I didn’t touch this awful tragedy when it first dropped a few of days ago. The announcement came from Naomi’s daughters, via the statement: “Today we sisters experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness.”
I can’t tell you how many texts/calls/dm’s I got w the questions: “What does that mean? Did she die by suicide?”
Those of us who live in this space knew what the sisters were likely getting at. When your mental health devolves to the point of mental illness & it’s announced that you died due to your mental illness, unless – the place where you were at, physically, at the time, you were put in harms way where an accident occurred, yes the likely explanation is suicide. But the sisters didn’t reveal that until late last nt in articles like this. And we have to respect the fam, when they choose not to disclose more details.
It’s sad we live in a society where the word suicide or the explanation of it as the cause of death, is avoided. It happens TO us. In fact, please read how eloquently Naomi herself explained this in an interview in 2018:
“People who (die by) suicide are experiencing problems with mood, impulse control and aggression, all of which involve discrete circuits in the brain that regulate these aspects of human experience, but we still don’t understand how these circuits go haywire in the brains of suicide victims.”
Circuits going haywire! Impulse error msgs. How sad that Naomi got “it” & yet still succumbed to this awful disease.
A person, who for YEARS knew she was susceptible to that affected brain circuitry, had the heads up, & still…we lost her this way. This should be THE example that we most often DON’T CHOOSE suicide. It an insidious malfunction due to stress & trauma over time (as young as little kids to as old as this poor woman in her mid 70s…& even older)…affect our circuitry.
THIS should be THE example that we shouldn’t shame ppl/fams affected by suicide. It happens TO us. The only chance we have to stem the tide is early education, & positive plans of action to have a fighting chance if the circuitry caused these impulses. Let’s talk about it.
