Sinead O'Connor and Online Pleas for Help: What Should You Do if You See a Suicide Note on Facebook?
Fans of Sinead O’Connor were alarmed Sunday when the singer posted a suicide note on Facebook. (Getty Images)
“The last two nights have finished me off,” she wrote. “I have taken an overdose. There is no other way to get respect. I am not at home, I’m at a hotel, somewhere in Ireland, under another name. There is only so much a woman can be expected to bear.”
The note also says O’Connor’s family abandoned her after she had a hysterectomy in August, and detailed how she’s locked in a visitation battle over her youngest son.
“After everything I’ve been put through, and been forced to go through alone, they wouldn’t know if I was dead until weeks from now,” O’Connor wrote. “My children don’t care if I live or die anyway. Neither do their dads. Everyone is better off. Never ever do this to a woman again. Let this be your lesson.”
According to BreakingNews.ie, O’Connor, 48, was found by authorities, and is safe and receiving medical attention.
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A public suicide note like this is disturbing, but experts say it’s unfortunately not uncommon.
“In my practice I have dealt with this twice in the last two weeks and one case as recent as over this past weekend,” clinical psychologist John Mayer, PhD, author of “Family Fit: Find Your Balance in Life” tells Yahoo Health.
Social media suicide notes in particular are becoming more common, Jackson Rainer, PhD, a board-certified clinical psychologist and author of “Life After Loss: Contemporary Grief Counseling and Therapy” tells Yahoo Health.
But why do some people choose to post these notes so publicly? It could be because they communicate with others largely via social media, Mayer says, and it’s simply the best way they can think of to get their message out there. But, for others, it’s a cry for help, sympathy, or attention, and public announcements are how they achieve that.
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However, Rainer says public suicide notes are often not considered deadly. “It means that they may be planning to kill themselves on one level, but on a much deeper level, it is designed to be what you would think – a very public, very open, and very inflammatory way to get people’s attention, and to get something done rather than for the individual to kill themselves,” he says. “The majority of the time, particularly with an overdose, the suicide attempt is not lethal.”
Mayer says these notes are often designed to do one of three things: be a plea for someone to take their problems away for them, an aggressive act (as in “I’ll show them), or a call to action or threat to action directed at a specific group.
If you see a note like this on Facebook, there are a few different steps you can take, depending on how well you know the author.
If you know the person, but aren’t in their inner circle, Rainer recommends contacting someone close to the note-writer, like a loved one. But if you know the person well, you should contact them directly, Mayer says.
If you’re a stranger, it’s difficult to do anything. “You’re up a creek,” says Rainer. However, he adds, while these notes are disturbing and distressing, “it’s often nothing more than very, very high melodrama.”
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