A good mate I’ve known the last 5 years from work. Found hanged this morning. He’s been a bit stressed/depressed the last few months on and off..
Never in a million years saw this coming, a great guy, married, a good job. Spoke to him On friday and he was talking bout starting back at work this week FFS!
Just in shock/numb. And that’s ten hours after finding out. Deal with this sorta stuff at work but this is est worse.
FFS.

I feel for you, it’s a horrible black feeling when someone does this.

My condolences Al.

Make sure you have someone you can speak to.

🙁

Whatever you do dont blame yourself for anything,you feel you may not have done for him.

Be there for his family and fellow freinds,perhaps visit his wife in the next week.

Be strong. oh and cry your eyes out it does help a bit.

I’ve known two people do this (and a cousin I didn’t know). It’s shit. Hold tight and if you’re feeling down yourself, speak up – here or anywhere.

My condolences – an awful thing to happen. 🙁

Rachel x

Thoughts are with you mate, dark times. If it really gets to you don’t ever be afraid to talk to someone about it, I’ve had to, never thought I would but so glad I did.

Feel for you dude. Be there for the family, be strong and accept help when you need it.

Cheers folks. Bad times. On holiday at the mo but have my wife and son so not so bad I guess.
Really popular guy.. Just absolutely gutted. So much stuff I was looking toward to doing with him that’ll never happen now.

Sorry for your loss of a good mate althepal.

It’s happened to me. My initial reaction was anger as thought to myself that we all need to deal with shit in life, we can’t just cop out. But then those feelings quickly subsided as I appreciated that it’s up to the individual to decide whether they want to make the effort, I came to respect his choice.

Unlike you I saw it coming – a few weeks earlier I spent an evening arguing with him that he should not end his life.

I’ve had a mate do this as well, at the age of 18.

If youre smart, take care of yourself, there’s nothing you can do for anybody else.

It’s been a few months now since this happened to my cousin. Completely unexpected – I think thats the worst part. It’s so easy to feel at fault and I ask myself why he did it all the time. It takes time but I’ve found some happiness knowing he’s at rest and happier now away from the stress. Such a horrible thing to happen and I’m sorry for your loss. My email is in profile if you ever feel like shooting an email across.

Sorry to hear that, such a horrible thing to happen. Regarding those plans, maybe in time you could commit to some of them, as a way of remembering all the good times you had with your friend.

that’s awful news, sorry to hear it. I’ve not known anyone that’s taken their life so can’t imagine how you or his family feel right now. Thoughts are with you though.

My brother killed himself in April 37yo. He’s had a hard time for a while, since our mum died in 08, he never really got over it properly, neither have I right enough but I have my wife and kids around me, he didn’t have that. He had relationship problems recently and I think that just tipped him over the edge, he shot himself in his house. Its been a tough few weeks, I’m his next of kin so I’ve had to deal with all his affairs and finances, not to mention clearing his council house. I also had to formally ID him at the Police mortuary. Its been difficult at times, but what I would recommend most is to try and avoid spending any time alone just now, and use your family and friends as much as you need to, they’ll understand. Its a natural thing to feel guilty when someone does this, but try not to be hard on yourself. Someone that commits suicide has to be incredibly ill, and completely unable to think straight.
Good luck, you have my deepest condolences. 🙁

I’ve just found out in the last few minutes that my sis-in-law’s son, my bro’s step-son, committed suicide earlier today.
There are no words. 😥

A colleague of mine who was the gentlest guy you could meet was also beaten to death in Leicester the other day. I knew him and liked him.

Mad world.

Maybe I’ve gone a bit psycho, but I thought about it for about 30 seconds, felt bad for about 30 seconds and then my brain decided “Well, at least it wasn’t me”. And until now, I hadn’t thought about it since. I think this is probably a bad thing, but hey.

I’ve became somewhat of a fatalist after watching The Thin Red Line some 11 years ago at the age of 13. At least I like to blame that anyway.

Honestly gutted for you CZ, and others.. Shedding a wee tear just now as I’m reading this..

I feel for you dude, and the only piece of advice i can give you is take the time it takes to take it in, if that makes sense.

Sadly this is much more common than people think, as the comments on this thread show. Mental illness is so hard to understand, and what pushes someone over the edge is impossible to understand unless you have been there. I haven’t thankfully, but my ex has. A year after our break up. She was intelligent and beautiful, educated, and one of the nicest person I have met. Sadly she just couldn’t be happy, and depression pushed her over the edge, aged 35. I’ll never get over it, and there won’t be a day I’ll not think about her and what she did. The only way I can rationalise what she did is that she was just unable to be happy. She just couldn’t, that was part of her personality, something she fought all her life, a disease modern medecine can’t cure.
The sadness is hard to take sometimes, and the only thing that helps is when we get together with her friends, which we did recently for what would have been her 36th birthday.
It has put things in perspective and has brought focus to the importnat things in my life, and that’s a good thing, I guess.
My thought are with you, his family and anyone who has been affected by losing a close one.

Been there. I’ll spare you the clichés but, my condolences. Sorry dude.

Anyone who watched M*A*S*H will know what I’m on about.

Anger turned inward is depression. anger turned sideways is hawkeye.

Developing a twisted sense of humour is the best thing you can do for yourself, it can help stop one from spiralling into depression. Spike Milligan is a good example, blatantly had PTSD from a heavy bout of shelling at Monte Casino but managed not to top himself.

I’m off to bed anyway.

I think anyone struggling to cope with a suicide should try to take solace in the fact that there was nothing anyone could have done to help..
I know from first hand experience that it can be a great deal more complicated than we imagine..
I tried to commit suicide when I was 20 years old by jumping off a 300 foot cliff..

To everyone around me I just seemed stressed and depressed and very weak and vulnerable and self pitying, confused maybe, but little more.. and I had a lot of love and help around me..

but inside I had spent months constructing ways of not inflicting my real problems on others.. just snippets and glimpses when things bubbled over..
I had become very negative and unhappy.. and for a reason that I can’t put my finger on, I had let some very average life problems turn around and around and crystallise and grow in my mind. I was completely unwilling to discuss what they had become with anyone.. I had isolated myself and so I went from feeling very negative and unhappy to being completely consumed by misery..

Things that had started as molehills had become a range of vast and all too real, utterly immovable impossible mountains.. but bigger and more profound than that, full of cruel riddles that all led back to the same harrowing conclusions..
I had made an irreversible pact with myself that the battle must be fought internally to protect the innocent.. it had nothing whatsoever to do with any lack of willing or effort.. and everything to do with facing problems of biblical proportions entirely alone.. in a prison of my own making

my soul had already withered and died of fear a thousand times over, and I truly believed that there was no other possible answer..

the place that I was in was a very long way past rational.. and I imagine that perhaps there is an element of this in every suicide.. try to remember them in their happier times

My condolences.

althepal,
well done for raising this. Suicide kills far more people than car accidents, but is far less talked about and far less is done to help those at risk. Raising awareness and making it ok to talk about is vital in allowing people at risk to feel they can seek help while they still feel they have options.

That’s terrible news. My condolences to you and everyone that knew him.

I think anyone struggling to cope with a suicide should try to take solace in the fact that there was nothing anyone could have done to help..
I know from first hand experience that it can be a great deal more complicated than we imagine..
I tried to commit suicide when I was 20 years old by jumping off a 300 foot cliff..

To everyone around me I just seemed stressed and depressed and very weak and vulnerable and self pitying, confused maybe, but little more.. and I had a lot of love and help around me..

but inside I had spent months constructing ways of not inflicting my real problems on others.. just snippets and glimpses when things bubbled over..
I had become very negative and unhappy.. and for a reason that I can’t put my finger on, I had let some very average life problems turn around and around and crystallise and grow in my mind. I was completely unwilling to discuss what they had become with anyone.. I had isolated myself and so I went from feeling very negative and unhappy to being completely consumed by misery..

Things that had started as molehills had become a range of vast and all too real, utterly immovable impossible mountains.. but bigger and more profound than that, full of cruel riddles that all led back to the same harrowing conclusions..
I had made an irreversible pact with myself that the battle must be fought internally to protect the innocent.. it had nothing whatsoever to do with any lack of willing or effort.. and everything to do with facing problems of biblical proportions entirely alone.. in a prison of my own making

my soul had already withered and died of fear a thousand times over, and I truly believed that there was no other possible answer..

the place that I was in was a very long way past rational.. and I imagine that perhaps there is an element of this in every suicide.. try to remember them in their happier times

agreed 100%, an incredibly insightful, reflective and honest post…. quite humbling to read!

i wont bang on about my job but put simply, working in mental health that’s very much the case with most people who want to/try to/actually succeed in committing suicide…. i’d put money on the fact that for everyone here who’s lost somebody to suicide, there was nothing you could’ve done. so please, please dont beat yourselves up and feel guilty.

i’ve posted some stuff about this charity before on the forum, but no harm in posting it again:

Campaign against living miserably

was set up to try to start addressing male suicide, suicide is the biggest killer of men under 35 in the UK and 3 out of every 4 suicides being male

Some really sobering stories here, condolences to all that has been affected by suicide.

Condolences to you mate.

A friend’s brother did the same (gassed himself in his car) aged about 20. Another friend (a depressive) sadly died of what we believe was an overdose in his early 40s. It’s the finality of it all that gets me – you can’t hide from that. Their life has been snuffed out and it’s their family/friends who need to battle on. Best to celebrate their life but at the same time remember you have a duty to look after yourself and your loved ones, i.e you still have your life ahead of you.

All the best. He is at rest. 🙁

It happened to some one I knew a few years back. He suffered for years from depression and was on and off drugs, suicidal thoughts etc.

He hung himself over the bannister in his house at a time when we all thought he was in a better place mentally than we had realised.

IMO to take your own life takes courage and is by no means the easy way out, I think its so sad that peoples mental health becomes that altered that it becomes an option.

If i recall correctly the time at which an individual suffering from a depressive disorder is at the highest risk, is when they’re coming out of their lowest point. At the lowest point most don’t have the mental energy to even plan suicide, but as they start to come out of the slump and start to consider the future, the effect they perceive themselves to be having on their loved ones/the world becomes clearer as they start to look outward instead of inwards… they’re a bit more mentally able to think a little clearer, albeit still very much suffering from depression and the clouded thoughts/judgement that comes with it.

That new level of clarity is usually the time when people decide to take their own life 🙁 and as Yunki said up there ^ it’s usually a choice made in an effort to stop the individual hurting the ones they love, as at the point in time the individual is probably 110% convinced the world would be a better place without them.

Please accept my condolences. I had a colleague some years ago (my guitarist and songwriter) who struggled for years with a schizophrenic disorder (twin personalities, hearing “voices from hell” and so on).

In 1999, he used Wimbledon station as a way out.

I pass through there twice a day, five days a week and am still in the process of dealing with it. I find myself “talking” to him. I’m sure you will too, with your absent friend.

The good news for you is that the grief, however, does pass. Good luck.

My condolences.

I was in the same situation as you 20 years ago, good mate of mine, we were both at different Universities, was a massive shock.

Whatever you do dont blame yourself for anything,you feel you may not have done for him.

Be there for his family and fellow freinds,perhaps visit his wife in the next week.

Be strong. oh and cry your eyes out it does help a bit.

This is absolutely right. As above, don’t blame yourself and don’t underestimate the benefit of having a really good cry.

My condolences, I have lost a couple of friends this way over the years, my only advice is to try and focus on the good times you had with him.

RIP

A school mate who joined the Marines was killed a few years on patrol in Afghanistan. It totally messed with my head. Best thing you can do is remember the good times. We are all wired up differently so don’t blame yourself.

Sorry to hear mate. Thoughts are with you and all concerned.

Cheers for sharing folks. Helps a bit knowing other folk have been through similar situations.
Ta for the insightful comments too.

Colleague committed suicide only a couple of months back.
Came in to work, gave us his inputs for the weekly team meeting, and excused himself since he said he had another meeting (we work on multiple projects), went home, emailed half the team a “goodbye note” thanking everyone for being great people to work with, and the Polizei confirmed within the hour that they were too late. 2 hours between me speaking to him, and me hearing the news, and when I spoke to him he was 100% his normal self, no nerves, no obvious “he’s telling a lie”, no nothing.

Been said above already, by many, but… there’s nothing you could have done, nothing that would have given you any clues, nothing that you did that could have been the trigger.

I am surprised at how common it is. Thought it’d be a one-off, but it certainly isn’t.

Agree with pretty much everything that has been said here and like a lot of folks on here I’ve been through similar within the past two years. Never in my lifetime did I think what happened ever would.

I think one of the most difficult things to deal with is the lack of answers and this can be very hard to come to terms with. Also the feelings of guilt which is an entirely natural emotion to go through for those suffering a bereavement

Mental health and suicide are such complex issues though and I’m sure are far more prevalent that most people might imagine, and its important to remember there is no way you could have forseen what your friend did.

People very close to me have found bereavment councilling very helpful. In particular Cruse who are a free national charity offering councilling services. Its always worth knowing should you feel to wish to speak to someone. Its important not to keep feelings and thoughts bottled up and speaking to others can help a great deal.

I’m sorry to hear your sad loss too.