I Think That For Thousands Of Years

Every Seventeen Minutes In America, Someone Commits Suicide. Mostly, I Have Been Impressed By How Little Value Our Society Puts On Saving The Lives Of Those Who Are In Such Despair As To Want To End Them. It Is A Societal Illusion That Suicide Is Rare. It Is Not.

In Some Cases, Some People Do Get Depressed In The Middle Of Their Grief And They Really Need To Be Treated For Depression.

The Awareness Of The Damage Done By Severe Mental Illness—to The Individual Himself And To Others—and Fears That It May Return Again Play A Decisive Role In Many Suicides

St. Andrews Provided A Gentle Forgetfulness Over The Preceding Painful Years Of My Life. It Remains A Haunting And Lovely Time To Me, A Marrow Experience. For One Who During Her Undergraduate Years Was Trying To Escape An Inexplicable Weariness And Despair, St. Andrews Was An Amulet Against All Manner Of Longing And Loss, A Year Of Gravely Held But Joyous Remembrances.

But Then Back On Lithium And Rotating On The Planet At The Same Pace As Everyone Else, You Find Your Credit Is Decimated, Your Mortification Complete: Mania Is Not A Luxury One Can Easily Afford. It Is Devastating To Have The Illness And Aggravating To Have To Pay For Medications, Blood Tests, And Psychotherapy. They, At Least, Are Partially Deductible. But Money Spent While Manic Doesn't Fit Into The Internal Revenue Service Concept Of Medical Expense Or Business Loss. So After Mania, When Most Depressed, You're Given Excellent Reason To Be Even More So.