"I just can't imagine what goes through a person's mind that would want to make them end their life"

I've heard this often from people when I tell them what I do for a living.

Suicide is complex and very early does happen off a single event or factor, it's what I explain in the?Suicide First Aid (SFA) UK?course.

From my own experience, there were many factors, of which I'm going to share with you now.

It all started in my younger years, I was brought up in to poverty, my folks were not well off, only my dad worked, my mum was a stay-at-home housewife, this wasn't because she was a kept woman, it was because she left school with no qualifications and she thought she had nothing to offer any employers.

As a child, I recall many winters without heating and using candles when the electricity ran out. My dad would take my brother and me to the local tip to rummage around for anything that could be brought back to life and sold, mainly bicycles and electrical goods.

Life was by no means easy.

Mum and dad had their own issues which sadly meant us children (unbeknownst to them) were conditioned to think and act just as they did, it also meant that their traumas were passed down to us.

By the age of 14, things were so bad at home I started exploring ways to escape the sometimes physical and emotional abuse, I found using alcohol, illegal drugs and smoking a wonderful way to escape and numb the pain.

At 15 years of age, my elder brother Paul was killed along with 5 others by a drunk driver.

This had a huge impact on my family & the entire community.

Sadly it drove my family apart.

The reason is none of us knew how to express our emotions, it's not something any of my family know how to do. It was conditional love or anger that turned into rage or fights.

We all tuned on each other.

Another reason is my folks chose not to accept professional support or help after my brother's death, I guess this was due to help being accepted was a weakness for my dad, he was a very proud man & kept everything in house.

A year later my parents divorced, at 16 years of age I was asked to choose whom I wanted to live with, this was not something I was ready for as I loved them both, but I was being forced to make a decision.

I chose my dad, & my sister went with my mum.

I was 16 and just starting out in the world of employment & going out.

I like my mother left school with very few qualifications, which made finding employment very difficult, most jobs I tried lasted for very short periods because I simply felt I could do them and I was coming in with a hangover or a comedown.

Dad couldn't deal with my erratic moods, on top of trying to find some normality after my brother's death, coupled with not processing it or talking about it was like being around a time bomb just waiting to go off. Dad said I had to go as if I stayed he didn't know what might happen.

At 16 years of age, I had to find my own way in the world.

I spent most of my teens & twenties and early thirties flitting from job to job and blocking out the pain I was in, not telling anybody about what I was feeling.

I couldn't, I didn't know-how.

I was taught from an early age not to trust anybody, and so I didn't, I like my mum and dad bottled everything up.

It wasn't until my early thirties that things started to get better for me.

I started going to look after myself, I went to the gym, had a great job with Unilever and was in the process of purchasing a house.

It was 2008 when I purchased my own house.

Life was good.

Only it was short-lived.

A little while after purchasing my house, I was introduced to Cocaine.

I'm not going to lie, it felt amazing, It gave me confidence as I've never felt before, I felt invincible.

One line on a Friday night soon turned into a gram, then a gram on a Friday night turned into a gram almost every night until I was spending ￡100 a day on cocaine.

I took ￡20k equity out of my house and spent almost all of it on cocaine, I even stopped working and paying my mortgage to fund my habit.

I became a recluse, pushed everybody away, selling things in my house when the equity money ran out to fund this addiction.

The house was repossessed, and I found myself living on the streets for 2 weeks.

I was saved by somebody I knew from school who took me in and helped me get back on my feet.

Within 6 months, I was back in employment.

I was still using cocaine to mask my pain but not as often.

I found myself job hopping and running away from people around the two-year mark, or when they started asking questions I didn't want to answer, nobody knew the real Steve, not even me.

This continued until I was 39 years of age, when I experienced a mental health breakdown in the workplace.

There were no mental health first aiders and nobody I could trust to talk to about my mental health.

I visited my GP, who signed me off on the grounds of work-related stress.

The GP could only go on what I was telling them, and not really knowing what it was, I said it was stress because I heard others had been signed off for similar reasons so thought I would just follow what others had been signed off for to get some time off.

On my return, I was invited into a meeting with my manager and was placed on a performance improvement plan.

Now I know what you're thinking, WTF?

It was the right thing to do for them at the time as they thought It was performance-related and had nothing to do with my mental health.

They had no understanding of mental health and the conditions were not there for me to talk about my mental health deterioration.

Sadly being on the PIP made my mental health worse and within a month I was managed out of the business.

My mental health deteriorated so much that I started contemplating suicide.

I was 39 years old, I had no job, no money, no family, and no friends.

I had no reason to live.

I chose to die by suicide.

Many factors led me to this point, from being a male, being conditioned, taking drugs, growing up in poverty, losing several jobs, losing my brother, having a mental health breakdown, and having an undiagnosed mental illness of #ptsd all contributed towards the quickest way to end all of that pain was death.

This was my experience.

An experience I will never forget.

I'm lucky, and I know this.

I'm lucky to be alive to tell my story, to offer other others hope, and to show that with the right help and support, life can be so so different.

This is also why I implore organisations to invest in mental health and suicide education and training because people suffer in silence when you don't.

If you would like to discuss having mental health or suicide first aid training in your organisation, please get in touch [email protected]

Visit www.mindcanyon.co.uk or Mindcanyon - Mental Health In Your Workplace to view a list of all the services I offer and testimonials from former clients.

If you need to speak with somebody immediately if you're having thoughts of suicide, please contact Samaritans on 116123.

#suicide #suicideprevention #suicideawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #suicideintervention