By Kristen Rogers, CNN
When it comes to reducing stigma around suicide, not treating it as the elephant in the room is helpful, say mental health experts.
But it’s not just talking about it that matters, it’s also about what you say and how you say it — which is why some have moved away from saying “committed suicide” and other phrases that can have harmful consequences. Social stigma around suicide can amplify shame for people experiencing suicidality — which includes suicidal thoughts, plans and attempts — making seeking help or talking about it more difficult, said Urszula Klich, a clinical psychologist in Atlanta.
Stigmatizing language about suicide can also cement ideas that people who attempted or died by suicide, when compared with everyone else, are broken, disabled, less than or different in some way, experts said.
This “us and them” mindset can detract people from feeling empathy or being compassionate, fragmenting our ability to connect with others’ struggles and developing strategies that might help prevent suicides, Klich said — which is why experts have suggestions for ways you can discuss suicide without potentially worsening the problem.
Changing how we talk about suicide
Some of the earliest calls for changing how we talk about suicide began in the mid-2000s. Since then, studies have shown that academic publication of the word “commit” has decreased by about 20% since 2000 — but “it has not translated, really, to the general population,” Klich said.
Use of the word “committed” stems back to when suicide attempts were illegal in many countries. Suicide remains a crime in at least 23 countries, including the Bahamas, Nigeria and Bangladesh, according to the World Health Organization.
In addition to the phrase “committed suicide” implying criminality, it also “clearly has a moral judgment, and it might not reflect the situation,” said Dr. Jacek Debiec, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan.
Some other problematic words people use are “successful,” “failed” or completed, experts said. The first two are particularly harmful. “Successful” has connotations of a positive achievement, which taking one’s life is not.
Given these factors, to eliminate stigma and judgment, the preferred language “is ‘died by suicide,’ (like) ‘someone died of a heart attack or stroke,’” Baker said.
“Fatal suicide attempt,” “killed herself” or “took his own life” are other alternatives, experts said. And when referring to someone who didn’t die from a suicide attempt, acceptable shorthand ways to say that include “nonfatal suicide attempt” or simply “suicide attempt,” said Justin Baker, clinical psychologist.
Another commonly used, but misguided, phrase is that suicide is a “selfish act.” Characterizing suicide as “selfish” has derogatory connotations because it implies the person did it for a pleasurable reason, when in reality, people who attempt or die by suicide more often want to end their pain or see themselves as burdensome, clinical psychologist Michael Roeske told CNN in 2021.
Therefore, “nearsighted” may be a better term, he added, since “their focus becomes really limited down to what’s immediately in front of them and they’re not able to see the larger context of the history of their life, the relationships and the dimensionality of things.”
Overall, sticking to factual, nonjudgmental terms is best, Baker said.
