Why I Came Out of the (Suicide) Closet

What will people think of you?

What will people say about you?

Some people asked me these questions when I told them I was publishing an essay in the New York Times (“A Suicide Therapist’s Secret Past”) about a very dark time in my life when I made a suicide attempt. I can’t really blame them. I myself had the same fears.

It’s stigma. If I had been pummeled by a tornado and almost died, or survived breast cancer, or been robbed at gunpoint, no one would question my decision to tell others of my experience. However unfairly, suicide and mental illness are treated differently. They are, to many people, unspeakable.

The meaning of stigma is “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.” I refuse to abide by the notion that people with suicidal thoughts, depression, and other mental health problems deserve a mark of disgrace.

Depression and suicidality are things that happen to people, like cancer or bad weather. It’s not our fault, and it’s not something that taints us.

And so the fear I felt in coming out paradoxically fueled my motivation to do it.

A Long-Held Secret

For 22 years, I kept secret from almost everyone that I had made a suicide attempt in my first year of graduate school in Austin. Personally, it felt deeply private to me, even tender, a source of shame and failure regardless of whether that shame was deserved. Professionally, it seemed too much of a liability for people to know.

Of all people, some mental health professionals hold very stigmatizing attitudes toward people with mental illness. In my master’s program and beyond, I heard some colleagues’ disparaging remarks: “People who attempt suicide just want attention.” “She’s being manipulative.” “He’s so sick.”

Many physicians and nurses are openly hostile to people who have attempted suicide. When I worked as an emergency room social worker, more than once a physician came to me and said of a patient who had attempted suicide, “Could you please tell them how to do it right next time?”

Stigma exists even among researchers who devote themselves to helping prevent suicide. Early in my doctoral studies, I heard a suicide researcher complain that some people who worked in their research lab had a history of suicidal thoughts or behavior. The researcher wanted to know how to “weed out” these people before unknowingly hiring more people with a suicidal past.

From these experiences and more like them, I got the message loud and clear: Don’t tell anyone your past if you want to get a job, be respected and cared about, and succeed. Hide. Be quiet.

So that’s what I did – for more than 20 years.

Liberating Truth

I never lied. When people asked me why I was so interested in suicide prevention, I told them a friend of mine had died by suicide in high school, and the experience had filled me with questions about how to help suicidal people. I give this same explanation in my essay Why I Study Suicide.

It’s true. But it’s not the whole truth.

The whole truth is much bigger than a 1,400-word essay in the New York Times can capture. Maybe one day I will write a far longer piece about my experiences with depression and suicidality, maybe even a book. But for now, I wanted to at least come out of the closet.

Suicide prevention activists and researchers like to say that we need to lift the taboo about suicide. Talk about it. Diminish stigma. If enough people from diverse walks of life share their stories about mental illness and suicide, then stigma will buckle under the weight of enlightenment, education, and compassion.

As I explain in the New York Times piece, the longer I hid that I myself had been intensely suicidal, the more hypocritical I felt. I needed to do my part.

Some people cannot take the risk of revealing their mental illness, suicidality, or other vulnerabilities. They might be fired, or discriminated against, or hurt in other ways. Though I wish it were not so, the risk is real.

I could afford to tell my story.  As an associate professor at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work, I have tenure. I’m not going to get fired for revealing my past.

It also helps that I recently finished writing a book, Helping the Suicidal Person: Tips and Techniques for Professionals. This gave me a huge sense of accomplishment and pride. I feel more confident now, not only professionally, but personally, too.

What Do People Think?

So let’s go back to the questions that came before the essay was published: What will people think of you? What will people say? 

I’m happy to say that almost all of the responses have been positive. In the New York Times comments section, on my personal Facebook page, and in emails, phone calls, and handwritten notes, people convey their support. There are no doubt some people who think less of me, or judge me, or are aghast because I suffer from depression and I attempted suicide. I am not likely to receive emails from them.

Perhaps most gratifying to me are the emails from other people with mental illness and suicidality, many of whom are also mental health professionals. They tell me that my story helps them to feel less alone, less afraid, and more hopeful.

I love knowing that my essay is, in its own small way, spreading hope to others. But my motives in publishing it weren’t entirely selfless.

In sharing my experience with suicide, I also hoped to help myself. My suicidal past was a big secret to carry, especially as someone working in the suicide prevention field. I felt like an impostor, hiding in a dark closet of secrecy.

In coming out of the closet, I have stepped into the light.

Copyright 2017 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW. All Rights Reserved. Written for Speaking of Suicide. All photos purchased from Fotolia.com.