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Kaleidoscope of the Heart: Every problem has a solution, if you give yourself time
March is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Apparently, March was chosen because this month sees the greatest number of suicides each year.
Certainly, March can be stressful, with the end of the fiscal year and job transfers looming for people in the workforce, and students faced with entrance exams and graduations. While many may shout they are looking forward to the next fiscal year, there are also many who see in fiscal 2010 more of the same hopelessness or despair they experienced the previous year. When I look back on my own life, too, in some years March has held its share of personal failures or new appointments reluctantly assumed.
However, while those of us in the mental health field meet many people thinking of taking their own lives, there is one thing we all believe: There is no worry in life so great that it has no solution. Of course, there are those rare times when something cannot be undone, but even then human beings have the power to turn their pain around and look forward, saying, "This will make me stronger." Even if there is some problem a person feels can't be dealt with alone, friends, family or professionals can help that person find a way out.
So, when I hear patients say, "There's nothing to do but die," I don't tell them they're wrong, but rather ask them to wait, even just a little. "Give me some time," I say. "I'll think of a way to help, because treatment should lighten your feelings of hopelessness."
Using the word "wait" instead of "wrong" with suicidal patients often brings a confused look to their faces, but it is also often accepted. Just buying time may look like an ad hoc approach, but in the short term it's actually the most effective method.
"'I want to die.' I thought those words many times," the late illustrator Rune Naito, who was swindled out of some 700 million yen in a fraudulent real estate deal, once said. "But the time I spent truly thinking that was about 30 minutes. If I can get through the next 30 minutes, I thought, somehow I'll manage. So, when that kind of feeling boiled up inside me, I went to see a movie right away. After the movie finished, I thought I ought to feel a little bit different."
So, if you think to yourself that there's no point in going on, just pass away the 30 minutes. Then, once you've calmed down a little, find someone to talk to. These simple steps, even if they take a while, can help set you on the path to resolving whatever it is that's troubling you. Whether it's failure in an exam or in love, debt woes or serious problems with another person, you are neither the first person in human history to experience the trouble you're having nor the first to overcome it. There is always a solution. Believe that, and give yourself time. (By Rika Kayama, psychiatrist)
Click here for the original Japanese story
(Mainichi Japan) March 7, 2010