Suicide Forum


Suicide: Its impact in our community


This major forum was held at the Wesley Centre for Life Enrichment on 26 June, 2007. 100 people attended during the day. About 30 of these returned in the evening, along with an additional 60 people. Participants came from throughout the greater Geelong community and even further afield into the Surf Coast, Colac-Otway and Golden Plains shires, and ranged from professionals in the mental health and counselling fields, to school welfare workers and teachers, to members of the community whose lives have been affected by suicide.

Day Forum
The day forum included keynote speakers Dr Jon Stebbins, a psychologist and suicide-bereaved parent, and Gary Tippet, a senior journalist with The Age and The Sunday Age, and a director of The Dart Centre, Australasian branch, which deals with issues of journalism and trauma. Their keynote addresses are included here. In addition to the keynote input, workshops covered:

► the role and responsibility of media and journalism;
► trigger points for young people;
► the impact of drugs and alcohol;
► accessing mental health services;
► policing in response to suicide;
► the impact of suicide on families and friends.

A plenary discussion at the end of the day raised a number of issues, in particular, the lack of sufficient after-hours emergency mental health services. Another issue raised was the lack of awareness of the extent of suicide death in the community, due to the lack of reporting by media on the issue. Both these issues are to be followed through by the Wesley Centre for Life Enrichment as advocacy issues.

Evening Forum
The forum also included an evening panel discussion led by Jon Stebbins, Di Pinnow (a suicide-bereaved parent who is with The Compassionate Friends, and the 'After Suicide' support group), Doug Lang (a Drug and Alcohol worker who has contemplated suicide) and Bryan Eaton (a trainer with the Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training program). Jon challenged those present to consider their responses to a range of issues around suicide, and to then reflect on how their preconceptions around suicide might affect their ability to be a listening ear to someone considering suicide. Di and Doug spoke openly about the issue and its impact in their lives, and Bryan spoke about the ways in which appropriate training can work to intervene in potential suicides. Many of those present at the evening forum had experienced the death of loved ones through suicide. Some had contemplated suicide themselves. Participants valued the opportunity to hear from others, share their own situation, and find out about resources available.

Resources
People experiencing personal problems can call Lifeline on 13 11 14; SANE Helpline on 1800 187 263; or the Victorian Suicide Helpline on 1300 651 251.
Support for those who have experienced the death of a loved one through suicide is available through the 'After Suicide' support group which meets on the 3rd Tuesday of each month from 6.30pm - 8pm. For more information contact Hope Bereavement Care on (03) 5226 7269 or Wesley Centre for Life Enrichment on (03) 5222 4101.

Parents who have experienced the death of a child (at any age), including through suicide, can contact The Compassionate Friends support group on 1800 641 091 for support and for details of the Geelong branch.
Training in suicide awareness and intervention is available through the Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training course, run through the Geelong Lifeline office on (03) 5222 2255.

Keynote Addresses


SUICIDE BEREAVEMENT – ITS IMPACT
Dr Jon Stebbins
Tuesday 26 June 2007


Dr Jon Stebbins, TPTC, BSc, BEd, GradDipEdCouns, MA (Couns), D.Ed, MAPS
Jon Stebbins has over 30 years experience working with people as a counselling psychologist and teacher/lecturer. His doctorate examined how the bereaved give meaning to their experiences in the context of a suicide death. Jon has developed and taught grief and trauma units at Melbourne and Victoria Universities, speaks to a wide range of community groups, conference presentations, trauma debriefing, one-on-one counselling, and leads support groups for the bereaved (with wife Sue, he co-led The Compassionate Friends (TCF) support group for families bereaved by suicide).
Introduction
Thank you for the invitation to be a part of this forum. The organising team is to be congratulated. Greater understanding and community support for those contemplating suicide and those left behind to pick up the pieces is sorely needed.

One thing we now know is that shocked and distressed families, will turn first of all for support to others in their immediate family, then their extended family, and then their friends.

But then, because most people’s knowledge of suicide is zero, commonly there will be a desperate search for information and support in the local community. So a forum like this, focussing on developing local resources, is vital.

Brief historical perspective
Historically, I believe, this forum takes place at a very significant point in time, in relation to our understanding of suicide and suicide bereavement.

For centuries we have kept a strong lid on suicide. We made those who suicided into sinners in the churches and refused to give them church burial services. We made them into criminals under the law. And we ostracised their families as co-criminals or at least as dysfunctional families. Fortunately some of this stigmatisation has disappeared – but not all – over the last few years we have come up against a couple of instances where priests refused to bury young people who had taken their own lives.

Why has suicide been buried so strongly for so long? I believe it is because a suicide death incorporates the very deepest fears and superstitions we have about the nature of life and death and non-existence. A suicide death, more than any other, rocks us to our very core. It raises such questions as “What is life all about?” “Does it really have any meaning?” “Is there a life after death?” “Will it be worse?” “Will there be nothing?” “Where is my dead child now?” “Is she/he happier?” Deep frightening existential questions.

In my view the first time the lid blew off the issue of suicide, and it was inescapably in our faces, was in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Increases in youth suicide became impossible to ignore.

Suicide prevention and intervention, and to a lesser degree, support for those left behind (or postvention), became a serious community quest. There were enquiries, conferences, papers and books written.

In Victoria the Government set up a very extensive Task Force to look at youth suicide and youth suicide prevention. It took countless submissions from individuals and organisations involved with youth, families, and community support.

For a few years, suicide was talked about, discussed and analysed. Academics built reputations around the issue. New support groups began to appear. The Compassionate Friends Bereaved-by-Suicide support group, which my wife and I had first attended seeking support, and then started leading in the early nineties, almost overnight grew from around 10 family members attending the monthly meeting, to as many as 40+ family members attending.

But slowly the interest in suicide faded. By about the mid to late 1990s the crust was reforming and the volcano was lying fairly dormant with just a few pockets of escaping steam. In Victoria, for example, we were left with initiatives such as:
• Beyond Blue, the organisation looking at depression and led by Jeff Kennet
• A small number of support groups,
• Some pockets of research
• And a little more awareness about the complexity of suicide

I think suicide essentially went underground again for two main reasons:
• First of all, I believe that researchers, and those working with suicide such as psychiatrists, psychologists and welfare workers, and Governments, were looking for quick fixes and simple straight-forward solutions. Instead they were continually confronted with suicide being a complex multi-dimensional issue, requiring time, patience and lots of money.
• And I suspect that the second reason suicide largely went back underground was because having it in our faces without finding any clear answers, again raised our deepest fears about suicide, so we put the lid back on.

The two points I want to make about all this is that:
(a) Firstly, if we want to help someone contemplating suicide, or bereaved by suicide, then we need to be aware that there are no quick fixes. We will need to invest energy and time and patience.

(b) The second point I want to make is that I believe this forum is part of a fresh large-scale eruption of the suicide volcano, which makes today very significant. Why now? I don’t know, but today’s forum is part of a number of initiatives appearing and gaining momentum.

It seems that lately more government funding has been made available for suicide-related issues – particularly for support for the suicide-bereaved. For example, Lifeline (Canberra) is exploring how to run the most effective support groups for the suicide-bereaved. And SANE, the mental health support organisation in Victoria, is starting a bereavement support project for those families and friends of people with a mental illness who have died by suicide or have gone missing.

In relation to the first volcanic eruption, I believe the most important thing we learnt when suicide hit the surface in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was that it is a very complex issue. For example:

• We now know there are multiple reasons that people take their own lives (telling us to always be alert – especially with young people, who have not yet developed a range of life skills – and directly check out even the vaguest suspicions we may have.
• We now also know that the grief reactions of each family member, friend or colleague will be complex and unique, which means flexible support programs, and this also highlights the importance of careful empathic non-judgemental listening.
• We are also more aware that the support each person needs will vary, and that quick bulk fixes are not possible.
• And, related to the issue of support, we also know the stigma of suicide is still alive and well, and we need to fight this. We know that families of those who have suicided are often avoided – and the reverse, that family members often feel like lepers and hide their loss and consequently often do not seek the help they might need.

Aims of session
All that was by way of introduction – of setting the scene for today. What I would like to do with the rest of my time now, is to tell you a little of my personal experiences with suicide and suicide support, then touch on some guidelines that may assist you in supporting people bereaved by suicide that you may come up against – either as a family member, or friend, or colleague, or as a professional.

My Story and Major Issues
A few years ago our 18 year old son, Matthew, took his own life, and the world for me was turned upside down. It was unexpected, and came out of the blue. We were a close family, and Matt shared his life pretty openly with us. We knew he had been struggling a bit with his schooling, but that seemed to be behind him. And adolescence was a struggle, but we saw that as fairly normal. And he had recently broken up with a girlfriend, although he said he was OK about that.

We were unprepared and devastated, and we still do not really know what triggered in him such feelings of hopelessness and helplessness about life.

Personally, I felt lost in a suddenly alien world. Life, which had been interesting, at times challenging, but essentially safe and secure, suddenly became insecure, unsafe, dangerous and frighteningly alien. It no longer made sense.

The first year after Matt died was pretty much a blank. I don’t remember many details, except that I leant heavily on family, friends and, at work, on colleagues. My work life was (and still is) teaching and counselling, but I gave up counselling for about 18 months or more. It took that long before I felt able to separate my issues from those I was trying to help.

But I did go back to teaching after a couple of weeks, because that was familiar and secure. I was teaching adult teachers doing graduate school counselling training courses at the time, and the students were caring people and didn’t seem to mind when I would suddenly choke up, or start crying for no apparent reason. I also had a very supportive group of colleagues.

Within our family, my wife, our 2 daughters and myself, we all grieved differently. My wife was like a long distance terrier. She spoke to all Matt’s friends, spoke to the police, to the coroner, in fact to anyone who might have information.

We were both warned very early that we would grieve differently – and we did. We both set up outside friends we could contact when we were not able to support each other. Within that first terrible year, Sue also found she needed more opportunities to explore her feelings with people who had experienced a similar tragedy, so she joined The Compassionate Friends (TCF) (a world-wide organisation supporting bereaved family members where a child has died – by any means and at any age), and attended the suicide support group. I didn’t join until later.

If Sue was a long distance runner, I was a sprinter. I tended to grieve in bursts. I also tended to be less interested in detail. Matt was dead and wouldn’t be returning.

In that sense I was a fairly typical male – working from the head, and tending to think issues through within myself first, and perhaps discussing them later, rather than exploring feelings directly.

Because quite frankly I did not really know how I felt, except that I was lost and confused, and struggling to make sense of life.

I might just pause here and mention a couple of pieces of research I have come up against that you might find helpful, and that relate to men and women, in general, grieving differently. We do have to be careful making generalisations, and listen carefully to the individual, because the next man I face may not react like a typical male, or the next woman I meet may not react like a typical female.

However there does seem to be a style of grieving that is commonly found with males, and a style of grieving that is commonly shown by women. Perhaps as a result of their socialised roles in the community.

Martin and Doka (2000) attempted to take the male female out of this, because nowadays the boundaries between typical “male” reactions and “female” reactions are becoming more blurred. They placed grieving styles on a continuum, and said that up one end (which they labelled “Intuitive”) were people who focussed on feelings and tended to seek others to talk these feelings out with. Most women are down this end.

At the other end of the continuum was a style of grieving they labelled “Instrumental”. People down this end tended to be more issue-oriented or problem-solving (How can we keep the money coming in?), more active (Went running when the pressure became too strong). Most men tended to be down towards this end.

(SLIDE 2)

A study by Schut et al (1997) recorded in Parkes (2000) carried out some research on about 170 (I think) bereaved people. Half male; half female. These people were randomly assigned to 3 different support groups:

(x) An emotion focussed group (feelings based)
(y) A problem solving group (cognitive based)
(z) A “no intervention” control group (actually a waiting list)

They found:
(i) The counselled groups (x and y) did better than the control group (z).
(ii) Men responded better to the emotion-focussed group
(iii) Women responded better to the problem-focussed group

Yet given a choice, men would have chosen (y); women would have chosen (x)!

These results are interpreted as indicating that in the long run each bereaved person (no matter what their gender or most comfortable grieving style) must ultimately come to terms with both the emotional impact (feelings), and the multiple issues (tackled cognitively – head stuff) that surround a significant loss.

Back to my story
I don’t now when it started, or how it grew, but I do realise now that sometime during that second year after Matt died, I began a serious search to try and find out, and understand, more about suicide and grieving people. A very strong desire to understand:
• Why people took their own lives
• How people went about rebuilding their shattered lives, and linked to this,
• How best to support those left behind.

Starting instinctively, this search became increasingly conscious. Like a fairly typical male, I essentially worked from the head, with ideas and issues, and along the way I began to formalise my search, and picked up a Masters, and then a Doctorate, with research in the area of loss and grief, and a particular focus on suicide.

And I have just finished working with a colleague, Dr Trevor Batrouney, on an extensive two-year research project for TCF, on the financial costs to families and the impact on family relationships, when a child dies, by any means. The report from this research, which involved contacting 103 bereaved families, will be launched by the Victorian Governor (Prof David de Kretzer) in early August this year (2007).

I will talk more in a minute about the powerful unstoppable inner thrust that took me on what has turned out to be a very interesting and rewarding journey.

As I mentioned earlier, in that first year Sue joined TCF, then about a year or so later I followed her, I think because I was more ready then to share and explore with others who were bereaved by suicide.

But that move became a very significant step for me, as it had for Sue. In the beginning I gained a lot of reassuring support from other TCF members. Then with time I found myself using my background in education and counselling to support others, as I had been supported, and to add to the effectiveness of TCF support programs.

Amongst other things Sue and I have run the BBSS group for close to 15 years, we have set up programs and have trained all the TCF group leaders across Victoria, and we are supervisors to the volunteer telephone counsellors. The fact that support group leaders are all trained gives us a great deal of satisfaction. We now know that people attending the support groups will enter a safe environment, run by people who know what they are doing.

Most of my research data over the years has come from my contacts with the wonderful members of TCF. They have so openly and trustingly let me into their lives, and shared their pain and the issues they have faced on their difficult road back to some sort of normality. Some of this I am sharing with you today.

Neimeyer and Anderson (2001) have said there were 3 major tasks of grief:
1. To understand the loss experience
2. To create some value in the experience
3. To build a new self

Certainly my work at TCF, and my other involvements in the area of loss and grief and trauma, has a lot to do with giving some useful meaning to Matt’s death – to what seems such a wasteful meaningless event.

The Impact – Issues, Research and Guidelines for Support
That gives you some small idea of the impact of Matt’s death on me, and some indication of the different ways Sue and I handled our grief. And the wonder of it all is that we are able to work so well together.

As for our two daughters. Our elder daughter was 19 at the time. Her pattern of grieving was much the same as Sue, in that she had supportive friends and talked a lot to them, as well as to us. Our younger daughter, who was 13 at the time, has struggled, and is an example of someone who has had to work much harder, and for much longer, to create a clear life path. But she is getting there.

Let me leave that brief glimpse into our personal reactions since Matt died. I would now like to share with you a little more about what I have learnt and understand about loss and grief and trauma, and specifically what I have learnt about supporting bereaved families:

First I would like to talk about traumatic bereavement. This means talking about the difference between grief and trauma. Our latest understanding suggests they are two different processes.

I will start by saying that it seems there is within each of us is an automatic instinctive drive, a pressure, to explore and understand any new experience – including the death of a loved one. It is probably a part of the human survival instinct. We all have this drive, and it cannot be avoided.

So when someone close dies we are impelled by this internal force to think about, to feel, to talk about that loss; to walk around it, to analyse and understand it, and eventually to build a store of memories to carry forward as part of a new life.

It seems that this drive is designed to help us eventually get some sort of balanced perspective on our loss, and move on with our lives, and as I have intimated, there certainly was within me, once I’d come out of my initial frozen state, a strong drive to understand, to question and to explore the boundaries of Matt’s death.

That’s the positive forward grief thrust. The problem arises, however, when there is a traumatic element to a loss, such as the horrendous images that are part of most suicide deaths.

When trauma is added to a loss, it seems, another, equally powerful, automatic, instinctive drive is activated. This drive seeks to protect us. It works to block out or deny the horrendous images associated with the loss experience.

In our case, for example, we live with images of Matt taking his life with a gun. For us this protective instinct was probably very necessary, because we could easily have been overwhelmed by a flood of frighteningly graphic images.

But clearly this defensive drive works against the drive to understand the experience. When the two drives come together, the protective drive acts to at least dampen the impact of the insistent drive to understand, and at its strongest can completely block the drive trying to move us forward, and you have probably already worked out some of the implications of such a clash of drives:

(A) First of all, in working with the traumatically bereaved, we can expect the grieving process to take much longer. We can expect many stops and starts, and even regressions. We can expect long periods of silence, people losing track of what they are saying, or repeating themselves.

To a large extent this slower rate of recovery is out of their control. The potential for destructive flooding by terrible graphic images calls out for strong defences.

(B) Secondly, we now recognise that it takes a lot of physical and psychological energy to block the drive attempting to make sense of our experiences, and blank out terrible images and memories, even for a time. So it is not surprising that many traumatically bereaved people get sick or have serious breakdowns. Their protective immune systems become drained.

Which means, of course, that in supporting family, friends or colleagues who have experienced a traumatic experience, we should encourage them to talk about the details of their loss, otherwise they are open to physical or psychological illness.

BUT it also suggests that we need to be very gentle, very careful, and allow them to work slowly and carefully past their instinctive need to protect themselves.

This also suggests guidelines for the best atmosphere that we as helpers might generate to assist them. This suggests it should be one that encourages quiet reflection, with lots of non-judgemental, not too challenging empathic listening. An atmosphere that gives the message that it is OK to work slowly and carefully and self-protectively.

I should add that research has, in fact, shown that such a quietly accepting, gently empathic atmosphere actually speeds up the grief recovery process. People feel secure enough to take risks and move beyond their protective barriers.

(C) Another implication of the clash of drives, and the slower coming to terms with a traumatic loss, is that for most traumatically bereaved people, the pressure and need to talk about details of their loss will come later, and increase with time – as they slowly come to terms with the worst images in their loss.

The families we contacted in our recent TCF research project supported this. Early on they just wanted to talk generally about their loss. It was weeks, months and even for some, years, before they sought to walk around details in trying to understand their experiences. Then there was a strong need to specifically talk about their dead child and what had happened.

This later emergence of the strong need to talk, makes sense of the confusion, anger and feeling of abandonment many traumatically bereaved people feel when people stop calling after 2, 3, or 4 weeks. Or if they do call in, they can’t handle the bereaved person’s strengthening need to talk, and change the subject, or tell them it is time to move on, to stop talking about their loss. Lots of anger, confusion and hurt.

(2) Now let me briefly talk a little more about the uniqueness of each person’s grief path.
The thing I want to mention is that usually in the early days following a death the family comes close together, supporting and nurturing each other. After a time, however, each family member begins to move off on their own grief path, and many parents in particular get quite freaked out by this. They see the family disintegrating.

We can help families here, by pointing out that this is normal. That each family member is uniquely different, and it is to be expected that each will grieve differently.

AND we can reassure them that for most normal families, family harmony and security will return – especially if each member is allowed to grieve in their own way.

(3) I’d like now to take a little further the finding from my recent research that I touched on before, about the support needs of the bereaved early after the death, and their needs further down the track. Our research looked at needs just after the death, and then three years later.

Our families told us that the sort of support they needed early on was different to that they needed later. In the early days and weeks, it was practical help that was needed, and just general stuff about grief and grieving, such as that each family member will grieve differently, and perhaps discussing the difference between men and women’s grieving styles. Talking about the specifics of their loss only built up slowly (for most).

The practical help they needed was such things as answering the phone, cooking meals, shopping, gardening, because especially early on their energy was low, their minds were a blank, their motivation to do anything was near zero.

In relation to these early days, and the giving of practical help, it is helpful to remember that one of the goals of recovery is regaining control and personal independence. So if you are helping a family, try to move quickly from doing things for people to doing things with them. For example “from “I see you are out of milk. I’ll get some” to “I see you are out of milk. Let’s go down the street and get some”. Support their return to independent control.

Back to the research data. Later – weeks, months later – as we have already mentioned, our families indicated a growing need to be listened to more specifically about their loss; a pressure to go over and over their story again and again. The help then, as we said before, is patient long-term non-judgemental listening.

(4) Another thing I have learnt, is that returning to work as soon as possible is very important. It’s part of returning to “normality” and security and independence.

Encourage this, but also try to help bereaved people avoid setting themselves up for failure.

The early days after they return will be very difficult for most. They commonly fear not having control of their emotions, many feel they are being pitied, many suicide-bereaved in particular feel that people will be judging them for not preventing the suicide, for being poor parents or brothers or sisters or partners or friends.

If you are supporting them, it is often helpful to assist them by preparing the ground for their return to work. Contact employers or colleagues, explain what happened, answer any questions, and give some guidelines on how best to support them. Workmates in particular appreciate this.

There may also be a need to negotiate short spells to start with, and less demanding work for a time. AND it might help to explain to employers that research has shown that the more carefully re-entry is managed; the faster they will return to full productiveness. But also explain that there will be regression days – bad days.

(5) Now, just a few brief comments on the grief of adults VS adolescents VS children: Firstly, they all experience the same intensity of grief; but adults tend to stay with the intensity longer; children in short bursts.

Young children will look to the adults around them for a model on how they should grieve. Which means keeping children in the loop on everything that is happening, why you are reacting as you are, discussing and sharing family decisions with them. This way the confusion they have about feelings, thoughts and images etc will be lessened, and they will less often have nightmares, or throw tantrums, which are usually just frightening feelings being let out.

Adolescents also tend to look to the adults around them to work out how they should grieve, but they will often also challenge what they observe as part of their movement into adulthood. They also need to be keep in the information sharing loop.

Adolescents also often tend to jump to anger in frustration because they cannot understand or control the intensity of their feelings. Anger gives them some short term control.

(6) One final comment for family members, extended family members, and friends, in particular. Grieving people often have high usually unrealistic expectations about the support they expect from those around them.

If you have a suicide-bereaved family member or friend or colleague, who you would like to support, but feel out of your depth, or you may be grieving yourself, then please don’t be afraid to tell them that you don’t feel able or capable of giving them the support they need.

BUT – and it is a very important BUT – do tell them that you will help them find someone more qualified to support them, AND stick around to give them that just as vital caring presence.

What I want to make clear is that you have a right to say “I don’t feel able or capable”, because the ability to support is built on many things – experience, training, personal confidence and fears. AND you probably also have a responsibility to say “I don’t feel able or capable”. You could do damage to the other person, or at least damage your relationship with them.

In our experience, the grieving person will appreciate your honesty, providing you don’t abandon them!

AND of course, do not underestimate the incredible helping power of the caring presence.

Concluding comments
The impact of suicide on families and those around them is immense. I once worked out that if each one of the 2,100 odd suicide deaths in Australia (2005) significantly affected 50 people – and this is a conservative estimate in my experience – and assuming it takes up to 5 years to essentially recover, then right now across Australia about 500,000+ people are affected, to a lesser or greater extent.

This is more than the population of Tasmania (490,000 - 2007)

Or this equates to roughly the populations of Greater Geelong + Greater Bendigo + Greater Ballarat + Greater Shepparton + Horsham + Swan Hill + Mildura + Wodonga.

Yes we certainly do need to understand more about the impact of suicide on the community.

Thank you for coming along. it gives me a great deal of pleasure to know that at the end of today, there will more people out there who understand a little more about this very complex and demanding human experience.

A keynote address delivered by Gary Tippet


Gary Tippet is a senior writer at the Age and Sunday Age, and a director of the Australasian arm of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma.

The Dart Center is a global network of journalists, journalism educators and health professionals dedicated to improving media coverage of trauma, conflict and tragedy. The Center also addresses the consequences of such coverage for those working in journalism.
I want to tell you a story about my first professional exposure to suicide. And I want to warn you that many of you will find it disturbing and perhaps even offensive.

I am not proud of it but I think it is important that you hear it.

In February 1972, I was 18 years old, a couple of months out of high school and beginning a cadetship at the now-defunct Sun News Pictorial in Melbourne. It was my first week at the paper and I had been sent for the day to watch police rounds at work.

It was a slow to no-news day at Russell Street so the police reporter suggested we drive up to the Sherbrook Forest where there was a search for a man who'd been missing for a week.

They found his body about the same time we arrived. He had committed suicide and while they waited for the coroners' people, the searchers and police sat and chatted, in a semi-circle metres from his body.

As the new kid -- and very much a kid -- I was allotted the spot nearest to the corpse -- a bit of fun to see if I'd puke or bolt.

He'd been dead a week. He was lying on his back, his head thrown back, mouth wide open in a silent scream from rictus and his hands like claws.

He'd poisoned himself and washed it down with a can of Courage Crest beer.

Then a photographer leaned across and grinned. "Hey, we can make a quid out of this," he said. "We'll stick the beer can in his hand and I'll get a photo and we've got a whole new ad campaign -- Courage Crest. When you're dying for a drink!"

For years I used the anecdote as an example of what a bunch of hard-nuts and what a hard-bitten profession I'd somehow stumbled into.

We laughed in the face of death.

It was a teenager's introduction to the black humor, deliberate bad taste and practised cynicism that so many journalists adopt when dealing with other people's trauma.

In 35 years, I've been as guilty of it as anybody, flaunting the thickness of my skin.

In our more reflective moments we tell each other it's a protective mechanism, like a shield to keep out the hurt. If you don't laugh, you cry or go crazy.

Or perhaps we'd say it's about objectivity. We're journalists, we don't get involved. We needed to stand apart from the things we were seeing so we can do our job properly. So we can tell the story.

And so we try to desensitise ourselves, hiding behind bad jokes or false bravado or simply choosing not to talk about our real feelings or emotions because our peers might see them as signs of weakness or a sort of unprofessionalism.

And in a sense there are good reasons even for bad habits. Those of us who deal with violence or tragedy on a regular basis often construct what's sometimes called "a needed and appropriate professional wall" between ourselves and the survivors or victims we interview.

But that wall can be a barrier to us as well.

That old approach to covering bad news can do more damage. Not only to the people we're interviewing, who are already suffering from what's now recognised as traumatic stress -- but in the long run to ourselves as well.

One of the worst jobs for a reporter is what a lot of young journos these day call the death knock.

I don't like that term: it sounds both flippant and and full of bravado. It's the police who have to knock on that door and tell a stranger they've lost a loved one – and we have no idea how that feels.

I've always called what we do intrusions because the word is both perfectly accurate and a reminder.

We're intruding, going in uninvited -- and sometimes unecessarily -- to intrude ourselves on people's private grief.

We need to be incredibly careful how we go about that task. It is an awesome responsibility.

Much of my work has been about trauma: murder, motor accidents, natural disaster, kidnappings, rapes. I have spent much of that time intruding on victims and survivors.

It did not take me long after that disrespectful initiation to come to the realisation that we need to treat such people with dignity, respect and empathy -- not only the way we would want to be treated in the same situation, but the way our better natures would want to treat those people.

Hasty, bad or thoughtless journalism can do further damage to someone already traumatised. Advocates for victims refer to a concept called "the second wound" -- the violence or violation journalists can inflict by not understanding or caring about this in their haste to beat the opposition or meet a deadline or through detachment or lack of empathy.

One of the determining factors we promote at the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma is that the interviewee should have a measure of control over the situation. In a phrase borrowed from medicine, the journalist should try to uphold the principle: "First, do no harm".

It would be nice to think that principle has become more dominant in the 35 years since I went to the Sherbrooke Forest. But at the beginning of this month I stumbled across a particularly egregious American example of how this is not always the case.

A couple of months ago John Winter, a popular television weatherman in Tampa Florida, killed himself. The local media covered the story extensively. He was a community celebrity, married, with a nice house in the suburbs and a Cadillac in the driveway.

His public persona offered no hint of private struggles. Why would a guy like this take his own life?

This month police released the records of their investigation. Before ending his life, Winter wrote a note, opened a Bible and placed a conference call to his wife and his best friend to tell them he was ashamed of something he had done -- he'd had an affair.

Now, suggested the US Poynter Institute, assume you're a newspaper editor. What's the headline? The competition, the Tampa Tribune, went with something pretty straightforward: "Before His Suicide, Winter Revealed Affair."

But in Tampa there is one of those free afternoon tabloids, the Tampa Bay Times or TBT -- similar to MX, the News Ltd giveaway for commuters in Melbourne.

It ran a large colour promotional photograph of the pleasant-faced personality on its front page, a headline superimposed in massive red letters across his chest. "HE DIED OF SHAME".

Predictably, it caused outrage. And to their credit much of that outrage was voiced by Tampa journalists and colleagues across the States.

The media critic of TBT's parent paper The St Petersburg Times is Eric Deggans. He wrote that what upset him most about the headline was "its adoption of a misconception that suicide prevention activists have been fighting for years: that a single incident can 'cause' suicide."

The Poynter website quoted Dr. Yeates Conwell, co-director of the US Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide, who analysed the headline this way: "He did something bad. He felt shame. He punished himself for it." -- That's such a simplistic linear interpretation, he said, that just doesn't display the complexity of suicide.

But, as someone who cares deeply about the craft of journalism, I think what most disturbed me most about the whole episode was the explanation given by TBT editor Neville Greene. "We have a clear mandate that we are out to find people, many of whom don't read newspapers, or are not in a daily newspaper reading habit. ... People who think the newspaper is boring."

So does that mean, in this age of apparent declining interest in traditional media, in this age of the short attention span, when the antics of Big Brother bogans are what our media unfriendly young people want to read and talk about, that we throw away our standards, sensitivity and ethics to win them over with titillation?

I know this is a little off-topic. But the sort of coverage that John Winter’s death got – and the hurt it inflicted on his family and friends and other families in similar situations – could become the norm.

And that would be like returning to the sort of attitudes on display in that little bush clearing in Sherbrooke forest. We need to be vigilant and loud in our desire that it does not happen.

But to return to the topic.

Suicide and our coverage of it is complex -- one of the most complex and problematic areas of journalism. How we cover it -- whether we cover it -- is agonised over constantly. I have to say I do not pretend to have any answers for you today.

The Age has a Code of Conduct and in Note 18 regarding professional practice, says: "The Age will not publish individual cases of suicide, unless issues of public safety or the wider public interest justify it.

"Care should be taken when reporting methods of suicide and, wherever possible, public information on where to gain help must accompany such reports."

We certainly meet the latter requirement. Our standard tag line to reports referring to a suicide or containing the suggestion of suicide, directs readers to beyondblue, Suicide Helpline Victoria or Lifeline on 131 114.

As for the first sentence, well it seems so simple and clear, doesn't it. But words were made to stumble over. For instance what constitutes "wider public interest"? The fact that the victim is a celebrity?

Suicide is a leading cause of death in Australia. Around 2100 of us die this way every year, a number far outweighing the rate of homicide.

But does media coverage reflect the extent of the problem? I would argue no. Generally suicides are not reported in the Australian media and when they are -- with some exceptions -- it is with circumspection and restraint.

I suggest this is partly out of a feeling that individual suicides are private business but particularly out of a fear of copycat events. There is an unwritten but often spoke rule in newsrooms that we avoid anything that could inspire a copycat.

Believe it or not, journalists are very aware of the potential effects of what we write. None of us wants to think that someone might kill themselves as a result of our story.

But there is an obvious problem with the softly, softly approach. If we are to gauge by what is in our media, suicide is rare. And we know it's not.

In fact suicide is a widespread and ongoing public health problem and the cause of immense heartache throughout our community. So suicide in the community is an issue that needs to be covered. It needs attention drawn to it -- not eyes averted.

But how? Foremost it needs to be addressed from the perspective of mental illness. In 2003 Cindi Deutschman-Ruiz, a public radio reporter in the US, wrote on the subject for the Poynter Institute.

She said: "To report on suicide without discussing the role of mental illness is like reporting on a tornado without mentioning the underlying weather conditions. Tornadoes don't jump out of nowhere and neither does suicide."

Yet the TBT chose to look at its weatherman without seeming to know which way the wind blows. It presented his tragedy as an event that came out of nowhere -- with the sudden precipitation of an affair -- and, let's admit it, also as eye-catching entertainment.

So among the lessons Deutschman-Ruiz encouraged the media to keep in mind when covering this issue are:

That suicide is never the result of a single incident -- too often we cover the weatherman's shame, the bad review a noted French chef received, but squander the opportunity to talk about, say, depression and it's potential role in suicide.

That details of method or location may lead to copycat suicides. This is a tough one for me. I am a harvester of detail for my stories. I hoover it up and pour it into my notebook and from there into my stories. But I would never want to provide someone contemplating suicide with the inspiration or method of how it can be achieved.

We need to approach statistics and mental health information more rigorously. And to be incredibly careful how we interpret them.

And we should look at journalism about suicide as an opportunity to inform the public and hopefully by doing so to save precious lives.

In 2004, Phillip Dawdy, a journalist with the Seattle Weekly, wrote a long, impassioned piece about the suicide of another celebrity, a local radio host. It was titled One Suicide Too Many and it was provocative and angry and moving. It was the polar opposite of the TBT yarn.

I just want to leave you with a few excerpts from his story:

"We largely accept suicide as the ultimate act of the mentally ill. Bag and tag the corpse and leave it at that. It is, after all, one of the worst social taboos, the act you don't want playing out in your family or circle of friends. How can we boldly discuss, much less stop, this nasty business that claims tens of thousands of lives a year, given a backdrop of societal paranoia and blindness?

"Suicide is a full-blown public-health problem, but if public spending is any indication, society has responded with a yawn, if not outright contempt.

"We have our heads in the sand, and our silence is criminal. We have contempt for the desperate, lonely, sick people who take their own lives and those who, like me, trudge through life assaulted by suicidal thoughts.

"…People don't want to hear about suicide. It's an inexplicable tragedy and social taboo rolled into one. It's emotionally messy. And it is tough to make sense of it. "Catholics and other Christians later renewed the act's place as the greatest of crimes against God: You thwarted his design. As a sign of society's opprobrium, a suicide's body was buried away from consecrated grounds, and his or her soul got a one-way ticket to hell."

That’s an interesting point, isn’t it? I wonder: Does the media do the same sort of thing?

"…Why are so many so scared to state the obvious?

"Well, f... this silence. Someone has to speak the plain truth: Accepting suicide is wrong. And that's precisely what societal silence amounts to -- acceptance.

"I can't say whether a society that regards suicide as a problem to be solved rather than one to be hidden could have saved Cynthia Doyon (the woman he wrote about) -- or whether it would help people like me. But it wouldn't hurt to try."

Did you get the hint in that last sentence? Dawdy admits through the story that he has lived for many years with terrifying thoughts of suicide. He is what he calls an ideator.

It seems to me he is exactly the sort of person we should be listening to on this painful but important subject. And learning from.