beautiful. Your writing takes my breath away.

It could be a phenonomena known as cluster suicides, that's why people are going to the other bridge.

According to Jamieson and Goodwin's latest, more people commit
suicide in Oct than any other month.

Maybe Eliot had it wrong.

Amen, Beckett belongs to us. It's what he's there for.

we used to have a saying in high school that "october kills." the weather goes overcast, the joy drains out of people, and if you're alone it really becomes rather crushing. i feel, i feel a lot for the people who lose hope. i feel anger about how poor the social services options are for those in a bad way, i feel sad for those who do unwise things, i feel in general.

i get more depressed than my usual low-grade thrum, i deal with my demons, but i have friends and family who will pick me up if it goes bad. i see a lot of beauty in a month which has meant a lot of ends to things in my life and people around me, and i know to mourn and to live.

i find great beauty in this blog, which WSB linked me to. thank you. and yeah, that Beckett quote is oh so perfect for the bad times. well, that, some ice cream, and a whole mess of buffy the vampire slayer. we all get by in our own way!

I needed to see that Beckett quote this morning when I woke up, and now it's in my pocket. You are right, read it twice, it's like armor.That is the bridge I drive where I have cried the most tears; it's the one I travel to visit my daughter. I've wanted to give up too. Don't.

Let himself unwind? Didn't get care? Why are you blaming the man who died? Why even bring the gun into it, if he didn't use it? Are you for decreasing stigma and prejudice and forced treatment or in favor of more prejudice and discrimination and forced treatment, I can't tell anymore.

Wow, waving a gun around begging for medication in a phrink's office before committing suicide. It's a true tragedy. I've lost a few friends to suicide over the years, 4 to be exact, and helped my ex-husband get through the suicide of one of his childhood friends. It's a true tragedy. Two were on psych meds at time of the death, the third one had never fully recovered from being sent to an adolescent behavior mod boot camp for smoking dope and the others, I don't know.
I wonder what this guy's story was? It seems like we live in a culture where docs are reluctant to give drugs to those that want them and eager to give them to those that don't.

I think we'd need to know the story, here's a guy so willing to take meds he's trying to use force to get them. Was he confused, delusional, or just terrifid and frustrated by a system that is often contradictory and confusing. Fear is the primary cause of psychosis, IMHO. Sad.

What kind of medication was he demanding?

I told someone about this story, and they wondered outloud why the person didn't use the gun, why jump from the bridge. There are no answers, but I imagine the doc, staff and people who were in the office were terrified, [from the gun] and to find out later he jumped and killed himself must be devastating.I'm in many different settings that could hold this scenerio, and honestly have wondered about weapons...not saying we shouldn't own them---but if someone has been having erratic behavior and it appears he was--get the damn gun and lock it up. I'm not anti-rights or anti-gun...but I've been in places that need metal detectors and weapons [such as knives]still walk in the door. You just never know what people are thinking when desperate, and I find this story bone-chilling due to driving that bridge daily, it's so damn sad.No, he didn't use the gun, but he could have, and instead he jumped off of a bridge to a horrible death, hitting hard ground.Im searched everytime I walk into the mental health Judge area--and I was thinking about this the other day with the gun topic--and well frankly, this might bother people, but I think the metal detector and search should happen at the entrance--sounds like I'm assuming people w mental illness are a threat. Not at all--but it's when someone becomes unraveled, that face it we need to protect them too. Because the man was waving a gun around you can bet the farm that he would have been shot dead by police if they got there to see him doing that. There is the tragic part that didn't happen. We would be talking about why police shot a gun-waving mental health patient.

Recently, I was extremely suicidal and was stumbling down the side of the highway, occasionally veering into traffic.

Then I had a thought which saved my life: If I died there, people might think it was an accident. That scared me. I walked to the Fire Department and turned myself in.

How many "accidents" are actually suicides? I wouldn't want my suicide to be mistaken for an accident. Perhaps that's what drives somebody to jump off a bridge. It's kind of hard to say it was an accident.

Not suicidal anymore, by the way. It's just a feeling, like any other, and it too will pass, if you let it. Hang in there and help will arrive. In my recent case, a bicyclist stopped and talked me down.

But if you give up and decide to jump, you'll have several long seconds to ponder whether you made the right decision. Most surviving bridge jumpers say they changed their minds on the way down.

My message to suicide ponderers: I've been there (waiting for my liver to fail and wondering if I was going to make the transplant list) and it's truly an awful feeling. Don't do it. Don't try it. Don't threaten it. Don't threaten to threaten it.

Francesca, I am glad that you are here.Stay.

If this individual would have used the gun in the office it would have been a huge story "crazy man shoots up mental health office". Instead the crazy man kills himself and hardly anyone notices. I guess the media doesn't really care that most MI patients would hurt themselves rather than hurting others.

Francesca, hang in there. Last year, when my heart was broken, I thought about it, anything to stop the hurt.

i got through it for two reasons, I had a friend who suicided and I couldn't do that to my best friend here, and the state I live in makes it impossible for anyone to get a gun.

I am so glad I stayed, Sometimes life bites, big times and I think about it, but when life is good, and I can read blogs like this and others hyperlinked here, and look at my cat, it is OK. Not what I wanted, but it's a good life nevertheless.

A speculation - This behavior, waving a gun around a doctor's office demanding drugs is not the behavior of a sick person trying to get well, it's the behavior of an addict desperate for more drugs, drugs the doctor probably got the guy hooked on. The guy had become dependant on the drugs and had to have more or couldn't live. He didn't want to hurt anyone or he would have used the gun, but the addiction was so strong living without the drug was more painful that living with it - a problem a lot of folks hooked on prescription psych drugs have, a problem the media and medical and psychological establishments claim does not exist.

I'd love to know what drug it was. It's interesting the national media doesn't pick this story up - the story of someone killed by a prohibitively expensive legal and sometimes legally mandated drug addiction, as they don't pick up the story of the woman whose child drowned becaue she was over drugged.

Me, too. I'm dying to know what the drug was. Naturally, the media isn't going to be interested in this story. It kind of flies in the face of the "image." Just like we'll never hear (in the mainstream media) about the guy who went on Prozac and attacked a gas station attendant with a crowbar. You know, that kind of crap just doesn't sell.

The bridges are 2 types-- one has no ability to park and jump,one has lots of room to park and jump. [making it easy].If the stats continue to increase at the one bridge, the ability to park needs to be removed.