The relationship had become intolerably abusive, and after a stinging phone call one night, it seemed there was only one way to end the pain. Enough wine and pills should do the job — and would have, except that paramedics barged through the door, alerted by her lover.
“I very rarely tell the story in detail publicly, it’s so triggering and sensational,” said Dese’Rae L. Stage, 30, a photographer and writer living in Brooklyn who tried to kill herself in 2006. “I talk about what led up to it, how helpless I felt — and what came after.”
The nation’s oldest suicide prevention organization, the American Association of Suicidology, decided in a vote by its board last week to recognize a vast but historically invisible portion of its membership: people, like Ms. Stage, who tried to kill themselves but survived. About a million American adults a year make a failed attempt at suicide, surveys suggest, far outnumbering the 38,000 who succeed, and in the past few years, scores of them have come together on social media and in other forums to demand a bigger voice in prevention efforts.
Suicide Prevention Sheds a Longstanding Taboo: Talking About Attempts
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