My wife attempted suicide last night

[Anonymous]

First off, I am very sorry for what occurred last evening. I am particularly sorry that your son had to witness the whole thing. I am keeping my fingers crossed that he isn't affected too much by what happened. Hopefully this was an isolated incident and things can resume back to normal again very soon.

Your anger is completely understandable and normal in this situation.

One on hand, you are very grateful that your wife is okay and is going to survive. Thank goodness for that! However, on the other hand once the shock has gone away, you do have some residual anger at what she has put your family, esp. your son through. Many people go through this and it doesn't make you a bad person.

My best advice is to speak to someone who has experience w/this type of situation ASAP.

Perhaps the hospital where your wife was taken may have some counseling resources available for you to look into.

Sending good vibes out to your whole family OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so glad she survived, OP. I lost my brother to bipolar disorder by suicide, and my mother attempted suicide a number of times when I was a child. I am so glad you are there for your child, and I am so glad that you love your wife and want to support her. It is really okay to be angry, too, and scared and hurt.

Unless you have reason to believe otherwise, please do approach this from the perspective that she was not in her right mind when she made this "choice". I read some really nasty judgmental posts above, and I think it's important to look at this from the knowledge that her brain is very, very broken right now, and not able to function in a way that allows her to see rational options in front of her. Just like kidney disease prevents those organs from functioning correctly, her brain illness is preventing her from seeing how much she is loved and needed and wanted. There's a really good chance that somehow her sick brain convinced her that what she did was best for you. (I had a really close friend who attempted suicide when her girls were young, 100% convinced that she was doing the best thing to ensure their happiness and security. It was completely nuts, but a totally unselfish gesture from the point of her crazy brain.) What she chose, depending on what her brain was telling her, was not necessarily selfish or weak or cruel. She might honestly have thought she was doing you a favor.

It is SO frustrating and heartbreaking when we can't just logic someone or love someone out of a brain illness. But if you think of it as an organ failing, how could love and logic ever be enough? You can't love a person enough to cure their heart disease or convince a liver to work properly by telling it all the reasons why we love it and want it to work properly. She needs medical treatment, but we are sadly still very much in the dark ages when it comes to treating the brain. Please try to forgive her if her brain can't see how much you guys love her and how much she needs treatment, just as you'd forgive her breasts for getting cancer or her intestines for having colitis. She's not choosing this.

And please do take care of yourself. The scary thing is that all the love in the world may not save your wife. Your child desperately needs you to be healthy, to be emotionally available, and to be dependable. I'm rooting for you so much.

It sounds like you haven't been the primary caretaker of someone with mental illness. This is different than organ failure or heart disease.

The disease itself drives them to refuse treatment, actively rail against it, or grasp at their caretakers to "fix" them. But end of the day, OP, you need to realize the ONLY person who can really help your wife, who can really make her better, is herself. She has to do the work, she has to embrace the treatment; and lots of mental health treatment feels hokey and silly (which is partly why many very smart people with depression have such a difficult time with the therapies).

Your job is to love her, and tell her you want to be there with her to get better, and you have to just wait and see if she will make progress. But always be mindful that you can't cure her, and to look out for the well being of your child and yourself as she tackles her demons.

Compassion?

[Anonymous]

Op here. I just left her room a little while ago. She is breathing on her own, and was able to talk when I was there (they took out the ventilator when she woke up.) I just wanted to crawl into that bed with her and fix her. I've always been able to fix what was broken and now I can't fix the person who is the center of my whole world. There is no logical reason why she survived. This is her 3rd attempt in a year, her first attempt while under psychiatric care/drug regiment. My son, I think, will be ok. I lied to him to keep her secret. I have people who are listening, who are trying to understand, but I find I just tuned them out today. I am crumbling under the weight of this all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here. I just left her room a little while ago. She is breathing on her own, and was able to talk when I was there (they took out the ventilator when she woke up.) I just wanted to crawl into that bed with her and fix her. I've always been able to fix what was broken and now I can't fix the person who is the center of my whole world. There is no logical reason why she survived. This is her 3rd attempt in a year, her first attempt while under psychiatric care/drug regiment. My son, I think, will be ok. I lied to him to keep her secret. I have people who are listening, who are trying to understand, but I find I just tuned them out today. I am crumbling under the weight of this all.

we're here for you bro - though it might not sound like much. I think a lot about suicide often. This book really helped crystallize why I feel the way I do:

http://www.amazon.com/Why-People-Suicide-Thomas-Joiner/dp/0674025490

Joiner has written a lot about the subject and his work really helped me narrow down on exactly what's causing the way I feel so that I can mitigate and live for another day.

It might not be relevant to what you are going through but just wanted to post this

[Anonymous]

This is so fucked up, op. I'm really sorry. You seem like a great person.

[Anonymous]

OP, what do you think is triggering her deep depression?

[Anonymous]

You're angry because that was an incredibly selfish thing to do and she was abandoning you. You have a right to be angry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here. I just left her room a little while ago. She is breathing on her own, and was able to talk when I was there (they took out the ventilator when she woke up.) I just wanted to crawl into that bed with her and fix her. I've always been able to fix what was broken and now I can't fix the person who is the center of my whole world. There is no logical reason why she survived. This is her 3rd attempt in a year, her first attempt while under psychiatric care/drug regiment. My son, I think, will be ok. I lied to him to keep her secret. I have people who are listening, who are trying to understand, but I find I just tuned them out today. I am crumbling under the weight of this all.

Please, please, please. Get it out of your head that *you* can fix her. And you need to make her understand she has want to be better and do it herself. If she won't, don't let her destroy you and your son's life with her acts of violence. Because end of the day, suicide is an act of violence against oneself, and violence of any form is very dangerous for a developing child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everybody wants me to be strong for her and to be there for her and I'm so fucking scared. I'm scared for her, for me, for my 9yo son who saw her taken away by ambulance last night. 700 pills in 15 minutes. She wasn't expected to make it thru the night but she did. And I'm so, so grateful. I love her more than she can possibly ever know. I want to protect her from everyone, especially herself. So why am I so angry with her?

Because anger is a natural response. It's selfish to kill yourself and cause pain on the people that survive. And the loss of a loved one is a significant pain. I had a relative kill himself and we were all angry at first. His one son still is angry after 10 years. That said the amount of pain , anguish, despair the person who considers or commits suicide is dealing with must be immeasurable and unthinkable for the rest of us.
I say all this to say: it's ok to be angry. Just remember you love her. I hope this keeps better for you all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, what do you think is triggering her deep depression?

She is bipolar. And things had been going so well, she seemed really stable, until this.

[Anonymous]

Wow this is pretty wild stuff. OP no matter what they say she needs etc you have to realize one thing. there is only so much you can do.

I nootice din yoru two posts the same theme

"I just wanted to crawl into that bed with her and fix her. I've always been able to fix what was broken and now I can't fix the person who is the center of my whole world."

You have to give her the space she needs to recover and recovery is going to last her lifetime. You can;t fix it alone, you have to rely on others.

this might not be what you want to hear but it sounds like you try to fix everythign and she isn't able to cope with things that she might not want you to be involved with. You have to stop trying to "fix" or control things, ask her if this is oart of the issue.

Many times, including me, try to do that and I haev learned to step back and it is hard but find out if this is part of it.

Best of luck

[Anonymous]

The disease itself drives them to refuse treatment, actively rail against it, or grasp at their caretakers to "fix" them. But end of the day, OP, you need to realize the ONLY person who can really help your wife, who can really make her better, is herself. She has to do the work, she has to embrace the treatment; and lots of mental health treatment feels hokey and silly (which is partly why many very smart people with depression have such a difficult time with the therapies).

Your job is to love her, and tell her you want to be there with her to get better, and you have to just wait and see if she will make progress. But always be mindful that you can't cure her, and to look out for the well being of your child and yourself as she tackles her demons.

I'm the PP whose father and 2 brothers killed themselves. This PP is correct. You can't 'fix' her. You can't. You can be supportive but when it comes down to it nothing you do - or don't do - will make a difference. She has to decide how she wants to live her life. Yo have to accept that you can't prevent someone from killing herself if she's determined. While you're wracked with pain and guilt for her, she doesn't feel that way about you and your DS. She's consumed by her own pain. She's not capable of feeling what she's doing to you and your DS.

As much as I worry about you and your wife, I'm even more worried for your DS. You say this is the 3rd time in a year she's tried to kill herself and that she's been under psychiatric care/medication. How are you taking care of him? Is he seeing a counselor? You can lie to him but I guarantee he knows something is up AND living with a person who is depressed is soul crushing. As bad as you feel, he's feeling much much worse even if you don't see it. You can't do much to help your wife but you can do a lot for your DS - and he needs it right now. I'm sorry to say this but he needs to be your primary focus. There is a significantly higher risk for suicidal behavior among family members of suicide victims and attempters.

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/relationship-suicide-risk-family-history-suicide-and-psychiatric-disorders

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, what do you think is triggering her deep depression?

She is bipolar. And things had been going so well, she seemed really stable, until this.

Are you journalling symptoms? Until I started journaling, I found with my bipolar nowExDH that sometimes I thought things were going well, but I really wasn't connecting the dots on the subtle signs across time.

Medication is tricky. Had she recently been through a medication change? Are you sure she was taking meds? Is she on an anti-depressant along with a mood stabilizer? Sometimes an anti-depressant can be "activating" enough to drive suicidal thought in BP. This happens because the AD can increase mania and the associated irrational thought patterns or because the AD can lift the almost-catatonia like aspect to depression enough to enable the bipolar person to DO something about their depressed feelings.

Standard bipolar treatment is a proven mood stabilizer (usually lithium or depakote) closely monitored to ensure consistent blood levels in the effective range and also supplemented by sleep aids or anti-psychotics or anti-anxiolytics in order to provide extra control for these symptoms (although often a panoply of meds to address a variety of symptoms really means that the mood stabilizer itself isn't the right one or the proper dose.)

I really think some of the advice above re: she has to want to save herself is harsh and wrong. The dilemma of bipolar and other mental illnesses is that the brain is not rational and thus unable to make rational decisions about treatment choices. Even when stable for a long time on meds, many persons with bipolar and other mental illness decide that they don't need their meds and try to go off, usually with negative consequences. It is an open question whether this desire to go off meds is a "willful choice" that patients make due to the stigma of mental illness and/or the serious side effects of meds or whether the decision is rooted in an early phase of a decline in mental status, i.e. returning mania or depression despite medication (which happens). Ellen Saks speaks eloquently in her book and in public talks about coming to terms with permanent medication of her schizophrenia. Xavier Amador also writes very helpfully on how family members can facilitate treatment choices.

That said, in the early phase when a person is nowhere near stable on meds, it may take more involvement of the spouse or other family member in treatment choices. The scientific literature and best practices are clear that outcomes are best when families are involved in treatment. You should be meeting periodically with your wife's psychiatrist and therapist to understand her med regime and recommended social habit patterns (social habits like sleep, exercise, diet, interpersonal interaction and self-care are also proven to improve outcomes, see studies on IPSRT aka Interpersonal Social Rhythm Therapy) so that you can support it at home.

Yes, it's true that bipolar patients have to take responsibility for their own care, but, IME, this can only begin once the person is sees improvement from meds and is beginning to stabilize. It is only at that point that they are rational enough to reflect on aspects of their life that they can control that contribute to stability, what kind of help they need from family members and what kind of back up plans should be put in place.

OP, if this is her 3rd attempt, I have to ask -- does she have proper legal plans in place? A will? A power of attorney (POA) naming you as able to make medical decisions on her behalf -- and her I refer to more than just the typical living will or POA that clarifies resuscitation wishes in various scenarios, but a POA that enables you to make medical decisions on her behalf and which waives HIPAA/privacy rights, which often cause a problem for families who need to provide care and thus need to know about treatment. Now might not be the time to push getting those in place, but if you don't have these you definitely need to seek counsel. NAMI has info on this.

Also, OP, you and your child definitely need your own therapist to help you deal. Feeling anger is normal, but conveying it to your wife and expecting some kind of apologetic response or change in behavior is not necessarily a reasonable expectation with this illness. As another PP said, the thought process is very irrational. Try to find a PhD clinical psychologist who provides psychotherapy and has lots of experience with mood disorders.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm so sorry you're going through this. I've seen what it looks like when someone has taken too many pills, and it is terrifying, and it was not my spouse.

A good friend of mine in college had a mother with BPD. His parents were divorced and his mom attempted suicide when he was around your son's age. It really really affected him and his own mental stability-as much as it hurts you and makes you angry that your wife would take her life and leave you, think about how it would be if that were your mom.

I just want to echo what 9:30 said about making sure you're getting help for your son. My friend did attempt suicide in college, and a few years ago his mother succeeded in ending her own life. He is not well now, struggling with drug addiction and living largely on the streets. He's an incredibly bright and talented man and it breaks my heart to see what he has become.

I know you want to fix your wife. I'm a fixer too. But you need to let go of that and understand that no one can fix her, not you, not her doctors. There is no magic wand to make this go away. She has a disease and may lose the battle with it. You can be there for her, be supportive of her, and help her through it, but fixing her is not on you.

I know you feel like you're crumbling, but you'll get through this. You have to, for your son. We're here to be supportive of you and you have others as well. Let them help you. Let them hold you up.

[Anonymous]

Your son is 9? He knows what is going on. Don't lie to him and focus on his therapy and care.