Scenes of Prison
Thinking outside the box
A New Understanding of Suicide
W hen I was in my twenties, I attended the University of Kansas and pursued a degree that would enable me to become a guidance counselor. In my classes, the subject of suicide occasionally came up, and one professor spoke emphatically about the importance of not raising the subject with despondent students we were counseling. He feared that we would plant an idea in a person’s mind and inadvertently trigger a sequence of events that would lead to the person’s death. We could trigger a tragedy.
When I became a caseworker in corrections, I attended new-hire training and once again encountered the topic of suicide. It is distressingly common in prisons, especially for those who are newly locked up. However, the direction I received in the Department training contradicted the position of my KU professor.
At the prison, if an inmate exhibits behaviors consistent with a person planning a suicide, then we should ask directly if he intends to kill himself. We are to raise the subject.
Prisoners are locked up, and they are carefully and frequently monitored. They don’t have guns, so any method of killing oneself would probably be detected. However, the frequency of successful suicides in locked facilities coaches caution, and receiving confirmation to suspicions that an inmate is indeed planning a suicide allows us to initiate actions we hope will make it quite impossible to carry out.
Five pointing is our most extreme measure to prevent suicide.
If we believe a person is in danger from himself, we can take control of him and protect him from himself. We can take all his clothes and place him in a bare room by himself with a suicide blanket for warmth. In extreme cases, when we believe an inmate is in imminent danger of harming himself, we can make it impossible for him to act. We do that by five-pointing him. We strap him down on a psych bed where he can’t even move his head.
Five-pointing isn’t used very often, and it doesn’t last very long. Inmates who are five-pointed experience it as very punishing, but as soon as they agree that they will not use a free arm to harm themselves, then that arm is freed. As soon as they agree to stop banging their head against solid objects like a table top, then their head is freed. And so it goes with the rest of their bodies.
Our experience has been that it is helpful to take control of an inmate, and then give self-control back to him as his will to live begins to overcome his desire to die. It protects inmates from self-harm. It works. We save lives with this approach. But why would such a punishing experience lead people away from suicide?
I was pondering these questions one day when I was working in C-Segregation at LCC. I had arrived at the Unit and found that an inmate was missing. Jerry had been in CU-3 for weeks, but now the room was empty. He was friendly and talkative and appeared to be cheerful when I had left the day before, but by nightfall, he had been five-pointed at the hospital. He had convinced our psych OD that he was an imminent threat to himself. With the jagged scars running up the inside of his arms and neck, it probably wasn’t hard to persuade him.
What had happened?
It was time for theory building.
To build a theory, you need to consider a set of facts and imagine fitting them together with an explanation of causes and predictions of events that will logically follow. I did that now with suicide. Here it is.
Suicide is a contagious mental disease. It infects through the communication of the idea of suicide, and everyone is infected with it. We also keep spreading this contagious disease by repeating the idea of suicide. I’m spreading it to you right now as you read this just as I might give you a cold. It is unique to humans.
The body has a natural immunity to suicide. I call this immunity the will to live. The will to live is very strong in nearly everyone, and it can be strengthened and weakened. Depriving someone and making them uncomfortable or putting them in danger strengthens it. I don’t know what might weaken it. I guess sad things like getting locked up or ending a relationship.
Occasionally, for some people, the will to live temporarily weakens, and when it does, symptoms of the suicide infections that everyone carries can emerge into a full-blown illness. It’s similar to when staff bacteria migrate from our skin surface to the inside of our bodies through a break in the skin or a weakened immune system. We always have staff bacteria on our skin, but when it gets a foothold inside, it makes you really sick, and it can kill you. We always have the suicide infection in our minds, too, but when the will to live weakens, the immune system weakens and the disease manifests itself, and it can kill you, too. When it appears, a person has feelings of hopelessness and episodes of suicidal ideation: thoughts, plans, and actions to carry through with a violent act which intends to end one’s own life. It’s a dangerous effect, so the contagious mental disease of suicide can be fatal.
Surviving the mental disease of suicide outside the prison in the community can depend upon knowledgeable people nearby who will act to prevent a suicidal act from occurring. A suicidal person must be in the right place at the right time. Furthermore, the people who respond must act to strengthen the natural will to live in a suicidal person. If they can’t do it themselves, then they must locate others who can and will. Many times, this is purely a matter of luck.
Discussion
- What do you think about this theory of suicide?
- What do you think about five-pointing?
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