Who We Are, Really
Peter Wollheim
Peter Wollheim, a Boise, Idaho based licensed professional mental health counselor and nationally known suicide prevention advocate committed suicide last month.
His sister, quoted in People magazine said, “Peter had been very depressed for years, but didn’t seek therapy, even though he knew firsthand what people go through and how important it was for them to get help…”
He was apparently deeply troubled by his parent’s brush with death and cruelty; they survived the Holocaust and Nazi death camps.
Did Wollheim’s childhood experiences and psychological construct lead him to take up a “healing” profession and ultimately right to the very issue that would take his life?
Suicide: Sometimes a Bad Rap
Ending one’s life under certain circumstances can be logical, rationale and effective.
Perhaps the best example is a diagnosis of a life-ending and progressive disease where pain and the loss of life quality is a given.
For many the notion of a slow and painful loss of vitality is reason enough when the end is a foregone conclusion.
Assisted suicide is an option that should be available to those who have been counseled and are ready.
Depression, certainly untreated depression, hardly fits the definition of a life-ending disease and depression related suicides are especially tragic.
“There’s no single cause for suicide, but it most often occurs when stressors exceed coping abilities of someone suffering from a mental health condition,” Robert Gebbia, CEO of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said in People.
Public Safety Professionals: Healers Too
The facts of Wollheim’s life are a given:
– He was exposed via his parents to visions of darkness and death
– He became a healer of the soul perhaps because of his own pain
– He found himself at the heart of the matter, suicide, where pain conquers the will to live
– He took his life
If there is even a shred of truth to the idea that Wollheim’s life path was driven by his inner pain we must pay doubly close attention to ourselves and those around us to forestall tragic and needless death.