Apologies for the Headline……”Suicide Is Painless”. It is the theme song from the 1970 movie “M.A.S.H”. And of course I am being ironic because Suicide is extremely painful for those that are left behind.

Over forty years ago, my sisters best friend (then aged 12 or 13) committed suicide. Or did she? It was so taboo circa 1967 that nobody really mentioned it. She went into her bedroom and had an accident in the closet. And at the age of 15 or so, I queried this with my parents who told me I should not speculate.

The thing is…….at school we were told that Suicide is the ultimate “sin”, the ultimate denial of the Love of God. Judas Iscariot had after all hanged himself. I think back then people were dishonest (for the best of reasons) about Suicide. Kindly coroners concluded that the overdoses were accidental thus facilitaing burial by kindly priests in consecrated ground. All to spare the feelings of guilt ridden and grieving families.

In truth, in modern times I have never heard of a case of a burial in church grounds being denied. Near my parents grave, is the lovingly tended grave of two brothers who committed suicide (some years apart) and there are other graves in the churchyard.

Historically, burial has been denied but Compassion has always trumped the Letter of Church Law.

There is the anecdote about a local Church of Ireland churchyard about one hundred years ago. I first heard it from a barber who was cutting my fathers hair……..Seemingly during a wedding ceremony in the Church, a man (a former boyfriend of the would be bride) came into the Church with a shotgun and killed the groom, before turning the shotgun on himself. Two dead. “What happened to the bride, she must have been devastated” my father asked the barber………..”Well actually she married another man”.

But the point of this anecdote is that suicide-murderer was a popular young man from a respected family…..and the congregation approached the Minister who agreed to a compromise burial, where he was actually buried at an angle where most of his body was on consecrated ground but his head was outside. An Irish solution for an Irish problem.

Suicide is a serious issue. And I reckon that the notion of the one unforgivable sin….is or was……in itself ….a deterrment to suicide.

Of course we live in more enlightened times. We readily accept the proviso “while the balance of his/her mind was disturbed”. So nobody is…..or should be ….judgemental. Statistics show that Britain and Ireland are as “honest” about the deaths by suicide as the Scandanavians and the statistics are shocking. Most nights, “local television runs suicide awareness ads”

But there seems to be an urban myth that Suicides happen in clusters. A few years ago, tabloid journalists descended on the Welsh town of Bridgend because it was rumoured that there was a secret sub-culture of suicide pacts which had led to an increase in deaths. In fact, the Truth was much less sensational. A statistical blip.

Yet rumours persisted of suicide pacts between strangers being arranged on social network sites. Again it seems that the reality is that there are isolated incidents.

A few months ago, I wondered in another blog if the present financial climate would actually lead to an increase in suicides……or murder-suicides, where hard-pressed parents take the lives of their own children before killing themselves. Sadly I think there is emerging evidence.

In Birmingham, a man and his mentally ill wife were so desperate, they killed themselves. More depressing is taht in the space of a month a man in Leicestershire shot his family dead before killing himself. Likewise a man in Yorkshire stabbed his family to death before killing himself and just a few days ago, a man in Northumberland shot and killed his family before killing himself.

All of these incidents were reported in detail on British National News but so far, nobody seems to have detected that these can no longer be called isolated incidents. And might well be a tip of an iceberg.