Content warning: This post discusses death and suicide.
Early in my training, someone older and wiser than me made a comment in passing:
There are two types of psychiatrists: Those who have had patients die by suicide, and those who have not.
I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that all psychiatrists eventually join the group where someone under their care dies by suicide. These deaths change us.
The first time I learned that someone under my care died from suicide was during my intern year. I didn’t know him well; I do not remember his name. I was working in a psychiatric unit in a hospital and had worked with him for only one or two days. He had a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder. My sole memory of him is his flat, unblinking expression while he looked at me. Though his face showed little emotion and he said few words, he radiated discomfort.
Within a week of his discharge from the hospital, he had jumped off of a bridge.
I didn’t know how to react. I don’t remember if we had a conversation about him, if anything else had happened, or what we could have done differently.
I do remember the name of the person who killed himself after he and I had been working with each for nearly a year. He was the first of “my” patients who died by suicide.
He earned a professional degree long ago, but was living in a shelter. Alcohol brought him comfort, though it drowned his career. He argued a lot. This was the primary way he knew how to interact with people. Despite his pugnacious manner, he and I built and maintained a respectful rapport.
The medical examiner ruled that he had died from an overdose, though the official did not deem this a suicide. The toxicology report stated that there was methadone and alcohol in his system. He did not like and never used opiates.
I still think of him a few times a year. I still wish he had talked to me before he ended his life.
In any given year, I learn that one or two people under my care have died. Most of the time, the cause isn’t suicide. People age; people get sick; bad luck strikes.
Between January of 2020 and June 2022, sixteen (16) people under my care died. None of them died from Covid. The youngest was in their late 20s; the oldest was in their mid-60s. A few died from suicide; others died from medical problems (some acute, some not). Many died from overdoses. Maybe they were intentional; maybe they weren’t. I will never know.
I recently spoke with a former colleague about the various losses we have experienced over the pandemic.
“No one wants to hear it,” she said with some bitterness. “People are tired of hearing sad or bad news, so they don’t ask about our work or how we’re doing.”
She’s not wrong. It’s not easy for me to talk about it, either, as talking about it means I have to think about it, and it’s hard to think about things that do not make sense and may never make sense: What happened? What happened to us?
Maybe I just want people to know that actual human beings died, that I knew these people, that all these people meant something to someone, that they meant something to all of us who had the opportunity to know them. I wish I could tell you more about the guy who made a handmade Christmas card for me, even though he had yelled at me the first time we met just six months prior. I wish I could tell you more about the woman who had several weeks of sobriety before she collapsed on the sidewalk, her heart pulseless. I wish I could tell you more about the man who always called me “Ms. Dr. Maria” and offered me home-cooked food whenever I visited him at his apartment.
That’s only three people. There are 13 others.
If you’ve lost someone during the pandemic, you are far from alone. A poll from 2021 (!) revealed that about 1 in 5 Americans are close with someone who has died of COVID-19. (Recall that over one million people in the US have died from Covid.) Suicide remains a leading cause of death in the US, with certain groups at higher risk than others. (Also remember that we all can help prevent suicides; it doesn’t have to be the only option.)
It’s okay to feel sad, angry, or disappointed; you feel how you feel. Things will change, as they always do, though they may not change as fast as we want them to. It’s also scary to express vulnerability. Voluntarily shedding the crusty carapace to reveal the soft tissue within, however, may be the best (or only) path forward.
Maria Yang, MD 