Providing Hope and Preventing Suicide

by Anna Quinn

Karen Mason’s Preventing Suicide arrived in my mail box the day before the call came that a friend’s husband had ended his life, so it was hard, but helpful, to read it. It provides a comprehensive overview of suicide prevention and integrates psychology with faith. Its essential theme, that faith is applicable both to suicide prevention and to dealing with its aftermath, held true for me in the aftermath of a friend’s death. Mason says,

People ask me all the time whether working in suicide prevention is depressing. I don’t find it depressing at all. For me, suicide prevention is focused on the hopeful prospect of ministering God’s grace to those he loves, to those who have lost their way. Suicide prevention is about saving lives and about witnessing human resilience. Human beings are unbelievably buoyant in the face of great suffering and challenge. Every day that I observe this resilience, I see validation that people are created a little lower than the angels (Ps. 8:5) and it leads me to worship the Creator.

Throughout this book, Mason gracefully shows pastors and counselors thoughtful ways to mercifully reach out to suicidal people and the people around them. She points to ways to integrate faith and psychiatry and recognizes that often pastors and counselors are on the front lines of day to day ministry with the chronically depressed. She encourages pastors to develop a theology of suicide and to think of how to best care for families and communities when suicides occur. And she gives hope that suicidal people usually want to live and are ambivalent about their attempts succeeding, which encourages us to keep encouraging them. Although it’s hard to consider this difficult topic, this book gives a wealth of practical advice in a concise manner, and is well worth studying.

Visit the Patheos Book Club for more conversation on Preventing Suicide.

Anna Quinn and her family live in Tennessee, where she is inordinately involved in church and school volunteering, fundraising (chocolate, anyone?), and chauffeuring. She is learning to say “no” and prays that maybe, occasionally, she throws some decent mothering into the mix. Writing still holds a mystique, and Anna now employs her Vanderbilt University degree writing book reviews and cultural articles for the e-zine Six Seeds.tv.