When ones career involves immersion into everyday distress and reactions, both positive and negative, to that distress it’s paradoxically easy to become distanced from it. 

Counsellors get used to hearing parts of peoples lives that are filled with anguish, melancholy, fury and sorrow and respond to suffering with care and interest. We discuss it, debate it, research it and attempt to make sense of it with clients and peers and thus the awful stigma of suffering rapidly diminishes.

So in a way it’s enlightening that so many parts of the media are calling today International Suicide Day, as if we’re all going to join hands and jump off bridges together sometime this afternoon, perhaps raising some sponsorship for a worthy cause at the same time. If this is the level of engagement that the Fourth Estate has for this most serious subject then there remains a massive amount of work to be done.

Suicide accounts for the death of one person worldwide every 40 seconds. In England it’s one person every 2 hours. One person every two hours.

If you are feeling suicidal you are not alone. That sense of isolation, of being utterly unable to make contact with someone who will listen to you and help you, is central to many people’s decision to kill themselves. In fact there are networks of people who will do precisely that: listen to you and help you avoid suicide.

The Samaritans is perhaps the best known and they’ve become more accessible. As well as speaking with someone on the phone you can write to or email them as well as dropping in to one of their branches.

NHS mental health services, from GP's to residential inpatient wards are everywhere. While some are good, many mental health wards are holding areas staffed by disinterested people and they will remain like that until we approach mental health with as much concern as we do the care of small children.

If you’re feeling suicidal and are not totally, utterly committed to killing yourself, if there’s the smallest doubt that you might not want to die then go to one of these centers. They will keep you alive, give you 3 meals a day, provide warmth, light and a bed and, taking all responsibility from you, give you time. You may meet a member of staff or another patient who will listen in a way that you find helpful. They can help connect you with other services that you didn’t know about. At the very least they can show you what route you may be heading down and offer a sobering view to the future. Any number of people have been so shocked by what they’ve experienced on psychiatric wards that they change their lives for the better to ensure they never return.

There are a small number of places run by people who have a genuine interest in and compassion for other people in crisis offering heartfelt care rather than statutory support. The Maytree, based in London is an enlightened, excellent place that offers “a short stay in a safe residential setting where you can talk, reflect and rest - and restore hope. Maytree is a place where you will be heard, respected and accepted, without judgement and in confidence.”

The Government has published a report today on reducing suicide which makes interesting reading. But unless we’re willing to ask for help, to offer help and to be able to point each other to meaningful help and support when we become suicidal, all the reports in the world are going to be meaningless. Reach out. You do not have to die today.

Some months ago a friend and I were talking about his experience of Flooding as a treatment. He very kindly agreed to share that experience here. 

I had a really awful time at school, for a while I would wash taps before washing my hands, just to make sure I had clean hands, then return to my pit of a bedroom with no hint of hypocrisy at all. Then I got a thing about my Achilles tendons, probably from a lesson describing what Achilles did to his tendons, (still makes me shudder to this day!), and would walk in an exaggerated manner that I felt made them less prone to injury. I had no evidence that this was the case, but nor did anything bad happen. 

Then one time we had inoculations, I didn't like it but it was no big deal. Soon after however, I went on a family holiday to Morocco that required two courses of six jabs, three in each arm, the arm would swell up and become a target for any pillock who was looking to cause someone pain, and hey presto, my needle phobia reared it's head, leading to a morbid terror of any sharp surgical instrument. Even knowing this, being reasonably certain of why I felt the way I did, and rationalising that hypodermic syringes were used to inject preventative medicaments, I could not shake the feeling of utter terror to the point where, when visiting people in hospital, I would try to sit with my back to the wall, or as far from anyone walking behind me just in case they tripped or decided I needed a jab from something.

My fear kept me away from the dentist for over ten years even when I had a gaping cavity, made me think twice about visiting anywhere there might be medical tools and forced me to look away when syringes appeared on TV: if I wasn't quick enough, I'd feel jittery for hours. When I did go to get my tooth filled I mentioned my phobia, so the well-meaning dentist caught me by surprise with the syringe, I don't think his nurse was too pleased with me crushing her hand though! I stayed conscious, but if my Mum hadn't been to hand I'd have had to sit in the waiting room for the next six hours, I was white as a sheet, jittery and weak as a kitten.

I think it was the dentists episode that sold me on the idea of getting referred to a psychologist. I've a sneaking suspicion that my GP didn't take me entirely seriously and  I'm fairly certain my psychologist was newly qualified. In any case, a large proportion of my treatment was talking therapy and the use of a clean hypodermic to touch on my skin which was actually reasonably helpful now I think about it. The Flooding part of it wasn't: watching videos of surgical procedures, the lung biopsy just freaked me out! It didn't help much.

Being the sort of person who's an obstinate bugger at heart, I pushed myself to have a vasectomy, my wife would've gone for sterilisation and said as much, even going as far as to try talking me out of it, but I was sick and tired of being scared, I was facing redundancy and going though stress at work so it wasn't like I was feeling balanced or strong. I'd just tried every other way and thought that voluntary flooding in the form of the vasectomy under local anaesthetic  would be kill or cure.

As it turned out I could cheerfully watch injections on the TV for over a year after without a flinch, it's resurfaced but only as a discomforting anxiety, rather than an overpowering horror and I'm not left feeling shaky afterwards. I still hate having the undersides of my fore arm touched, that comes from the idea of blood being taken, but I don't think I'd be a screaming mess if I woke up in hospital with tubes in my arm which could not have been said of me 20 years back!!!

Thinking about it, I did try a little flooding soon after seeing my psychologist, I got my ear pierced, which was ok, and a tattoo (the first of six, they're addictive!), but the needles and procedures, not to mention environments, were entirely different as were the outcomes, so the experiences were of little practical use, other than to demonstrate that fear can be overcome, you just have to be a stubborn bugger!!