The Value of Honesty
TW: Suicide
This week, I saw something I have never seen before: an obituary that honestly and openly deals with the fact that the deceased person ended their own life.
The obituary was for 25-year-old Cody (name changed for privacy), the son of two people who worked at my college. I had met him a couple of times; he seemed smart, kind, and passionate about the things he cared about. As his parents were helpful to me during my own tough times in college, I stayed in touch with them and was distressed to hear that Cody died by suicide last week.
It was a surprise to find this information out directly. As part of my job, I am responsible for reading and editing obituaries, and I’ve never seen one related to mental health where you don’t have to read between the lines. Usually, the obituary in question will have a relatively young age, won’t discuss the death at all, and will end with a request for donations to a mental health organization.
In contrast, when I read Cody’s obituary, I knew immediately what had happened - and not just from the statement his parents released to friends and family. I could tell from the fact that they said he died at home - and the fact that his parents mentioned multiple mental health diagnoses by name, including the one that caused Cody the most distress at the end of his life.
I’ve never seen someone openly acknowledge someone losing a battle to mental illness. I’ve seen a few memes on mental health advocacy Pinterest boards saying something like “we’re not ashamed when people die of cancer,” but in the real world, I’ve never actually seen a person’s loved ones be willing to share that their family member died by suicide.
In some cases, it’s embarrassment or a fear of religious repercussions - like not being able to bury the family member in a cemetery associated with a particular religion due to the cause of death. But ever since my own experience with suicidal thoughts years ago, I really felt the power of the stigma against mental illness when I was shunned and ostracized by everyone at school except for one friend who stuck by my side.
People treated me like I was insane for telling them how much pain my mental illness was causing me. One rabbi whose family I had been particularly close with distanced herself from me to an extreme, terrified that I would hurt her young children (who I had been babysitting since they were born - not to mention that I was never going to hurt myself or others).
When I saw Cody’s obituary, I was astonished to see that the disease that took his life was OCD. I have only met a few other people with OCD, and none of those people ever had a crisis like I did after my blood clot. People around me had a hard time understanding that I hadn’t snapped, lost my grip on reality, and turned into some kind of violent maniac - I was just me, overly scared of my own head for coming up with these thoughts as a solution to trauma flashbacks and round-the-clock panic attacks.
In addition to feeling seen in this way, I was glad that his parents shared about his interests and positive obsessions, the things that made him happy and how much love and care he shared during his life. I was glad to see that they hoped his life would be used as inspiration for other people living with mental illness and an impetus to treat these people - as the obituary says - with “compassion, gentleness, and love.”
I hope that Cody’s obituary might be able to help other people who are considering ending their lives, or ease the pain of people who have lost a loved one. When more people are willing to share honestly and openly about how mental illness has impacted them and their families, we as a society take an important step toward reducing and eventually eliminating the stigma of mental illness.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.