This piece discusses suicide. If you, or someone you know is struggling, help is available.
This week, Sir Bob Jones wrote an article in which he suggested he had encouraged a man to commit suicide.
Why starve to death?" I suggested. "Why not get it over with quickly and commit suicide?" So he did.
The New Zealand Herald apologised, and removed the comments – though some on Twitter thought the newspaper’s tweet wasn’t much of an apology.
RNZ’s Mediawatch will be looking into the article, and how it got published, on Sunday, but it has already spawned a number of pieces in the blogosphere.
Sarah Wilson writes about the cost of the lack of understanding about mental health.
Life. Life is the cost of lack of understanding. I know that people who have not suffered from mental illness may struggle to understand it. I don’t know what it feels like to have a broken leg. That doesn’t mean I don’t have compassion for someone who does. Perhaps compassion, more than understanding, is more what I mean here – but understanding something medically and economically is, surprisingly, an easier request than asking someone to care.
On the Daily Blog, Rachel Goldsmith talks about suicide being tossed around by people who should know better.
Roastbusters has us having a national conversation about rape, but story after story of young Kiwi’s ending their lives thanks to bullying, encouragement and idealising have raised mutterings but not outrage.
And over at the Pantograph Punch, a different but related subject: Sad Rap, and whether it trivialises depression.
It’s a mundane kind of misery that plagues most of us at some point, but it’s still deeply uncouth to talk about; so when I lay in my pizza-box-strewn bed and flicked open Little Pain’s SoundCloud, hearing him spit lines like “second verse and I’m still sad / dropped my bitch ‘cause she too glad”, I sat up straight, and grinned.
(For help: Lifeline - 0800 543 354 or (09) 5222 999 within Auckland, Samaritans - 0800 726 666 (for callers from the Lower North Island, Christchurch and West Coast) or 0800 211 211 / (04) 473 9739 (for callers from all other regions) Suicide Crisis Helpline - 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO))