activities, see here.
This Suicide Prevention Week is wrapped around the international World Suicide Prevention Day which is organized tomorrow (10 September) by the IASP (International Association for Suicide Prevention) with support of the United Nations’ WHO (the World Health Organization).
If you are a regular visitor of this blog, you already know that I myself am cynical enough to wonder if high-minded large-scale publicity actions like these will make a real difference. To be honest, I doubt it. Still, this kind of doubt is no reason to ignore such well-meant initiatives, and certainly not the genuine and well-founded worries that are behind them.
Although in my view a Suicide Prevention Week or Day will do very little to actually help prevent suicides, at least they may contribute something to general awareness of the seriousness and magnitude of the problem. At least these activities can cause the media to highlight some simple facts again: like the fact that every year, over a million people die by killing themselves.
– But what can we do when it comes to actual suicide prevention? Basically I think the answer should not be sought primarily in grand publicity-focused anti-suicide campaigns or in high-level government policies, but in the very first place on the basic, personal, individual, one-to-one root level.
A hand. A touch. Just being there. Simple personal contact can (sometimes) help to break through the shields of depression, help people to regain control over those unbearable feelings of self-deprecation, failure, loneliness and desperation.
So if you really want to contribute something and make this your own Suicide Prevention Week, just ask yourself if there’s someone near you who might be depressed, who might be in danger. Go to see him or her, in person: and make a simple proposal to spend a little time together, doing something, going somewhere. Even if they are too depressed to accept your suggestion, the mere recognition that you took this trouble may already be helpful to them.
Some Suicide Prevention Music? The well-known song Rock’n Roll Suicide by David Bowie, from his 1972 album Ziggy Stardust (“The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”) ends with the lines:
oh no love! you’re not alone
you’re watching yourself but you’re too unfair
you got your head all tangled up but if I could only make you care
oh no love! you’re not alone
no matter what or who you’ve been
no matter when or where you’ve seen
all the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain
you’re not alone
just turn on with me and you’re not alone
let’s turn on with me and you’re not alone
let’s turn on and be not alone
gimme your hands cause you’re wonderful
oh gimme your hands
Do take a look at David Bowie’s site at Myspace: you can not only hear more of his songs there, you can also order a remastered 40th Anniversary Edition of the Ziggy Stardust album. But here he is with Rock’n Roll Suicide:
(click the “Play” button – if it does not work, install Flash)
• tip: Maybe we all should simply view Suicide Prevention a little more as Loneliness Prevention – and in daily life, act accordingly.
Yesterday The Guardian UK newspaper site had an article 
The number of published depression life stories – in magazines, books, blogs, media interviews, websites – keeps growing and growing. I’ve never felt the urge to publish my own full “depression autobiography” here in this blog, but clearly ever more people think that publishing their own depression life story will be useful. There must be tens of thousands (maybe a million) personal depression stories printed or online by now. Why? Useful to who?
A third problem is that “depression autobiographies” are by necessity nearly always written after the author has to some extent overcome her depression. As long as you’re on the verge of suicide, you won’t have the focus and energy to write about it. Put bluntly, “depression autobiographies” are not a hot-from-the-spot war report, but more distant, retrospective, perhaps less negative war memoirs. And of course such memoirs are written by the survivors among us – not by those who lost their battle.
Sometimes the unbearable lightness – fluffiness, I should say – of the Internet as a whole is really irritating me. But it also demonstrates how depression can come with an incidental perk: being different! Our poor depressed brain may be far too susceptible to negative feelings, but at least we’re still trying to use it.
The 
Meet 
The main difference with the 1960s is that back then, most people still were consumers rather than producers. They were still mainly at the receiving end. Today, each Twitter or Facebook user is also constantly busy producing and spreading his own pseudo-events.
• Am I the only one feeling this way?
Many of us will recognize the Count from his many guest appearances in the funny and educational Sesame Street children’s TV series, where he helps our little ones to master the fine art of counting. Despite his Dracula looks, the Count comes across as a well-meaning and helpful character. Young children love him. He looks just scary enough to be fascinating.
The latest therapeutic trend here is Mindfulness training. This will teach you how to switch off that depressing autopilot. Using techniques borrowed from Buddhist meditation practice (applied here in a non-religious way) it can make us more aware of our own body and mind again. It can help to regain the direct intensity of basic bodily sensations, and to clear away the mess in your head.
But eventually, you will make it all the way from a full mug to the bottom: counting. And this forces you to better concentrate on your coffee-drinking activity. In fact because you have to count them, you’ll now better (more intensely) taste each gulp of coffee. You’re now back to drinking your coffee in a conscious way. Instead of your autopilot, you are now the master of this activity again. I admit the woman in this picture is overdoing it, but you got my point.
Instead of getting up, try counting your breaths, each time you inhale. Think of a goal (making 200 or so) and start counting. Of course you don’t need to count aloud. I can predict right now that the nasty depression beast in your brain will not like this. The beast will tell you to give up this ridiculous nonsense, will try to interfere and distract, will try to force its own negative thoughts onto you. But do go on. Keep stubbornly counting, every single intake of air. 63… 64… 65… Yes, the beast will protest this is boring and dull. Still, keep going.
You know walking is good for you, so you’re taking a lone walk. On a street, a country road, a forest trail, a beach. But while walking, you may happen to gradually lose your focus on yourself and your environment. You may start brooding. Negative thoughts and feelings begin to encroach on you, depression taking over while you keep walking on in an ever more mechanical way. This autopilot thing, you know… Feeling more and more depressed, you may even start asking yourself: why am I doing this? Why am I still walking here? What’s the point of all this? Meanwhile, you forget where you are.
After all the heavy stuff from the last few times, something lighter today. At the occasion of the 500th episode of The Simpsons this week, I want to congratulate the makers with their great work!
June 19, 1783 –
