Another perspective of an explanation I gave in rebuttal to a professional that attacked the post of a friend I shared... Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The state of mind a person comes to when they venture into thinking about acting on suicide is known as as a crisis, and suicide hotlines are manned by paraprofessional crisis intervention counselors that take calls, probe the caller, offers empathy, assess the risk, responds with emergency services if necessary, provides resources, and attempts to help the person through that crisis state of mind... which is temporary. Yes, depression can go on for years, decades, and is often complicated by self-medication which often becomes the presenting issue, and is used to cover the core issue causing the depression, things we were trained to look for. Mental illness can be a long term problem, however that crisis state of mind is always temporary. I speak not only as a former intervention counselor with over 400 hours on hotlines, but as someone who suffered from depression for over 20 years, and came to that point in thinking where I no longer saw a point to anything... getting out of bed... eating... nothing. At that time, if I didnt have to walk Beatrice Raymond... I wouldnt have gotten out of bed, and if I didnt have to feed her... I wouldnt have eaten anything myself. I just happened to have an appointment with a therapist on that day of crisis... and as I sat holding Beatrice in my lap... he told me about the movie Papillon and how they trained servicemen in case they were taken as POWs. In the movie Papillon when Steve McQueens character is thrown into solitary confinement, pitch dark... no light ever... he found a pebble, and threw the pebble, then went and hunted for the pebble until he found it, then would celebrate finding the pebble, then again throw it away only to go hunt it down again and once more celebrate finding it, repeating that over and over. What was the point of the exercise? The point... was to have point... a purpose... something beyond the crisis you were in at the time. Then the therapist just sat and stared at Beatrice in my lap... and from that moment on she became my pebble. A few days later, in a meeting with my case manager, I was explaining the difficulty of trying to find a place to move with a dog and a cat. He said, Why dont you make Beatrice a Service Dog? I said, What the hell is a Service Dog? He explained it to me... and I was on a mission. I read everything and anything I could, researched everything, read books on training, Beatrice and I started training 3 times a day for at least 2 hours a session, practicing everything a Service Dog needed to know to pass a public access test, and learning tasks that would improve my quality of life. Two of my doctors agreed to prescribe service animals to assist me, and I signed for a school to get my certification as a trainer, which Beatrice and I went through together. It started a whole new life for me. After Beatrice passed away over 3 years ago, I was devastated, as that puppy had saved my life so many times in so many ways, and in her infinite wisdom, made me promise to get another puppy, keep training dogs and helping people who needed Service Dogs. After 5 days in bed crying and sedated, I got a poke... Time for you to keep your promise. So I got up, cleaned myself up, and headed out to find candidates at 6 different shelters. The first one I walked into, and the first kennel I walked up to, 5 little dogs ran to door barking, and this one little wiry Chihuahua scooted in front of them all, and sat quietly with her right paw lifted. I had to see her, but she had just come int hat day, was on a 5 day quarantine, and could not be seen until Friday. So I continued on through all 6 shelters picking candidates, but I didnt want to test any dogs until I tested that first dog. So back to bed I went until Friday, when I was standing at the door of the kennel at 8 am telling the game warden I needed to test that puppy as she was a candidate to be a Service Dog. I put her through a personality/aptitude test for a 3 month old puppy that she passed with perfect center-line responses, as she did a test for a 1 year old, and 2 year old. The game warden had never seen anything like that before, came back with the supervisor who told me that she was only 3 months old, could not be fixed until 4 months old, and by law is not suppose to be released, however if I agreed to sign a statement that I would bring her back to be fixed when she turned 4 months, they felt she would be better off spending the next 30 days with me training, rather than taking up space in the shelter... and so I took my new pebble... who accompanied me through 9 months of intense out-patient therapy that eventually ended my decades long depression and I finally was able to stop taking antidepressants. Caylee-Beatrice is one of the many tools I use to manage my health. When I feel like my mind is drifting into a mood that isnt healthy, I grab the flirt-pole to go outside with Caylee-Beatrice, who makes me laugh so hard... it gets the positive brain chemistry flowing. Follow that up with some puppy cuddles and petting, which also stimulate the positive brain chemistry, watch some funny You-Tube videos, listen to great music and dance... always remembering... crisis states of mind are always temporary... and it is NEVER a bad thing to reach out in times of crisis. I agree with Peter Coyote... if Robin Williams could pass on any message, other than vast legacy of work he left us with... he would beg us to pay attention if he could.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:36:07 +0000
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