#Suicidal thoughts song quotes how to#

If we are going to talk about the details of one of my attempts, for example, it should be one of the times when I tried something that's very unlikely, like when I was a teenager and I tried taking my own life by laying down naked in the snow.

If we speak about details of how a person made an attempt, and those details are sort of easily replicable, then that can have the effect of actually causing people to go out and try to take their own lives in the manner described. On this question, happily, we have a large scientific literature on how this works. And it's kind of the realization of a dream for me.

So when you're writing your book, when you're doing public speaking, how do you think about what language to use so that you don't trigger people, but you do help them?ĬLANCY MARTIN: Thank you so much for having me on the show, Terry. On the other hand, we want to have an open conversation about it because that could be helpful. We always want to make sure that when we're talking about suicide, that we're avoiding any words or thoughts that might trigger other people.

#Suicidal thoughts song quotes how to#

I want you to help me think through how to handle this conversation. Quote, 'That is what chills your spine when you read an account of a suicide - not the frail corpse hanging from the window bars, but what happened inside that heart immediately before.' That quote is followed by this one from comic John Mulaney - 'When I'm alone, I realize I'm the person who tried to kill me.'Ĭlancy Martin, welcome to FRESH AIR. The first is by philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir. You can get a sense of the tone of his book by the two quotes he opens with. He's been a student of Buddhism since 2012. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and Ashoka University in New Delhi, India. He's translated works by Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Martin has thought about the meaning of life and death as the survivor of more than 10 suicide attempts and as the author of over a dozen books on philosophy. He also hopes to speak to people who have suicidal thoughts or may be considering an attempt and to the many people whose lives have been drastically changed because of the self-inflicted death of a loved one. He explains that he wrote this book especially for the people like him who have attempted suicide and who still struggle with the desire to kill themselves. He says he's lived most of his life with two incompatible ideas in his head - I wish I were dead, and I'm glad my suicides failed. 'How Not To Kill Yourself: A Portrait Of The Suicidal Mind' is the title of the new memoir by my guest Clancy Martin.