The Desperation Point: SAD, the Holidays and Suicide

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• Currently there are slightly more than 300,00 suicides annually (83 suicides per day; or 1 suicide every 17 minutes), with 12 of every 100,000 Americans killing themselves.
  
  
• Suicides rates have traditionally decreased in times of wars and increased in times of economic crises.
  
  
• Suicide rates are the highest among the divorced and widowed and lowest among the married.
  
  
• Mental health diagnoses are generally associated with higher risk of suicide. Groups/diagnoses at particular risk are depressed, schizophrenics, alcoholics, and those with panic disorder.
  
  
• Feelings of hopelessness (e. g., "there are no solutions to my problem") are found to be more predictive of suicide risk that diagnoses of depression per se.

Statistics from Crisis Intervention

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Here I am again quickly approaching the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and I have drifted into my "normal" depressed funk as are many of my friends and aquaintenances. My early warning defense mechanism, that is automatically touched off by depressive feelings kicks into high gear and I immediately start analyzing the "how" and "whys" of my falling into that rather deep hole of depression that constantly awaits me.

It takes little time for me to discover that in large part, I am missing my Dad, who died on November 15, 1991. The "feelings" of free floating anxiety always proceeds my remembering that he died right before the holidays. I have no room in my concious memory, because I am to busy with the enormous amount of decisions and activities that must be attended to this time of year. My financial resources are so limited that I am in a state of financial depression all year.

After discovering the core reason for my morous temperment, I ask myself if I had unfinished greiving about my Dad's death? My feelings have changed every year since his death as to how I needed to remember him and what I needed to do to handle that I could no longer have his "real" tangible presence (the person there in their skin) to cling to in times of stress and to go to for guidance. It is hard to deal with the lost of a parent and difficult to learn how to parent yourself.

The only thing left for me this year, was to mark the tenth anniversary of his death, and to honor his memory. I have done that by placing an entry in my Online Journal. My message to him was short. I wanted him to know that a great grandchild (a boy) is soon to arrive.

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