MS. ROGGEMAN: According to the CDC for our area, the 24-
to-34 age range has the highest completion rate attempt vs.
completion.
MS. ELMENDORF: In the U.S., men are three times more
likely to accomplish suicide than women.
MS. SHIN: I remember reading that women, before they at-tempt
to do it, also advertise in a way that people pick it up.
Men do not.
DR. BENNETT: Men advertise it differently. They tend to be
angrier; they tend to have more erratic behavior.
MS. BRENNERMAN: Women also are more likely to talk with
someone. Men don’t really do that.
MR. COOPER: A lot of times the men manage the finances, and
they get in trouble and they’re ashamed to admit a failure. Or
their business gets away from them and they see with a sick
mind, ‘My way to solve this for my family is to take my life and
they’ll get the insurance and it can bail them out.’ A high per-centage
of men allow their jobs and their financial situation to
define who they are. And it’s a lie.
MS. BRADFORD My brother had a complicated set of per-ceived
failures.
MS. ELMENDORF: That was the story with my husband. He
felt like he was worth more dead than alive. He did what I
call the farewell tour. He went to see all of his family mem-bers
and wrote a very long letter to me with instructions on
how to handle the finances and what to tell the children. I
had been married to this man for 21 years and I never saw
it. But he did not mean for me to see it, he hid it from me.
It wasn’t just the business failure. The glass of water doesn’t
overflow with the last drop, it’s every consecutive drop that
fills that glass and made that glass overflow. The last criti-cal
factor was losing the company. That made him feel so
unworthy.
MS. BRADFORD: And hopeless.
MS. LANE: My dad took his life on a Monday. He had written
in his planner to take Louise to lunch next week; take Louise
and husband and Mom to dinner the next weekend. So it was
kind of planning double lives. Like if I wake up tomorrow
and I feel better then, you know, we’re going.
MS. BRADFORD: My brother, his was all planned out. He
visited with his friends. Can you imagine what they felt
like, that they didn’t see? The guilt just splattered. It was
almost like a concentric rain out into the community. The
stigma was so deep that at the funeral they pretended like it
hadn’t happened, almost like he’d been in a car accident or
something.
MS. ELMENDORF: It doesn’t have to be a dysfunctional family.
We can be a happy family, but sometimes the mental health
issues are there.
MS. SHIN: Has there been a study in mapping out the genetics
of depression, so you would know if you are at risk or not?
Obviously if there has been a suicide in the family, you are at
risk.
MS. BRADFORD: Absolutely. When my brother took his life,
my husband took a job where he was gone for three weeks at
a time. So there I was alone in my grief. Just because you’re
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