My Dad’s Death Certificate is a Lie
TW: Suicide, Depression, Mental Illness
September is National Suicide Awareness Month. June 2nd, 2020 marked five years since my Dad died by “suicide.” It’s taken five years to be able to write this down. I’ve tried multiple times and have struggled with finding the right words to say. Five years really isn’t that long, but right now it feels like a whole different life time. So many major life events have occurred and my family and I have changed in so many ways. The biggest change is living with the glaring hole of of my Dad not being here anymore. His death certificate may say he died by suicide on the morning of June 2nd, 2015…
And that is a lie.
Growing up, I felt my Dad was very good about being around for us. He would take us fishing at local ponds, coached many of our sports teams, helped us hide bad test grades from our Mom, and carted us, plus our friends, around to the town pool during the summers. He was incredibly funny and cared deeply about us.
As I got older, I’m not sure if it was just me becoming more aware or if he was just getting worse, but he wasn’t exactly who I remembered as a child.
I noticed how often and how long he slept during the day. I began to notice the unstable moods, the unwillingness to leave the house or do anything for that matter. He seemed more than just unhappy. Then suddenly, for short bursts this would all shift into episodes of energy. He suddenly seemed so happy— almost too happy. Also much more active, yet all over the place. His thoughts and actions became more scattered, and ungrounded in reality.
He never said anything, not until I was in college and had figured it out many years prior by googling the medications in the cabinet. My Dad suffered from bi-polar disorder and major depressive disorder. Being that my Mom practiced Irish Catholicism and my Dad practiced Roman Catholicism, such topics were not really discussed and being open with emotions was not necessarily my family’s forte. It feels like we swept a lot under the rug and I still see some of my extended family doing the same thing.
I wish we talked more about these things.
It’s not healthy and we shouldn’t be ashamed of a loved one’s mental health or their death by “suicide.” We are not the only family who had a loved one with a mental health disease. In 2018, there were over 48,000 deaths by suicide and about 1.4 million suicide attempts. We were not alone and while I can only speculate, I’m sure talking earlier would have helped us more.
Talking about our Dad’s mental health would have given my siblings and me an ability to understand more about what he was going through, what he needed to feel better, and how we could be more supportive. Instead, there were many hurt feelings, confusion, anxiety, and frustration. When I came home from college some time in my freshman year, he had moved out of our house. It gave everyone some space to breathe and it stayed this way up until his passing.
I know he was receiving treatment and had gone inpatient a few times in the last couple months of his life. But, his mental health wasn’t the only issue. There were multiple other factors in his life causing him strife and no one was helping him with them. These factors were what was really impacting his quality of life and exacerbating all of his symptoms. In the end, I believe he had lost hope that he would get the help and support he needed. That life couldn’t be lived the way it was going and that there was no point. And that’s what really killed him. His unmet mental health needs and the lack of support and cohesion in helping him address all those areas of his life. That is his cause of death, not suicide.
That’s what I wish everyone knew about suicide. Suicide is an act and means to die, but it is not the true cause of death.
The true cause of death is hopelessness as a result of unmet biopsychosocial needs. People who die by hopelessness aren’t weak. They had been going to war within their own heads each and everyday and also fighting an external battle with the systems we have in place to get their needs met. You simply can’t expect anyone, let alone people with pre-existing mental health conditions, to be able to feel any hope when they are fighting so many battles within themselves and the complicated, and sometimes inaccessible, social systems we have in place.
We have to change the system.
We have to ensure that we understand the true root causes of a person’s mental health disease. We have to look at them as the whole person that they are; seeing them within the complex systems that exist in their lives. My Dad was not just his mental health diseases. My Dad cared deeply about people and was simply unsupported in many ways to get what he needed to feel hopeful about life. That’s what took him from us. We have to change the narrative and end the stigma around mental health and death due to hopelessness.
We do this by understanding people as people, not diseases. We talk openly about our feelings and acknowledge thoughts of death or dying and hopelessness; then support people to find the help that they need if those thoughts are more like a plan. We find ways to connect systems of care so that people trying to navigate the health system and other resources get what they need quickly. And lastly, we do this by treating people with compassion and empathy. Find ways to help people find hope and we will be able to save lives.
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If you are in need of help or in crisis:
Please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800–273–8255.
Or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
