Suicide Is [Not] Painless: I Can['t] Take or Leave It, If I Please

• Author: Joseph P. Beckman

Published in Litigation News Volume 47, Number 1, Fall 2021. © 2021 by the Ameri can Bar Association. Re produced with per mission. All rights re served. This info rmation or any porti on thereof may not be c opied or disseminated in any f orm or

by any means or stored in an el ectronic database or r etrieval system w ithout the expre ss written cons ent of the American Bar A ssociation.

MENTAL HEALTH & WELLNESS

By Joseph P. Beckman, Litigation N ews Associate Editor

“Suicide Is [Not] Painless: I Can[’t]

Take or Leave It, If I Please”

* Relative (2 blood , 2 marriage)

** I was the last to see S cott alive.

Shortly b efore I started w riting this a rticle, I received

a phone call. The ca ller delivered a message I have

received, in my view, way too many ti mes in my six

decades on this mor tal coil. Someone I knew had

died by his own hand .

The list above includes (in order of appe arance) a radio “Quiz

Kid,” a high school junior, a 50 -year-old Vietnam vet with a

high school degr ee, a jewelry store owner with four sons u nder

age 16, a 30-year-old i nvestment banker and Triple Nine Societ y

member, a former Motorola engin eer with four patents to his

name, a high s chool junior who made an impulsive decision, and

an Eagle Scout (at the ti me a college student). Sadly, and most

recently, I learned of the deat h of a mid-20s accountant.

The accountant was a n older brother of a young man who

was a classmate and hoops a nd baseball teammate of my

younger son. Another cl ass-/teammate took his ow n life in 2013.

This is my son’s fth t rip down this road between ages

6 and 23. He has also m ade that trip with t wo uncle s and a

fellow Eagle Scout f rom his troop. Jack, who is ty pically an

emotionally tacit urn young man, asked his mother, “W hy

does this keep happe ning?”

The Tenth Leading Cause o f Death in America

All nine pe ople I know who exited life th is way were males.

That Y chromosome ma kes me roughly four times more

likely to die by my own hand t han my partner is to die

by hers. (According to Ce nters for Disease Cont rol and

Prevention (CDC) data, however, women at tempt suicide two

to three time s as often as men.)

Surprising ly, lawyers are s tatistical ly less l ikely than aver-

age to die this way. As a profession, we come i n at 11th place

behind corporate exe cutives and just above doctors. Women

lawyers, however, are slig htly above average compared with

the overall rate for female su icide, whereas male lawyers are

just under 60 percent of the average.

In 2019, the CDC reporte d that “12 million A merican

adults seriously t hought about suicide, 3.5 mil lion planned a

suicide attempt, a nd 1.4 million attempted s uicide.” That is 1

out of every 100 people living i n the United States.

The Unanswerable Question: Why?

While death not ices in the 1970s and 1980s rarely mentioned

suicide, people kne w. Despite that , it was bar ely a topic for

“whispered conversation s,” and it cert ainly was not suitable

for polite ones. Perhaps it was a fu nction of the stoicism of

© Getty Image s

7/19/ 21

5/11/15

3/7/13

10/15/ 10*

9/11 /0 4*

12/ 16/ 03*

1/12/00**

9/12/80

4/5/ 76*

32 | SECTION OF LITIGATION