“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways”
– Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939, founder of psychoanalysis.
Normally, I’d be here talking about the economy but this week, let’s take a different path.
Since tomorrow is World Suicide Prevention Day, it feels right to share a personal story. A story many of us might relate to, either directly or through someone we know.Who hasn’t gone through hard times? We might have faced them head-on or seen a loved one battle these inner struggles.
I unknowingly played a part, not realising at the time that I was helping. I’ve been reflecting on it and taking notes, never thinking I’d one day discuss it in this column but with her permission, I’m opening up today.
A few years back, I had a colleague at G. Sachs headquarters in the Big Apple. She was like me, a young economist, handling some high-pressure analyst tasks.
However, she began to seem different. It was during one of our business events that our VP Scott Campbell, picked up on her behaving…off, not quite like the person we knew.
After that, she started giving away gifts and sending emotional postcards to her parents back in Padawan.
My wife and I, being close to her, decided to check on her after work one day. What struck me was how empty her apartment looked. Many things were missing – furniture, paintings. And then, my wife found something alarming: three unopened bottles of sleeping pills in the bathroom.
Confronting her revealed even more. She’d given away her stuff, cleared her savings, and sent all that money to her parents.
When I interviewed her, she told me how every single thing, even the simplest of tasks, felt so hard. She wasn’t happy at all. Every. Single. Day.
Honestly, I could tell she was spiralling into some deep, dark place. Behind the screens and numbers, she was being consumed by a darkness I recognised all too well.
We both found ourselves buried under financial models for 17 hours daily, with weekends no exception.
The clock seemed to only tick for work, and our lives outside the office just blurred into the background.
One of the reasons I remember this so well was that, out of all analysts I’ve mentored, she was special.
Dubbed our ‘sniper’, her precision and finesse were unmatched in my investment banking years.
She looked at me, the weight of the world in her eyes, and asked, “Am I slowly killing myself trying to do this job? And for what? For a few praises or a raise? Is it all worth it?”
Seeing her pain mirrored my own struggles though I was able to cope. When I suggested she get help, perhaps talk to someone, a professional, her response sent chills down my spine. She simply said, “I don’t care.”
The scariest part? This wasn’t a passing thought for her; she had a detailed plan to end her suffering. Ironically, it was this very plan that raised a red flag for us, giving us a window to act.
And act we did. Between her family, my wife, and myself, we rallied around her, reaching out just when the dark clouds seemed thickest. I’ll forever be thankful for that moment of intervention.
She was put on a medication that eventually worked wonders for her. Slowly, she began to find joy in life again.
Exactly! While my friend had a lifeline, many aren’t that ‘lucky’. Pills and prayers have limits. I mean, a pill isn’t going to find you a job, fix broken relationships, or provide a roof over your head, right?
Suicide prevention is also difficult because family members rarely know someone they love is about to attempt suicide; often that person doesn’t know herself.
A good friend from my Columbia days, always engrossed in the world of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, told me about how nearly half of those who attempt suicide do it on impulse. Imagine, in less time than it takes to make a cup of teh tarik, someone decides to end it all.
People often say, “If someone’s struggling, they should just reach out.” But it’s not that straightforward. The reality in Malaysia and elsewhere is that good psychiatric care is like gold – rare and expensive. And, in extreme cases, where people need immediate care, we simply don’t have enough facilities for them.
We push for hotlines and awareness campaigns, which are great, but this is like cutting doorways into an empty building.
The decision to stop living is one that people arrive at by different paths, some over months, but many in a matter of minutes. Many slip past our mental health radar. While we undeniably need better psychiatric care and quicker treatments for intense depression, it’s never a complete solution.
If we ignore all this, and keep telling the story that there is a simple solution at hand, the families of suicide victims will be left wondering what they did wrong.
