party pic

I was looking for pictures of my friend and don't seem to have any scanned in to the computer, but I did come across one which was taken to 'advertise' our party - it's me pretending to throw myself onto a knife out a window. There's so much talk in the media these days about the prevalence  of suicide, but back then (late 70s) it appears that we could more innocently make fun of it...

... thouogh of course there wasn't any 'innocence' as we were all quite aware (talked about it endlessly, in fact) of the hurt and violence at the heart of many nuclear families.

Comments

[Mikhela]

Not including clients, I have known a couple of people who suicided, none close, although I did have a lover who took an overdose after our relationship broke up (she was fine though, and seems to have recovered from the loss of me quite well).

It is hard to put myself in the position where it is possible to contemplate suicide as a serious option.

I wonder how long suicide has been around? It seems to me that there is a lot of awareness raising about it at the moment, and an assumption that suicide rates are rising, but that historically suicide has simply been called something else (martyrdom, heroism).

I think there's something about there not being enough opportunities for risk-taking in our society...must stop now, this is turning into my own blog post.