September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Unfortunately, suicide continues to be the tenth-leading cause of death in the United States. In 2024, 48,824 Americans died by suicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Ten years before that, I almost became one of those statistics.
I’m grateful that it’s been 12 years since my most recent suicide attempt. There are no guarantees in mental health and I continue to maintain — and I’ll speak for myself — that with my history I need to be extraordinarily vigilant and proactive if I feel a downward shift in my mood.
I was recently admitted to a medical hospital, and they didn’t have my Pristiq in their formulary. There was no one who could bring my medication to me from home. By the third day without it, my mood was tanking and I found myself tearing up at the slightest frustration, including those I would have shrugged off if the medication was at a therapeutic level in my system. The generic for Pristiq is desvenlafaxine and the generic for Effexor is venlafaxine, a cousin of sorts, so the doctor wrote an order for that, but it didn’t help.
When I got home, I immediately re-started the Pristiq, but the damage had been done. I didn’t feel like myself. I emailed my psychiatrist, Dr. L., and asked for an appointment; fortunately, she had an opening at the end of the week. It was good to see her in person. I’m not currently in therapy but we spoke and some deeper issues came up that I was not consciously aware I was trying to deal with. I left not with a prescription for a new medication or an increase in dosage but with a directive to get myself back into therapy. I fervently wish I could see Dr. L. again but her fee precludes that and she doesn’t accept insurance.
My point is that if I hadn’t been so attuned to the downward shift in my mood and proactive in making an appointment with Dr. L., what was struggling to come to light might have festered in the recesses of my psyche and who knows what might have happened there. I could have just as easily buried it and become suicidal again. With me, it doesn’t take much, even after 12 years. One longitudinal study on recovery from attempting suicide tracking 1,044 subjects with a history of suicide attempts concluded that the risk of suicide after an attempt persists for up to 32 years.
I must give myself some credit, though. Thanks to therapy with Dr. L., I’m not the same person who attempted suicide in 2014. I’ve resolved many of the issues I struggled with around both of my parents. That person who overdosed in 2014 was full of rage at her father for dying because it meant she would never hear from him that she was good enough.
I’ve built a life for myself in the ensuing years. Constructing a life worth living wasn’t easy and took a long time but the result has been worth the effort. Cultivating friendships, sharpening my skills as a writer, working on my memoir, finding a job where I feel valued and appreciated, finding a second job teaching counseling at a local college, rescuing a dog, and being asked to speak at a conference this summer—all of these parts add up to the sum of a life that speaks of an active, self-assured, secure woman.
The tools I’ve come to rely on since my suicide attempt include my ability to validate myself. I used to need constant reassurance and praise. Upper management at my job is supportive but we are a busy practice, and supervisors run their own teams with a measure of autonomy. I need to be confident in my decisions, relying on my years of clinical experience and common sense. I don’t always know the answer and when I don’t, I know who to go to for it. Additionally, my time alone is so valuable right now. I’ve taken up swimming in the very early morning hours. At 5 AM, I have the pool in my building to myself. I splurged on headphones I can wear while I swim that play my favorite songs from my phone. The 45 minutes I swim are my sanity-preservation time, and I feel my psyche start to slip if I miss more than one day.
Another tool is my writing. I’m exhausted when I finish my workday and I still have my documentation to do so I generally work on my book on the weekends. There is a bookstore near my home I tend to favor that has a full-service restaurant inside. I sit at the bar with my computer for hours and when I’m hungry, I order lunch. I pop in my airpods, establish a creative bubble around where I’m sitting, and get to work. On a good day, I can churn out a thousand words.
Another study on recovery from past suicide attempts found that almost three-fourths of people who had ever attempted suicide did not attempt again for more than 5 years. Recovery, these researchers reported, “involves not only psychiatric and substance use disorders but improvements in key socio-demographics and social connectedness over many years.”
Recovery. What a sweet sound that is.
If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24/7 dial 988 for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
