FACING the UNTHINKABLE: Death, Dying, and Suicide

⚠️ Trigger Warning ⚠️

This episode contains discussions of sensitive topics including suicide. Listener discretion is advised.

What if the key to unlocking the mysteries of death and suicide lies in the delicate verses of poetry? In this thought-provoking episode of Don't Be Caught Dead, we sit down with the brilliant Katrina Jaworski, a philosopher and educator who dares to tackle the taboo. Together, we explore the profound connections between creativity and the complex emotions surrounding death and suicide.

Katrina's insights challenge us to rethink our assumptions and the language we use when discussing these sensitive topics. She passionately advocates for the power of listening—truly listening—to those who are struggling, creating safe spaces for open dialogue. Through her experiences and research, she reveals that vulnerability does not equate to voicelessness; instead, everyone has a story worth sharing, and those stories can be transformative.

Join us as we navigate the intersections of philosophy, gender, and mental health, and discover how we can foster a more compassionate and understanding society. This episode is not just a conversation; it's a call to action for all of us to engage in meaningful discussions about death and suicide, breaking down the barriers that keep us silent.

Key points from our discussion:

• The role of poetry in understanding and expressing complex emotions related to suicide.
• How societal and gendered assumptions shape our perceptions of suicide.
• The importance of creating safe spaces for open discussions about death and dying.
• Practical advice for supporting loved ones who may be struggling with suicidal thoughts.
• The need for innovative approaches to suicide prevention that go beyond traditional methods.

If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know! Share your thoughts, subscribe, and help us spread the word about the importance of discussing death openly.

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Catherine

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Transcript

0:01

Before we begin, just a heads up that today's episode includes discussions of sensitive topics like suicide. If you choose to proceed, please take care. Your wellbeing is important, so please feel free to pause or skip any parts if needed. If you need any support, there are resources in our show notes. Mental health doesn't cause suicide, and the argument there is that you cannot confuse correlation with causation and that without denying that the depression, for instance, might be an important factor in someone thinking about suicide. It's not the entire explanation. And in a way, you know, I would argue that suicide is an existential phenomenon, and if mental illness is part of it, then it is, but it doesn't mean that it's the only thing that makes someone suicidal. Welcome to Don't Be Caught Dead. A podcast encouraging open conversations about dying and the death of a loved one. I'm your host, Katherine Ashton, founder of Critical Info, and I'm helping to bring your stories of death back to life because while you may not be ready to die, at least you can be prepared. Don't be caught dead. Acknowledges the lands of the KO and Nations and recognizes their connection to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nation peoples around the globe. Today we have Katrina Voki. Shes a philosopher, educator, and someone who has done deeply reflective work around death, dying, and suicide. Katrina, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for the invite, Catherine. It's great to be here. Now, can you tell us a bit about how your work with death and dying began and maybe touch on how we first met at the festival? Sure. Thank you. Yes, I remember the festival. I'll start with that because I came back home very excited and people would say, well, where did you go? Death and Dying Festival. It was amazing. So, you know, as you probably will agree, it offers such an amazing space to talk about things that often either. People get nervous about freaked out, upset or really uncomfortable. And I also remember you as well. I'm like, oh, who is this person? She's saying really interesting things. So it was really nice to meet you there. My work mainly is around suicide, and so in the last few years it's always been about the agency of suicide. So my question has always been, how is it that we make the kind of decision to kill ourselves or those of us that do, and how is that? Act and choice interpreted. So my work is not so much about why people kill themselves, but rather how suicide is interpreted by others, how it's made sense of. And so in the last few years, I have been working on suicide and poetry because poetry is a really interesting medium of actually naming really difficult things to explain. And naming things that we are really afraid of. And poetry as an art form has this capacity to resonate with others without necessarily explaining things too much. So often people respond towards something and go, I get it. And that's that kind of resonance. And sometimes it's really good, especially for death and dying where words fail us because there's so much about death and dying that we can explain. But then there's so much more that we can't. Wow. That is such a powerful way to frame it, and I love the way you describe poetry as a bridge into these deeper conversations. I'd love to hear more about your use of poetry in this space and what role does it play in making sense of something as complex and as emotional as suicide? So I've been working in that space of poetry and suicide with a colleague of mine from Canada. He's the poet, so I'm just the try hard poet. I interpret stuff. He writes the poetry. So it's, it's been a really interesting exercise, for lack of a better word, because it just kind of trying to work out how does poetry help us to understand the complexity of something like suicide? And one of it is that we. As human beings are taught that we need to control everything. At least in Western society and to a degree you can, you know, it's like what you do, don't record dead prepare kind of thing. But there's so much about death that is out of reach. And I think that's the lesson that poetry teaches us that there will be things that we can't control and we just have to keep company to it and not blame ourselves. And as a result, have more compassion for those who go through the act of suicide and end up dead, but also those who grieve as well and have to come to terms with that. Someone did make that choice. So for me, poetry and death, you know, I just, of course I went to that workshop. Because I was just fascinated, you know, how they were doing it. And it was really rewarding because it just brought out so much out of people. Like you probably remember the discussion as well, like poetry, creative arts often kind of, you know, bring really interesting discussion out of the woodwork because people, you know. Can explain themselves differently through the medium or they find it more comfortable or more welcoming. You know, it's so different than being in a clinical space, for instance, or a grief counselor session or, and especially because we are all in the company of others. And I think that sense of being together in a community, uh, was really important. But, um, that's where I'm at at the moment and using poetry to say. Look, suicide is something that you get. Lumped with in life. It's like a gift you didn't ask for, but there it is. You. You know, if someone's dead, you can't undo that. And so what do you do with that? How do you actually come to tells of such a wound? Because it is a wound, but also to say that people might have responses to suicide such as it's selfish or it's, you know, how could they, that's all fair, but that doesn't always necessarily mean that suicide is immoral or unethical. Or bad in its own right. So this is where poetry kind of helps me as a philosopher to say there's no, you know, you can say that someone is selfish, that they did a terrible thing to you, but that it's your response rather than the actual. What that person decided. And I guess to finish up my long explanation, my task, I think it's about how do I, as a philosopher, as a teacher, how do I balance respecting and honoring the dead, especially from the culture that I come from. How do I respect the decisions of the dead? But also at the same time, acknowledge and respect those who grieve. I. And that's a really hard act to follow, but I figure I've got a whole life to go. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I can see why people are curious. I imagine people sometimes question why you'd choose to work in this space now. What draws you to these themes of death and suicide? Yeah, that's a common question I get, you know, and often it's one off curiosity of slight suspicion, meaning there's something wrong with me. I must be clinically depressed, unmedicated, and whatnot. None of that's true. I'm not clinically depressed at all, but for me, I'm drawn to issues of death because I like solving puzzles. Existential puzzles and death is a puzzle I can't solve effectively. Dying is possible to understand, but death isn't unlike, I mean, the dead don't speak to me, so maybe others can say something different about that. So for me, it's doing anything to do with death and suicide is also trying to understand what life means and the degree to which that it is precious. And that you get one shot at this. And so analyzing and studying something like suicide is also about thinking through what it means to live. Especially since people that do suicide or complete suicide are effectively saying, this isn't for me. So perhaps this is why suicide as a topic is so difficult to handle because in a way it's a critical point someone's making through death. Wow. Thanks Katrina, for being so open in your response. Um, and sharing that, have there been personal experiences that shaped your connection to these topics? I had people in my life that killed themselves. I've published on this, so this is public knowledge. When I was seven, my father threatened to kill himself in front of me. So it is then that I was, you know, introduced to, as I often say, this was my first lesson in existential philosophy. And you know, as a child I didn't quite understand it, but, well, fortunately or not, I have this memory that recall that. I remember a lot of details, so it never left me. But also as a young growing up person, you know, people around you do kill themselves, so you know, that often drew me and I always wanted to understand what was going on and understand it from a point of compassion and from a point of not pathologizing their experience. Because something very intense is going on for someone who's in that space. So I guess, you know, that's how I came to the topic. I think the topic of death and dying bodies in particular, actually my mentor died, one of them 2007, and I was part of very small group of women, basically her mom. Two sisters and myself looked after Louise until she died. So witnessing someone die was actually quite a powerful experience that led to a 10,000 word article. But, and my way of, you know, working it out and realizing that her death was actually about love as well, and the, the degree to which witnessing someone die is. A difficult experience, but it's an incredible gift to be with someone you love, you care about until they dying. Breath. So I gravitated to the topics through kinds of life experiences that I've had in life. And because I first studied psychology and sociology, then went through sociology only, and then through my PhD was more in cultural studies and continental philosophy. And so. I think I gravitated towards disciplines that would enable me to ask certain questions and get some explanations, and so I did actually the topic of suicide in assessments when I was younger. I was just one of those students. Tell me what specific area of cultural studies or philosophy did you focus on during your PhD? Yeah. European philosophy, but, but yeah, nowadays, I mean a lot of it is French and German. Basically, and the difference between analytic philosophy and continental, I mean, continental philosophy is the naughty child of analytic philosophy. Basically analytic philosophers whose work I, you know, appreciate and respect will analyze the problem in itself. Continental philosophers, like myself, will look at the political and social and cultural contexts to analyze a problem. So that's what makes us different effectively. Hmm. American and UK are very strong in analytic philosophy traditions. Australia is as well, but continental philosophy emerged, um, post World War II in particular, and it came out of the shock of World War ii Holocaust and the Destruction. Um, so it does emerge. As a discipline asking particular questions around what it means to exist, especially the existentialist in France at the time. But are those continental philosophies aware of its own limits? And so it is increasingly engaging with African philosophies, for instance. So we've South Pacific philosophy because the way philosophers think, it's very driven by context and often that context is very white. And you know, there are different ways of explaining the universe depending of where you are on the globe. So yes, that's a long explanation. That's such an important point, how even philosophy, a field that's meant to question everything can still be shaped by historical trauma and. Have a narrow cultural lens, and, and that lens doesn't just affect how we understand existence on a broad level. It filters down into how we interpret individual experiences too. Now, you've written about how gender plays a big role in the way suicide is interpreted. Those gendered assumptions can be so deeply ingrained. What are some of the patterns you've noticed in how women's and men's experiences are treated differently? So gender has always been part of my. Project on suicide. Even when I was a younger student, what I was always fascinated by was not only that there were differences between men and women, for instance, but also that they were interpreted differently based on outcomes, but also on the way the reasons for suicide were interpreted. So basically, women, men's suicides, and especially because their rates of suicide are higher interpreted as serious, willful. You know, women's suicides tend to, to this day, be interpreted as attention seeking waste of time, maladjusted, manipulative, and so on. So I was always fascinated why on earth this kind of interpretation. Emerges over and over and, and, you know, even in everyday people you can, I often people say this to me at parties, oh yeah. Women are just, you know, they don't really mean it, you know, this is just them having a, a moment kind of thing. And what is really also interesting that in the past often the reasons for women were always about, well, she'll kill, try to kill herself. The relationship has broken down, whereas men will, their reasons for suicide is economic. Like he's lost his job or, you know, he's gotten really ill and can't function fully anymore. So, you know, and in reality is that men's reasons for suicide, um, a lot of the times about relationships and relationship breakdowns, and it's this kind of inability to accept that, that, first of all, women are serious. Regardless of their outcome, whether it's attempted suicide or completed suicide. And second of all, something really complicated about masculinity is going on for men. So I guess I came to, you know, the topic, wanting to understand not just how sociology interpreted suicide, but also the media law, medicine, and psychopathology. I have to say, that is such an important point. Do you think some of our assumptions about suicide are reinforced by systems such as the media, the legal system, or healthcare? Yes. I understood that the reason why we have really powerful views about suicide is because different. Disciplines or different professions in the end somehow kind of repeat the same pattern in what they think about suicide. So it's not just that, you know, psychology used to think that women were just attention seekers. It was also in legal spaces. The same thing is thought to this day. It was also in medical spaces, in the media in particular, especially prior to putting in the media training web. To respectfully write about suicide and to not include too many details and so on. So yes, I think I was kind of drawn to this difference and wanting to understand why. And my conclusion was that we have a very masculine way of understanding suicide. So, you know, the body has to be male. The man has to be masculine, has to choose a particular method, is often interpreted as strong. Assertive active, whereas women are passive reactive and so on. And so this kind of framework of interpretation will often affect how each person's suicide is interpreted basically. Now, in light of everything we've discussed, you know, philosophy, gender, and how we interpret suicide, what direction do you think we should be moving in as a society or in a professional practice? I mean, one of the things is I think, and I did this in Nottingham a few years ago before Covid, they invited me to be part of a workshop on the language of suicide for allied health professionals. And I loved it because in my first postdoc I worked with health sciences. So my suggestion was, we need to be really aware. What kind of language are we using to describe people's experiences with suicide? And then question ourselves, where is it actually coming from? And so to me, in a way, one of the, you know, things is to actually train allied health professionals into critically engaging with the way in which they use language to describe when someone's suicides or not, and to actually assess whether assumptions are coming from, not to blame themselves, but to work out how larger. You know, things in life affect how we understand something individually. Assumptions, values, meanings, and so to actually think about that critically. And the other thing I think, you know, the other problem is that we don't think gender is really important, or sexuality in suicide, for instance. And if it is, it's just like an added issue. Whereas for me, it's like those kinds of things are always part of suicide and you know. We cannot presume that suicide is a gender neutral phenomenon or value free phenomenon in society. That it's just suicide, that it means the same thing to everyone. I think breaking out of that, it's really important. The other thing too is, and especially because I discovered this when I interviewed queer young people about their experiences of suicide, is that we really need to learn how to listen. And this is coming from different quarters at the moment. This really kind of attentive, ethical listening. Just really listening, being there for people because what often, some researchers are found out that a lot of suicidal people, they just want someone to listen, not to tick. Clinical categories. I mean, that might be important, that might need help, but also to, you know, to just be there and pay attention, which is actually a lot of hard work. That kind of deep listening you describe is so rare, but so powerful. You've mentioned the power of listening, not just clinically but deeply. Ethically, what does that kind of listening look like in practice? Um, like I'm, I've had interviews for two hours, for instance, whereas just that person was talking nonstop and I was just there. And that was a powerful interview because. One that, you know, affected me for a long time. But what it also meant that I said my, um, listening said, your experience is valuable is real, and I will respect it and treat it as important. So listening is, you know, one really important thing I think as well. And listening, you know, knowing that gender roles and assumptions. Inform how we understand everyone around us and just be critically engaged with that. I think the other thing too, and I think this is going past gender, is that, and this is a contentious point, is that mental health doesn't cause suicide and even psychiatrists. And psychologists, as I haven't started to say that. And the argument there is that you cannot confuse correlation with causation. And that without denying that depression, for instance, might be an important factor in someone thinking about suicide. It's not the entire explanation. And in a way, you know, I would argue that suicide is an existential phenomenon, and if mental illness is part of it, then it is, but it doesn't mean that it's the only thing that makes someone suicidal. Because, for instance, with a lot of people, you know, if you give someone a really secure job, if you give them a happy. Family life, the suicidality is likely to recede. So, you know, there are other things that are very much part of it. And in mainstream suicide prevention, you know, all this is really important, but often, you know, people fall back on what they understood stand really well in suicide prevention, you know, rather than looking at really kind of innovative things that my colleagues and I in the. Field of critical suicide studies are really focused on, I imagine that was both confronting and yet insightful for you. Now, I know you've done some, did a project around working with women in round distress and suicide. What did you learn from that experience and what surprised or moved you? Yeah. What was really powerful about that was, first and foremost, it was a reminder that grassroots groups are actually much better at prevention than anything, you know, funded by the different levels of government. Number two was that regional and rural suicide. Is really different to what happens in urban centers around in Australia, and you cannot presume to understand rural suicide, original suicide in the same way as you understand suicide in the cities. And you know what happens with a lot of communities there is that they get really angry because I get. You know, these packages from the cities to prevent suicide, and it just doesn't work at all. And they just refuse to do it and do stuff themselves in a really powerful way. And the last thing that I learned was that the women there. Are not passive just because they're suffering and often they have to take care of the farm. They have to take care of the kids. They often have a part-time job to bring an extra income into the family. But these women are vulnerable. Yes, but they are not passive. And they do actually have answers. It's just, it's a matter of whether someone's prepared to listen to them or not. And I think that could be said the same for young people that I've learned about queer youth suicide is that, you know, young people who struggle with suicide are vulnerable, but it doesn't mean that they don't have a voice. You just have to listen to them and be part of that journey. I really like what you've just said there about the fact that vulnerability doesn't mean voicelessness. It seems to me it's a matter of whether someone's really willing to listen. So with that in mind, what are some of the systematic barriers to supporting people who are at risk and how do those barriers affect the way in which the care is delivered? Um, look, I mean, I, I don't do that work as much as my colleagues do, so I often feel like I'm slightly on the outside. But it's good in the sense 'cause you see things differently. I think a lot of the times funding is a problem. So, and I mean, we are terribly underfunded in the mental health space. So, you know, personnel is stretched and also often not supported when it comes to crisis, and also not trained well enough in the latest. I. Things. So, um, like I'm thinking of a study that talks about emergency centers and how suicide attempts are treated by the staff and so on. And it's, it's not good. I mean, we could often, you know, those people are more concerned about whether you live or die and, you know, and the mental health team comes. Of course, all that kind of things happen, but it's such a clinical space, so you know it's gonna work. But I need to a certain point, I think for me as a philosopher, a couple of things are really important. First of all, we need to have spaces in where we can talk about suicide without it being a cause of alarm. So, you know, my colleagues in UK who are actually working in the mental health space and suicide, have come up with the idea of death angst cafes, where you can talk about it without necessarily, you know, someone calling services. Because everyone's talking about suicide. So I think that's really important. I think the other thing too is that we really need to retrain ourselves on how we listen to people's suicide, especially in crisis moments. And the other thing too is that, you know, often people say, oh, well, you know, this person attempted suicide. That didn't really mean it, because obviously it didn't work. They're not dead. And my response is always about. Shouldn't you be happy that they're not dead? And even if or when someone is not really wanting to suicide, isn't this potentially a way for them of finding life again and even if or when they are being manipulative, isn't this an opportunity to go, okay, what is going on here? Why are you in such a space that you feel that this is how you reach out to people and you know, and that might be a beginning of a better way of living, rather than, you know, saying, well, that person is unstable mentally, and so give them tablets and. Put 'em through community program and they'll be fine. And usually they're not. The other thing too, I mean, and I know this is a really difficult and contentious thing to say, but people often will say with the crisis services that they're doing that, you know, we need zero suicide. And I don't think that's possible because human beings have a way of making decisions. And often that's out of our control. Even when we, you know, prevention is a good idea. So, yeah, I think in a way it's, we need to recalibrate our approaches to suicide before we actually go and say approaches to preventing suicide or responding in crisis before we actually come up with new ways of response. And, you know, that's a slow task. It doesn't get you funded, you know, those kinds of things. Yes, so, well, I'd love to know, you were talking about the work that you've seen done with crisis groups and your colleagues in that space, and you know, what seems to be lacking in mainstream that isn't happening, that you think should be happening to support people. I think basically old methods are being tried over and over again. And more risk factors are added to the list of risk factors of suicidality as if that counts for innovation, when in fact it doesn't. And so basically, I think there's not enough innovation because true and tried recipes, so to speak, are being applied over and over again, presumably based on. Evidence when in fact people increasingly say it's not working. And they often, like I found out a few years ago, they people start their own grassroots organizations, especially for bereavement off from suicide. So, you know, I think we need to. A major reframing of how we approach suicide. Stop focusing on risk factors alone, that people do talk about protective factors, but it's, in a way it's still incredibly clinical and also have spaces where people can actually talk about suicide without fear of being sectioned, or the fear of being treated like. There's something really wrong with you and you're really sick. You know, when in fact they're going through something incredibly intense and existential and they need someone to listen. It's almost like we have to, I mean, we've got Lifeline, we have all those kinds of services, and they've had played a really important role, but often they're not funded well enough. And having done a work in rural South Australia on suicide prevention, it's so clear there's just not enough services. And the people, you know, there's like the whole region one gp and to call, get a psychologist on board, you have to wait six months. So, you know, it is just chronic, underfunded, and also reliance on all methods of responding to suicide, preventing suicide with the argument that it's based on evidence, where in fact, increasingly that evidence isn't actually as strong. But also being really culturally aware of certain things around gender norms, how we interpret people based on class, based on their race and their ethnicity, of course, also their sexuality, you know, those kinds of things. We have to be really culturally aware a lot more than what the bigger bodies are saying. Are you seeing in the data that you are, you're privy to? Are you seeing that those factors are contributing to an increase in suicide attempts? When those sort of gender or sexuality, those sort of issues are being called out as a cause? Yeah, sometimes I do. It depends. I think context is everything when it comes to understanding suicide. So there might be contributing to suicidality. Young men or actually middle aged men are quite suicidal. Older people are quite suicidal. So you know, things like that could be called the so-called risk factor, except I actually personally don't believe in risk factors. But to me it's also like they might be contributing to suicidality, but they might also be contributing to why suicide prevention is really just not effective enough. And why people will not pursue counseling services because they simply think they're not being heard or listened to, or no one will believe them. And there are some really interesting groups and funded services doing really wonderful work, but often they don't last long enough. So what can we do to create a safe space? Have these discussions, I think be open to those discussions, which I think is really difficult. Also, you know, and this is something that will take, it won't take overnight, but actually. Create an attitude.'cause often people say, we need to overcome stigma, but at the end of the day, the attitude is that if you're suicidal, then something's really wrong with you. And when people think there's something really wrong with them, they feel guilty and they shut down and they'll reach out only. If they are desperate or when they are desperate. So I think we need to have a much more collective approach to suicide and suicide prevention, because I think a lot about the topic I. Belongs to psychiatry, psychology, medicine, social work. Those are important disciplines and professions, but they're not the only ones. We have to socially and culturally create those spaces, have those. For instance, my colleagues are doing New K existential angst cafes, you know? And also do things which sometimes are really counterintuitive. So I'll give you an example. My colleague from a while ago now, he did this, he's in US, Michael Crow. He's an anthropologist, he's retired now, and a psychologist. So he was called to respond to a massive crisis of Inuit suicide in Canada. Communities were being basically decimated, and one of the things he actually did. Do is that they built a house, turned into a community center, gave the young people ownership and leadership roles, and suicide rates dropped to nothing within months. So in a sense, building a space. What made it happen in for that community? You know, I don't have specific answers, I suppose, but my sense is that when it comes to suicide, there's a lot of guilt that's attached to the act. People that try to kill themselves and don't succeed, but also people who are grieving, they blamed themselves that they didn't see anything in time, they couldn't respond and. My sense is that, you know, only 10% of suicidal people are noticed and the rest are not, because it's actually really hard to see if anyone's suicidal or not. They have to be at the end of their tether in a very particular, distressing way. So, you know, I often say to people who have lost others through suicide is it's not informed. We have to have an approach to suicide that says, it's okay. It's not your fault. You couldn't see it. It's still a loss, and you may not know why someone killed themselves completely, but it's still not your fault. So I've given you kind of a really philosophical roundabout explanation, but a lot of it's to do with rethinking how we make approaches before we put specific initiative to work. And it sounds, from what you're saying is that it's not just looking at one aspect or one part of the demographic, but the whole of the surrounding societal factors. Yeah. It's like when wonderful historian Maria Tomakin ages ago wrote a book called Trauma Escapes. And she looked at different trauma sites, war sites, natural disaster, and her argument was that trauma needs to stop being the property of psychiatry, psychology, and medicine. It needs to be social, cultural, and collective where we can talk about trauma because unless we learn how to talk about it and face it. Then we're gonna be stuck in a cycle of grief and not being to talk about things. You know? And silence often is not very good in this area. And I think of this to Markin's argument in response to exactly what you're kind of saying. We need a much larger approach. A change in tactic in the way you know, that we actually approach suicide and also be really brave and courageous and change and put innovative practices into work rather than depending on things that have, we've been using for the last 50 years, really. And there is some really innovative stuff coming out, but it's often not very well supported and it's often grassroots and it's often people like you, Catherine, that start something and go, yeah, we need to, we need to know stuff. And tell me about your work that you mentioned when we first started talking about the role poetry has played. Yeah. Because that's something that you wouldn't normally put the two together. So I'm fascinated to hear with the work that you are doing in that space and the connection you've made and how that came about. Uh, it started at a conference, so I was at a conference in University of Oxford, I think 2011 or 10, and I was in a panel with this Canadian academic who was talking about the use of poetry in coping with the psychosis of his son. And so, you know, we started chatting, I was talking about depression, gender, and suicide, and how women are diagnosed with depression more often than men. And if they are less suicidal it's probably because they are managed through the mental health system, you know, that. So that was my argument back then. I mean, it wasn't new, you know, we started just talking and we met again the following year and he was sitting at the back with me and he met some, a friend of his. Daniel Scott is his name I should say, and Daniel was met someone a few days earlier, a dear friend of his, I think, whose child killed themselves and he just wanted to spend time anyway, so he's sitting at the back next to me and he starts writing poetry and I'm trying to pay attention to the paper at the front and looking at the poetry at the same time. And I just, because I'm, you know, I'm so Bolshevik, I went. We're gonna write about that. And so that was the beginning of a beautiful, lifelong friendship, really. And now I know his family. And so we started thinking about how the function of poetry and how it becomes a different area of understanding and suicide. So what was really interesting was that a few years ago, he put a call for poets to submit. For an anthology of poetry on suicide and he called the book Voicing Suicide. He puts out the coal and he thinks maybe he'll get, you know, he'll be lucky if he gets 50 poems. He gets 250. I. Wow. So, you know, suddenly it was just like the Watergates opened. And so he asked me to write an essay in response to all that poetry. And then we had book launches and it was all during Covid, so it was online. But what was really fascinating. Was that I was part of one of the book launches and you know, I said a little bit, Daniel said a little bit, and then the rest of the audience were either the poets who contributed and the rest, people from mental health, from, you know. All sorts of walks of life and the conversation that followed was astonishing. People started opening about their experiences. So for the poets that contributed, it was usually because they either a, experienced suicide themselves or have lost someone through suicide. So their poetry was all about that and the conversation. It was just astonishing how open it was. And then people from mental health community started asking, well, how might this work? You know, all those kinds of things. And it was like, I remember saying this to Daniel. This is the kind of conversation and discussion that never happens in counseling rooms, in grief counseling. What's going on here? Why is it that, that it happens here, but the kind of honesty and openness. Isn't enabled elsewhere. And so, you know, this is what got me to thinking that, you know, we need to really create spaces of discussion and also perhaps workshops, you know, in which I've actually written about that, where, you know, writing poetry about suicide is a therapeutic mode of actually dealing with the complexity of suicide. But also, you know, people might want to not do it for therapy necessarily, but come and write some poetry, write short stories, whatever it is, and that somehow writing it taps to that part of the brain that releases the emotions, and that kind of allows them to kind of come to naming what happened in their life. So poetry has this amazing function insofar as, as it captures the content of suicide, but then its form. Actually captures something else about suicide that is often really difficult to name, to speak about. And it gives people permission as a result because maybe as a creative, as a source form of creative art, it gives people permission to kind of face to the topic of suicide differently than. In comparison if you were in other spaces, in other contexts. So it's, and for me it's like I'm often struck at how powerful fiction is, for instance, in convincing people of social justice issues, and that in fact it is far more powerful to go to a writer's week when writers, for instance, are discussing different issues, are writing about them in fiction as opposed to going to a lecture. On a topic of social justice, there's nothing wrong with the lecture, but we have to think about the medium in which we convey the message. You know, it's an old idea. The medium is the message in media studies, but you know, so it's because there is something about the medium of poetry that offers people a chance to give themselves permission. To be more brave, more honest, more everything you know? So I was thinking just then when we met during the death festival, there was another group there from Melbourne and it's about the Queer Death Cafe. It's a fantastic, I mean, that's the stuff we need to be doing at a much larger scale. Rather than saying, oh no, you can't talk about suicide. Oh no, that's terrible. Let's talk about it. Because it actually might mean that some people will find a way of living as a result that it's actually fruitful and rewarding, rather than going from one psychiatric facility to another. Yeah, so it's interesting, you know, I've seen personally from my time when I was working at the Royal Botanic Gardens. When you actually engage someone who is creative to convey scientific messaging or talk about a particular topic, the way in which they approach it is very, very different to an academic, scientific way of approaching Absolutely a topic and. It creates a, a safe space for experimentation and it's a lot more open at times. Mm. What I've seen is it allows for creative expression where there's no right or wrong. That's right. It's that, you know, the judgment I. Is suspended, the moralizing is suspended, kind of. It's, you know, it's over there for the time being, and you can be who and what you are and however you want to express yourself, you know? And it's so powerful and so different than sitting in front of a clinician and saying, yep, I'm feeling sad. I haven't got it out of bed for six weeks. You know, those kinds of things because in that kind of space, it's a different kind of exercise of expression. Of what is really difficult to express, I think, and also sometimes, you know, I think, you know, like thinking with creativity and especially if you're in the company of other people, which also means you're not alone. Because if in a way, suicide, like I said earlier, is an existential issue, first and foremost. But part of the existential issue, and I've just marked the PhD thesis in philosophy, is this real extreme existential loneliness where people feel cut off from the world. They might be surrounded by people, but they still feel alone. And the other thing is also a profound loss of trust in the world. And to me it's like if you are in company of someone creative or in a group talking about creative arts and suicides, you realize that this is not just you. Mm. Yeah. Which I also mean it's not your fault. And, um, there was a great report that I read and I had Michelle Lim from Ending Loneliness on the podcast last year. They released a great report just showing the statistics on how common it is for people to feel alone, even though they could be in a room full of people, there are moments that they still feel alone and mm-hmm. Oh, absolutely. And I thought that that report was fantastic for people to realize that there were other people that felt perhaps like they do, maybe even standing in the same room they were as they were experiencing it, and. I think that there is something in the fact that the more conversations we have about looking at these issues that we have that are perhaps sometimes taboo, whether it be loneliness or suicide, death itself. Mm. Where we can look at it more and have more open conversations as a collective. Exactly. Then there's more opportunities to be creative with how we come about it. And you're so right, like the queer as death crew down here in Melbourne, you know, hiney and Alex are Yeah. Are really leading the way in providing that peer support for people in that space. Um, absolutely. So they should be getting a lot of funding for me in my books. You know, they are really doing the grassroots stuff that needs to happen. They need to be funded, encouraged, but unfortunately those kinds of groups struggle and have to be super creative in order to maintain, you know, the funding or whatever it is. Right. So it's absolutely. So for someone who's, who's listening today, Katrina, what do you suggest to them if they have cons? Firstly, I would say, what would you suggest to a loved one who has concerns about where. One of their loved ones might be at within their space, what would you recommend for them to do? I would recommend for them to make pumpkin soup and sit down and eat with them. That's it. Or I don't know anything else. So I think a lot of these, you know, recommendations for me, I'm always like, if you go to someone and say, look, I'm really worried. What's wrong with you? That person's gonna turn off and run away. If you're going to come, you know, put the, the s word attached to, you know, a possible conversation or a possible meeting. So it's in a way you have to go sideways in order to get to the matter at hand. And you know, so sit down with someone. Don't sit face to face, because often if someone's suicidal or they'll feel really looking directly at someone, the stress is not a good thing. And just, you know. Eat something, drink a cup of tea, and just talk. How you going? I think you know, you're not your usual self. You know, something like that because usually if you know someone, you know how to engage them. Often to prevent suicide is to not do the preventing of suicide. It's kind of a paradox. You actually just do something completely counterintuitive and make pumpkin soup. And you know, I mean because suicide is about making connection with someone and responding to their need and whatever that connection might be. It might be through company and listening with food being as a medium, or it might be, as I said earlier, building a community whole, or it might be at a collective level like the festival of of Death and dying. But you know, because at the end of the day, sitting side by side with someone and say eating something, it's creating safe space. And so, you know, and that can be incredibly powerful. And also saying, you know, to someone, like I often say to people, don't freak out. Don't. Don't. Oh my God, are you okay? None of that. Be really patient, be really calm and honest, and just be there for that person and listen. Because often that's what will make it work. Respecting what that person's going through. Not saying, oh, you must, we must take you to the doctor, unless of course there's something really distressing going on. You know, those kinds of things will often help because that's in a way then overcomes, you know what? They talk about stigma. I mean, as a philosopher, I think there's more to it, but it overcomes the heavy weight that often comes with suicide or it comes with death. Especially, I mean, you know this so well too, right? What we're talking about last year, that we live in a society which weirdly is obsessed about watching death on TV screens and has managed death really well, and somehow is incredibly afraid of it. And just will not address it until it has to. There's no choice until you're caught dead. So, you know. Yeah, and look, I think, you know, I often say, and this is from a philosophical perspective, if I can divorce ethics from morality in suicide, I'll be really happy about that. Probably won't happen in my lifetime. But you know, because there's a difference between ethics and morality in my mind. And you know, if we actually say that suicide is a human phenomenon and people need to be respected and that we need to witness what's going on for them and keep company to them with compassion. And you know, empathy and care. Then I think we might actually slowly turn things around. But really interestingly though, Japan, for instance, as I've learned a few years ago when I was there, Japan doesn't see suicide as immoral or unethical. It just sees it as a sad phenomenon. But it just happens. But the problem Japan has, as I've learned from Japanese colleagues, is that mental health is a moral problem. There's something wrong with you if you're mentally unwell. Right. But with suicide, they're like, yeah, that's really sad, but this is what happens. It's fascinating, but it's a, it's a different society, different philosophies, you know, over centuries, thousands of years. So yeah, all things I'm suggesting won't be, you know. Most of them. I think you are not gonna achieve this overnight. But this is why I think something like queer as death as one example, should be thoroughly supported and you know, praised for the work they're doing. Because especially with queer kids, trans, you know, trans young people, they just want a sense, you know, amongst other things, a sense of recognition and respect that who they are counts. And that they matter and that what they're going through is real and that it's not their fault. You know? And those are really powerful things, but sometimes they're really hard, especially if you lost someone through suicide and you're grieving and you know, oh, someone's attempted and you're trying to deal, you know, respond to that person and you're angry, how come they've done it? And all that kind of stuff. So I think this is where, you know. That's fair too. But it's not the same as saying to someone who's struggling with suicide. It's not your fault. This isn't wrong, but something's going on. I think, I mean, to to end the point, and I'm always, I don't think he does this anymore. There was a show about this retired army general. Somewhere quite high in the Japanese army. And what he did was it happened, I think it's on the, oh, I'm not very good with geography, Japanese geography, but basically in Japan there's a suicide forest where people go and die. I've done some field work there, but also there's another on the other side where there is these cliffs and really rough seeds. Basically what that. Man did, and I don't know whether he's still alive and doesn't, is that just, he lives in the area and he just walks the coast with a famous of green tea and he sees people, he always goes to places where people usually jump, but places, cities, or, you know, like in Sydney, the gap, you know, there's always hotspots, what they call them, hotspots. And so he just walks around and if he sees someone, you know, standing on the edge on the cliff, he just comes and says, hello. Would you like to sit down and talk? And he just listens and gives them green tea and that, that's what I call effective suicide prevention. Yeah. And often he says people just walk away and they don't come back because he's there every day. So, so if we had something, you know. Something like that, you know, or something that is focused on a very different kind of listening and says, yes, you can come here and talk about suicide and no, we're not going to section you. No, we're not going to, you know, take you away as they do in Canada, you know? Where basically you're taken to a hospital section, then you can't come out if you say anything, if you express suicidality of any kind. I don't know whether that rule is still, but I know a few years ago it was still in motion. If we give people spaces to talk about those, you know, about things that are really difficult to talk about, then perhaps, you know, we might start changing, shifting attitudes in terms of, you know, how suicide is viewed. Katrina. I think that that is such a beautiful way to finish our conversation. That thought of that lovely man and his green tea and the fact that I have to check out whether he's still alive now. Yeah. But, but also just the fact that there, there could be a shift in how we have conversations and how we can support people around suicide. Um, absolutely. Can't thank you enough for your time. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time and inviting me. It's been the best. Thank you. Thanks, Katrina. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of Don't Be Caught Dead, brought to you by Critical Info. If you liked the episode, learn something new, or were touched by a story you heard, we'd love for you to let us know. Send us an email, even tell your friends. Subscribe so you don't miss out on new episodes. If you can spare a few moments, please rate and review us as it helps other people to find the show. Are you dying to know more? Stay up to date with. Don't be caught Dead by signing up to our newsletter and follow us on social media Head to Don't Be Caught dead.com for more information and loads of resources.