Trigger Warning: This content contains discussion of suicide and suicidal thoughts. Please scroll down for available resources.
When I first said, “I suffer from anxiety and occasional depression,” out loud, and shared it on social media, I knew I was just scratching the surface. I knew there was more to my story that I would share. I just didn’t know when. Cindy Hsu’s upcoming appearance on Ep. 18 and her candor in sharing her story gave me the courage I needed to open up a little more about my own struggles.
If you are not familiar with Cindy, she is a news anchor for WCBS-TV in New York. In 2021 she shared publicly that she had survived a suicide attempt several years earlier. She was rushed to the hospital, admitted for psychiatric care and returned to work a month later, brushing off questions about her unexplained absence. She has gone on to be an advocate for suicide prevention and has produced several special reports under the “Breaking the Stigma” banner.
Ep. 18 will feature real talk about suicide and suicidal ideation. There have been two times in my life when I experienced passive suicidal ideation. I didn’t go so far as to make a plan, and I was never in a position to actually harm myself. In both instances, those thoughts were fleeting, but frightening. It’s something I have kept buried for more than twenty years.
We will discuss suicide and suicidal ideation on a new show that I launched with Dawn Helmrich, “Shining Light on Shadows: A Candid Conversation About Mental Health.” Cindy Hsu, a WCBS-TV News Anchor in New York, will be our guest. You can watch the show live on Thursday, October 24 or catch the recording on Facebook, Twitter*, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram* or my website.
*We won't know the exact urls for Twitter and Instagram until we go live. For now, those links go to my main accounts on those platforms.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the key distinction between passive and active suicidal ideation is that Passive suicidal ideation involves a general desire to die without any concrete method, plan, intention, or action. For example, an individual may have thoughts like "I wish I could just disappear" or "I don't want to wake up.” Active suicidal ideation, on the other hand, involves a detailed plan and a determined intent to act on suicidal ideas.
The National Institute of Mental Health reports that “Approximately 13.2 million adults in the U.S. (5.2% of the adult population) reported having serious thoughts of suicide in 2022.”
In both instances of when the thought of taking my own life snuck into my conscious mind, it was triggered by circumstances around work. The first was twenty-four years ago.
The Bridge
In March of 2000, I was serving as the Washington Bureau Chief of News India-Times, an English-language weekly serving the Indian American community. I was part of the White House Press Corps for President Clinton’s trip to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. I put an inordinate amount of pressure on myself. There was no way I could live up to the expectations I’d set. I didn’t produce nearly as much as I had hoped to. I felt like I had failed.
I came home, tail between my legs, and vowed to do better. When the Indian Prime Minister announced a visit to Washington, DC for September of that year, I seized on that opportunity to make up for what I failed to do in India. I put even more pressure on myself than before. I was going to make up for my earlier failings. In hindsight, somewhat predictably, I couldn’t live up to those impossible expectations. In the midst of feeling despondent, I suddenly pictured myself standing on a bridge overlooking a ravine not far from where I lived. It was a fleeting thought. I never actually thought about going out there. Picturing myself there was scary enough.
The Bus
The second instance happened sometime in 2006. This episode was also triggered by a work-related experience. I’ve written earlier about the depressive episode I had while working at the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER) as a consultant. After organizing a working group meeting, I somehow convinced myself that the meeting was a failure, that I had let people down. I stopped returning phone calls and stopped checking email for that account. I stayed away from work for about a month.
In the middle of that depressive episode, I did reach out to find a therapist. I was in-between therapists. At one point, I was sitting with my wife on a bench in the middle of a park on the campus of the University of Washington. We were not near the road. There were several bus stops nearby. All of a sudden, I pictured myself stepping in front of a bus. I couldn’t see the buses from where I was and I was never near the curb. But, this thought flew into my head and just as quickly, flew out.
I haven’t had similar thoughts since then, to that degree of specificity. There have been other times when I’ve felt an even more generalized sense of wanting to be hurt, but never by my own hand.
I launched this show with Dawn to help reduce the stigma around Mental Health. I was scared enough to share that I suffered from Anxiety and Occasional Depression, much less that I see a therapist. I’m sharing my experience with passive suicidal ideation in the hopes that it might help someone who has had similar thoughts.
If you or someone you know have had thoughts of hurting themselves, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 988 for 24/7 free and confidential support. You can also visit 988lifeline.org.
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