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Pain Doesn't Always Show: Warning Signs of Suicide

January 6, 2017  |  Coping, Mental health, Mental illness, Suicide awareness, Suicide prevention, Trauma

Here\'s a question: do you think you\'d recognize that someone is thinking of taking his or her life?

After the reported suicide of a student at the Warren County Career Center this week, it\'s a question that may be on many people\'s minds right now. There\'s really no easy answer to it, either. We all hope we\'d notice if someone is feeling down or we would hear the subtext of a comment that goes something like, "It\'s just not worth living anymore". But when we don\'t know a person or don\'t interact with people, we don\'t always think about what\'s happening in their lives.

Maybe it\'s time to start reaching out more.

Suicide prevention isn\'t always easy. It\'s a little easier to pick up the warning signs of someone thinking of harming themselves when you\'ve been around that person a lot. You notice the changes in personality or daily patterns. When you don\'t know someone, though, and maybe pass them in the hall or in a store aisle, things can look pretty normal. So it\'s not easy.

But we CAN make a better effort to help people cope with life\'s daily pressures and curve balls. It\'s about taking the time to care about the people we see each day and how we treat them. You don\'t have to be the best of friends, but you can at least be a source of a good experience with a smile and a "hello" or "how are you?" as you pass during the day. You just don\'t know what kind of impact that small but mighty gesture could make in the life of someone who thinks no one cares.

They\'ll see you did. And maybe, just maybe, you\'ll have given that person reason to keep going.