Suicide:- the realities of depression

Content warning suicide, victim blaming, lack of mental health empathy


*wrote this a long while back and never posted it. Posting it now (21/05/2019)



After the sad suicides of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington I made the mistake of reading some of the comments.

From comments on Metal Injection FB page:-

             "He didn't die from depression idiot ...he committed suicide, he made a choice."

             "He's a coward who left his children behind."

             "Selfish, coward, easy way out."

             "Suicides are just pussies, selfish pussies."


Those are just a small selection of similar comments across various social media and media pages, comments, opinion pieces etc.

Someone on the metal injection page tried to explain "depression is a disease and dying because of it is no more selfish than dying of cancer". The responses began with "Cancer isn't a choice, suicide is." and get worse from there.


My cancer journey was and is scary but there was hope of remission; there remains hope it will stay in remission.

My mental health journey is a daily effort to manage and battle; each second of each day. it would take only one moment of utter consuming corrupting darkness to lose the battle and end with suicide. Yes there are tools we can use and meds we can take but the side effects of these meds can be suicide.

Each minute of each day we have to find a reason to keep living, which when your depression is telling you that your loved ones and the world in general is better off without you in it, are increasingly hard battles to draw let alone win. Most days when it's bad can feel like a hard fought no score draw (to draw a football/soccer analogy).

A little more empathy and a load less judgement people.