I am grateful for Sean Wellington, and for his podcast, Suicide Noted. He’s working to change the conversation.

For many years, I have worked to reduce the stigma of mental illness. I talk about my own struggles with depression openly, I refer to mental illness in sermons at my church, and I even wrote a book all about it. It’s important to me that we learn how to talk about mental illness better, and that we become more comfortable talking about it at all. Because mental illness is real, and it’s not a moral failure. Hiding it or being ashamed of it doesn’t help anyone at all. It just makes it worse.

But as open as I am about mental illness, and about my own depression, there’s one stigma that I still maintain, one aspect of my illness that I am very cautious about: suicide.

I’ll talk about it in the abstract. And I’ll discuss the suicide attempts I made when I was a teenager. But to discuss my current relationship with suicide, to clarify if I’ve had any attempts in the last thirty years…well, I’m more cagey. And if I do bring it up, I immediately frame it with warning labels like, “DON’T WORRY. I’M NOT SUICIDAL” and so forth. I’m just not sure if it’s wise to talk openly. Depends on the context. Depends on the person. Depends, depends, depends…

It’s hard to talk about it. People are scared to talk about suicide, even more than about mental illness. People who consider suicide are scared to bring it up. And other people are scared to bring it up with them.

It really would help if we could just talk about it more. It would help a lot of people.

And that’s why I’m grateful for Sean Wellington. He has hosted the podcast “Suicide Noted” for six years. Sean interviews suicide attempt survivors and suicide ideators. (By “attempt survivors,” he’s referring to people who have attempted suicide but are still alive, not the survivors left behind when someone completes suicide. And “ideators” means people who think about suicide, consider it, whether or not they ever go through with it.)

Every episode, at least weekly, consists of an interview between Sean and one of these people. And he doesn’t hold back. He asks tough questions. He gets right into it. And it is refreshing to me. It’s refreshing to hear people talk about suicide openly, not delicately. It’s refreshing to hear people talk about suicide without focusing solely on prevention. Suicide Noted is a safe place to talk about what’s really going on in our heads, not just trying to stop people from doing something we don’t understand.

Sean’s stated goal is to help people feel “a little less shitty and a little less alone.” I’m so grateful he’s out there doing this work. I encourage you to check out his podcast if it sounds interesting to you. I’ll have some more to say about this in the future. And of course I’ll let you know when his interview with me drops later this year!

Featured image by Gian Reichmuth on Unsplash