What we talk about when we talk about suicide

The room was quiet when Roxana Colman-Herak held the .22-caliber rifle in her hands. The gun was loaded, but she needed only one bullet. She was 24 years old and she was ready to put an end to her life. She was ready to stop the pain.

She looked into the barrel. All she had to do was pull the trigger. She had never before thought of taking her own life, but enough was enough, she thought. She felt exhausted. Tired of being a part an abusive relationship. Tired of blaming herself. She had made up her mind that her world had ended.

As she sat there with the gun in her hands, she again returned to the same questions that had spiraled in her mind for the millionth time.

Who else would I be good enough for? Who else would love me?

Her stepfather had killed himself almost ten years before on her mother’s birthday. Her grandfather killed himself five years ago. In her mind she resolved she would be the next in the line of suicides. She felt herself stuck in the past; she replayed the episodes over and over until it was a loop of continuous suffering.

How long had she been sitting there? Minutes? Her sense of time was distorted. She felt like she was held in a trance.

Out of nowhere – a knock at the front door. She refocused on her whereabouts and what she was about to do. She instantly snapped back into the present and thought: What was I thinking?

Roxana Colman-Herak didn’t commit suicide that day in 1975.

Once she heard that knock, that unexpected intervention, she knew that she was not going to take her life. She knows she’s not as fortunate as others; not everyone in that state of mind can be stopped from a simple knock on the door. But it was just what she needed at the moment of truth. She survived, but many others do not survive, they go through with the decision to kill themselves.

Forty years have passed since that fateful knock at the door. Roxana’s alive to tell her story and to share her experience with the hope that she can help those in distress.

“I can relate,” Colman-Herak said. “I know what it feels like.”

Roxana is now 64 years old and lives in Charlo with her husband Marty. They’ve been together for over 20 years.

Suicide and its aftermath affect everyone in the community. Here on the Flathead Indian Reservation and in Lake County, it’s a problem that many find uncomfortable to discuss. Whether it be guilt or shame, suicide is difficult to talk about because it’s so personal to families and friends. But it’s not going away.

 “It’s so out of control,” she said. “The situation is not improving.”

Simple questions about suicide often require complex answers. Those left with grief often wish they could have done more.

Why did they do it?

What were the reasons?

Could it have been prevented?

Suicide is unpredictable and depends on the individuality and circumstances of a single person, no matter the age, she said. Communities, friends and family can offer help in different ways. The hardest way is simply addressing the subject head-on. Such as asking someone if they might be thinking of hurting themselves.

“A lot of people are afraid to talk about it because they think that if by asking, the person will be easily led into actually committing suicide,” she said. “They think they will plant the seed of suicide. It’s just not true.”

Sheriff Don Bell said it’s definitely a problem in Lake County and on the Reservation. Law enforcement responds to calls on a regular basis. “No matter how many times we respond to a suicide call,” he said. “We never get used to it.”

So far this year, there have been seven suicides in Lake County and on the Reservation. Bell said police have responded to 83 attempts so far this year. Compared with 2014, seven suicides were reported the entire year, with 88 attempts. In 2013, four suicides were reported, with 100 attempts.

“People often say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” he said. “We encourage anyone to stay and talk with a friend if they are talking about hurting themselves and call for help.”

Bell said in his experience, when someone begins giving away valuable possessions, the act could be a sign of distress leading to suicide. “In some cases that can mean they are making a plans [to commit suicide].”

Bell said access to firearms during desperate times result in dangerous outcomes. “Drugs and alcohol can fuel the desperation as well.”

CSKT Tribal Chief of Police Craige Couture echoed Bell’s view that suicides are an especially sensitive part of the job that he and the officers find difficult. Despite the training and the professionalism of the Sheriff’s Department and the Tribal Police, officers are susceptible to tragic feelings when responding to a scene, both Bell and Couture said.

Suicide attempts are taken seriously and both Lake County and Tribal law enforcement agencies will assist people who have attempted suicide to protect them from harm by taking them to a local hospital. They will be evaluated by a mental health professional. Results vary in success, but Bell said he has seen people turn their lives around after a desperate situation gets out of hand.

Suicide affects the officers on the Reservation because they are all Tribal members, and the Indian community here is close-knit, Couture said. That intimacy is often a source of pain that hits Tribal officers on a personal level. “When we respond to a suicide or attempt, often we are dealing with our families and friends,” he said. “That makes it hard for the officers as well as the families.”

Bell and Couture agree that suicide is a delicate problem that affects all members and citizens of the community. Families grieve their losses together.  At times families grieve the loss of a young adult, Couture said, “With their whole lives ahead of them.”

Read the second part of this story in next week's edition.

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Montana Suicide Study Provides Insight:

In 2014, the Montana Suicide Review Team (MSR), a group that works with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, published a detailed report that analyzed suicide statistics in the state. Composed of mental health, social service, coroners, the purpose of the report was to determine whether suicide “was preventable and the factors associated with the suicide.”

They were unable to account for every single death, but they used a small sample size from across all counties of the state to determine the possible bigger picture. For example, the group cited 243 suicides in the year 2014 for an average of 20 per month.

Tuesdays and Sundays constitute the highest rate of incidence of suicide during the week at 35 percent. The suicides in Montana occur in January and September. In 61 percent of the suicides, firearms were the primary method used, above the national average of 51 percent, followed by 19 percent by hanging, and 11 percent by overdose. Males have the highest suicide completion, accounting for 81 percent of all suicides compared with 19 percent of females.

Persons between the ages of 45 and 65 are most likely to commit suicide and the report cites mental, physical health issues, and relational losses as possible reasons. In addition, out of the 243 suicides in Montana, 216 were white, 21 were American Indian, 1 Asian, and 1 African American. However the report makes cites the 2013 U.S. Census that in Montana 90 percent of the population is white, and 6.5 percent are American Indian. “It is the rate of suicide among these different ethnicities that indicate the severity of the problem,” the report states. “However, with such a small sample size (low population and only one year of data), we cannot calculate the rate with any statistical significance.”

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[Addendum: "Infinite Jest" passage by David Foster Wallace]

David Foster Wallace was an American writer who wrote essays, shorts stories, and novels. He often wrote about suicide as both a theme and a subject. He had attempted suicide in his 20s, before being treated for substance abuse and depression. He became familiar with addicts' stories. He himself experienced a long recovery process. He committed suicide in 2008, leaving behind a large body of work. The following passage is from his novel "Infinite Jest," based in part on the difficulties and experiences with depression and recovery.

The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.