9781422273920

A suicidal person's crisis may end when another person intervenes to help them.

Some Words on Words When people talk about the act of taking one’s own life, it’s common to hear it described as “committing” suicide. But there’s big a problem with that expression. The verb commit is only used with an action that’s understood to be bad. We’d never say that someone committed a favor or a good deed— we’d only say that someone committed a crime or a sin. We don’t commit a birthday party, but we do commit murder. So to use the word committed in relation to a suicide attempt is to convey that the person has done something immoral. As you’ll read in the next chapter, suicide has been considered a criminal or sinful act during many periods of

Understanding Suicide

15