Hello I want to die please fix me
Real talk about suicide and depression with Anna Mehler-Paperny's 2019 memoir
It’s March and book #3 of our Mental Health Reading Challenge. This subject matter is tough, so please take care reading. Or maybe skip this one today if this topic is hard for you.
When I told my boyfriend that I wanted to die, he hung up on me. I was seventeen and sitting in my basement, winding a phone cord round and round my fingers.
The second time I told the truth was many years later, to a public health nurse who was assigned to my postpartum case (worse luck to her). As she ran through the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale, a common screening tool, I answered “yes” to the final question about suicidal thoughts. There was no plan; I just didn’t want to be suffering anymore.
She freaked out, and I found myself trying to console her. “It’s okay…it’s not that serious! You can go home now!”
The lesson I learned from these experiences is that suicide is a no-fly zone with most people, even the professionals. It’s OK to say I’m sad, to say I’m struggling, to say I’m anxious; not OK to say I want to die.1
That could be why I clung to Anna Mehler Paperny’s book like an ironic life raft. She named it all, in great detail, which admittedly may alarm some readers—but not for those of us who know the truth.
“How do you talk about trying to die?” she asks, in the opening line of the book.
Anna begins by telling her own story: her life as a successful, award-winning journalist, her multiple suicide attempts, a diagnosis of major depression, involuntary and voluntary stays in a hospital psychiatric unit, and her “pill-popping parade.” It’s a highly detailed and gripping account of what it’s like to want to die, and the way that family, friends, the healthcare system, and society both supported and failed Anna at various points throughout her journey.
Next come the “fixes.” Each chapter is a search for answers, from therapy, pharmacology, electrical shock, deep brain stimulation, meditation, and psychedelics, to the different philosophical takes on the concept mental illness (i.e. is it a brain disease or is it something else?)
Later in the book we also get personal stories from people young and old; from those who have survived suicide attempts, and the loved ones left behind. Anna is keenly aware of the disparities in mental health care and charts the ways the system can fail some of us while others have the money and privilege to seek therapy, medication and other lifesaving procedures.
Most of the content was very familiar to me as I cover many of these topics in my own book. And I sympathized with Anna’s desperate search for answers—for a “fix.” We end our books in similar ways too, as she writes, “This is not a triumphant book. No one finds herself; no one is saved, although some remarkable people do incredible things.”
Those remarkable people are the experts she interviews throughout the narrative, drawing from research and groundbreaking work being done in the field of depression and suicide, while also acknowledging that depression has no “ice bucket challenge,” no yearly marathons, no shiny pink ribbons.
It still hurts people—emotionally, financially, and professionally—to admit to mental illness, even though we say that stigma is a thing of the past (at least it seems to be if you listen to celebrities tell-all and Bell’s “Let’s Talk Day” rhetoric). We want the shiny stories of success, not the ones where people lose their job and can’t get out of bed in the morning. Those, we’d prefer not to know about.
Anna would likely dismiss this idea, but I also think the “remarkable people” she names should include herself, as the person actively, effectively, seeking answers. She says she’s “torn on that front,” and writes, “I’m a journalist, not an advocate or an activist. But I can inform, I can document, I can explore, I can provoke, I can punch in the face with words.”
And this is precisely why the book is so powerful, because a punch in the face is what many people need. We need an inadequate system to become adequate, so that we don’t die, so that we find some shred of hope. But none of that will happen if we continue to turn our backs on people when they’re at their most vulnerable.
Finding a solution means confronting the full truth of depression and suicide, even if it leaves you feeling emotionally bruised.
“For a society that’s gone so far in so many civil and scientific arenas, there are some things we still do astonishingly badly. Treating the most debilitating chronic illness out there is one of them. So let’s fix this, goddammit, and move on the bitching about something else.”
If you are a Canadian in crisis or need someone to talk to, you can text or call the new suicide crisis helpline, 9-8-8.
Next month, we’ll be reading Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi
I am grateful to report that I have not felt this way for a long time.