60 second video
Say tally ho, bon voyage, bye bye, auf weidersehen, addio, au revoir, 再见, addios, sayonara, to the word “committed” when it’s next to the word suicide. Jettison it from your vocab forever, throw it in a deeply dug latrine, say a final memorial, cover it with dirt and leave it behind forever. “Committed” screams shame and adds to the stigma.
Suicide is not a crime it’s public health issue
We don’t say that someone committed a heart attack so why are we saying someone committed suicide? I’m not word-shaming you, just making you aware of the difference in language. The video tells you why we say it that way.
The accepted phrase is “died by suicide,” “killed himself,” “took his life.” Of course you’d use the right gender he, she, their. Even if there is still some archaic law on the books in your state, it is recognized by medical and clinical science as a public health crisis.
It’s been “committed” for centuries so it will take a while to change. Do me a favor when you slip up and correct yourself out loud. That will give you the opportunity to educate others. I have addressed this topic before but it bears repeating and I wanted to do a one-minute video for the YouTube and Instagram.
Thank you for this. I will share. I teach mental health nursing, and I stress the importance of communication and word choices. Instead of saying, “This is John. John is an addict” I encourage “John is a loving father who suffers from the disease of addiction”.
That is awesome Carol.
Excellent and shared. I usually say Whitten took his life.
And thankfully I can say that, since I don’t live in Berkeley, CA….(where you can no longer refer to he or she – you have to say they) 😉
But seriously, it’s good info. It is hard to get used to , since we’ve been saying it for centuries…but we raise awareness.
That’s why I said according to their gender. At first I put in They died by suicide, She died by suicide but it got too complicated.