Like most of the world, I’ve spent way too much time online during COVID, scrolling through my feeds looking at funny memes.
One meme in particular popped up on my various social media channels. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s a woman, filtered to look like she’s from the 1800s, knitting a large noose as a “gift” to her husband. The tag line: After 2 weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf.
You know, so he can hang himself. Noose..……hanging…..suicide? Get it?
Funny, right?
Hardly.
I’ve also seen mothers across the country, stuck at home working and homeschooling their kids, posting comments such as: “Shoot. Me. Now. ” or “I’m seriously going to jump if these kids don’t go back to school.”
We seriously need to stop with the COVID suicide jokes. There is absolutely nothing funny about suicide.
The COVID lockdown has brought about myriad challenges including unemployment, social isolation, families cooped up together with no place to go, and uncertainty and stress on top of the fear of getting sick and dying.
According to a recent study by the CDC, elevated levels of adverse mental health conditions, substance use and suicide ideation were reported by adults in June 2020. 11% of those surveyed reported serious consideration of suicide.
In my private practice, I often work with families that are dealing with the death of a loved one from suicide. To label the grief from a suicide death as “complicated grief” is a gross understatement.
I’ve personally attended three funerals of people who took their lives in the last four years. The devastation left from a suicide is truly incomparable to other deaths. It’s haunting. As one mother said to me recently……”This wasn’t my choice at all to be in this life without my daughter. She made that choice for me.”
Think twice before making a “joke” about suicide. I love to laugh and have needed to desperately during this time, but let’s not ever make suicide the punch line.
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