Change Your Brain Every Day - What Are The Social Causes of Suicide?
Episode Date: September 19, 2018People who commit suicide often do so as an act of anger, and with a specific target to cause hurt and pain in mind. Therefore, it’s hard to truly evaluate depression and suicidal thoughts without t...aking social circumstances into consideration. In part three of “Suicide Awareness Week,” Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the relationship factors that can drive people to commit suicide.
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Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast.
I'm Dr. Daniel Amen.
And I'm Tana Amen.
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visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast.
Welcome back. We're talking about Suicide Awareness Week, and we've talked about the
biological factors, psychological factors. Now we're going to talk about the social factors. Who kills themselves? More common,
people who are isolated, people who are not connected to a group. Social isolation is bad
for your brain. There's actually a higher incidence of Alzheimer's disease,
clearly a higher incidence of depression in people who are lonely.
So interesting.
People who are isolated, that completely makes sense.
Haven't they done studies on if you are isolated, it's good to have a pet even?
I know that sounds crazy.
But when people know that their pets are counting on them, it makes a difference for them.
Does it not?
It gives them purpose.
Right.
Right?
I mean, Aslan taking him for a walk in the morning, that gives him purpose.
And like the cat, like I know like what would happen to him, right?
You think about these things.
So it's like having a baby.
They're dependent.
So being connected really helps.
So when I was a medical student, I took a month elective called emergency psychiatry.
So we handled all the cases in the emergency room.
And suicide is the most common reason that a psychiatrist is called into the emergency room.
And we had to learn how to evaluate people quickly.
And one of my professors had what he called the target theory of suicide.
And what that is, is when you evaluate someone who's suicidal, you want to go,
what's the goal of the behavior? Is it that they want to change someone else, or you can't find the reason for the behavior.
So the target theory is who's the target? Is it-
They want to hurt someone.
Somebody broke up with them.
Right.
And they claim, you don't do well with this, they claim that if they don't come back,
that they're going to kill themselves.
And so you want to go, who's the target to their behavior?
And if it's another person and the person gives in to the behavior, so they go, okay, I'm coming back to you so you don't kill yourself.
That person is acutely safe.
You can send them home.
But they're chronically dangerous because someone has taught them that they can manipulate others with suicidal behavior.
So I'm not a bad person after all.
Do you want to explain that to our group?
I had someone do that very thing.
So I wasn't just evil. I didn't just say, well, go group? I had someone do that very thing. So I wasn't just evil.
I didn't just say, well, go ahead.
I didn't do that.
I basically said, as a nurse, I have to report you.
So this is not something that I am qualified to handle.
I'm going to call someone to handle it.
And one of two things is happening.
You're either manipulating me or you're serious.
If you're manipulating me, I definitely don't want you in my life.
And if you're not manipulating me,
you need to be seen by someone
who's professional and can handle this.
Wow.
Yeah, it didn't go over very well.
That's perfect.
Your answer to that situation was perfect.
And as soon as you said that to him,
what did he say?
Snapped him right out of it,
got really upset.
No, no, no, don't call anybody.
Bye.
So that's a perfect way to handle it.
Too often people give in because they don't want the guilt associated with it.
But you actually offered help, but you didn't give in to the behavior.
People who don't give in to the behavior, that person's at risk if they're not going to give
up the idea he gave up the idea of it because he was clearly manipulating you.
But if they don't give up the idea, you need to hospitalize them because they're dangerous.
And I basically said I'm hanging up and calling 911.
Now when you cannot find a target to the behavior,
those people are dangerous. They have had a head injury. They have low thyroid. They have a major
depression or they're in a bipolar depression and they're dangerous and you have to be very protective of them.
So you see, you can find the target,
you give in to the target, so safe now,
but chronically dangerous.
You don't give in, and they don't give up the idea
of killing themselves.
They're dangerous, you need to protect them.
Or you can't find the target, you need to figure out why.
So this is sort of a bizarre question, maybe.
When someone is, if you determine as a professional that someone is truly suicidal, you can't
find this target, how dangerous are they to others?
Well, that's a different discussion.
I mean, if someone is dangerous to themselves, are they potentially dangerous to others?
Potentially.
And, you know, we've all heard cases in the news repeatedly over the years of people who killed other people and then killed themselves.
So one of the theories about the school shooters is they are, in fact, suicidal.
And they're going to take a lot of people with them.
So they are devoid of a spiritual anchor, which we're going to talk about in the next podcast.
Because my thought is if you're getting to the place where you're willing to take your own life,
other people's lives really don't mean that much to you.
Well, not necessarily, because there are many people who kill themselves who are highly moral people. They never would hurt anyone.
Okay.
And then there are people,
either because they have damage to their frontal lobes
or they're morally bankrupt,
that I'm going to kill myself
and I'm going to take as many people with me.
And that's not uncommon.
And one of the risk factors for suicide is relational breakups.
So, I mean, talking about this social circle, not only custody battles, but divorce, breakups.
You know, I often say people are never as crazy as the first six months when they're getting divorced.
Oh, no.
And domestic violence calls are what police officers are most afraid of.
Right. they're getting divorced. Oh no, and domestic violence calls are what police officers are most afraid of. Right, because when our relationships break apart, that's when people tend to be more vulnerable. And that's why getting your relationships right, in my new book,
Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, there's a whole chapter on attachments and how important they are
because if your relationships aren't right, you're not right. There's actually whole chapter on attachments and how important they are because if your relationships
aren't right, you're not right.
There's actually treatment for depression called interpersonal psychotherapy.
Teaching people to get along better with others actually treats depression in some studies
as effectively as antidepressant medication.
When we get along, I'm happy as can be.
And for whatever reason we're fighting, that makes me miserable.
Now, I tend to be more homicidal than suicidal.
Right?
F you is always better than F me.
You always say, that's always healthier.
I'm glad you said that, not me.
Finally, it's not me.
So getting your relationships right is critical.
And when you see people that have problems with suicidal thoughts,
surrounding them with other people.
And I think one of the most effective things we do for people here at Amen Clinics is not
only do we evaluate you, we sort of want to evaluate your system and how can we get you
more connected to other healthy people because that just helps you so much.
Right.
I like it.
So if we want to talk quickly, if you want to improve your relationships ask
yourself today what is it i can do to make my relationships better um have empathy for other
people be a good listener be assertive but the words i always say for assertiveness is firm. And kind. And kind. Also, learn to have grace and be forgiving.
It's so powerful.
Forgiveness is just so powerful.
Notice what you like about other people more than what you don't.
I mean, that's really some of the simple ways to begin to improve your relationships. I think sometimes if you're in a really bad place,
just doing one small nice thing for someone else can turn it around.
So there's actually a study from Baltimore, the Baltimore Longevity Study.
So it's a fairly famous study where they got people to volunteer.
And over the next year compared to the
people who didn't volunteer their hippocampus that area in your brain we've
talked about hippocampus is great for seahorse that's involved with mood and
memory actually grew interesting in the volunteers so get outside of your head. And Barbara Bush actually wrote about this when her
husband was head of the CIA. He stopped talking to her because he couldn't talk to her because
all the things were classified. And she got very depressed. It was around the time she went into
menopause. So there were hormonal issues so biological issues but the social issues were
really important because she felt she felt very connected to him and now she's very lonely and
what she found that really helped her a lot was she volunteered so she got outside of her head
into the head of other people and it just made a huge positive difference.
So I just had an experience really quickly
with one of my nieces who, she's been doing really well.
She went to church camp recently
and had this amazing experience, but came home.
It's hard to keep up that high when you come home.
She comes home and she kind of got back
into the whole teenage thing of like bashing yourself,
you know, and so she felt really bad about herself one day and she was beating herself up and just had a full
blown meltdown of just like how much she doesn't like herself and she was just going crazy and so
I went and picked her up and I said so what's different this week than last week you were so
high last week what changed this week and I wanted her to identify it so I kept asking her questions
to get her to identify it and so basically we you know, I kept doing this until she finally got to what I
was trying to get her to get to. So basically what it was is last week you were around a whole bunch
of people who were thinking about something bigger than themselves, right? They were focusing on
amazing projects and togetherness and, and just really focusing on something much bigger than yourself.
You had no social media and you had no mirrors.
You had no makeup on and you had no mirrors and you did not feel bad about yourself, not even once.
But you came home, nose back in the mirror, nose back in social media.
You're back thinking about the same things.
You're not focused on that thing that's bigger than yourself or with your same group.
And what happened?
You spiraled, went right down the drain,
went right back into a depression.
And isn't that interesting?
She goes, well, what can I do?
I go, well, you tell me what you can do.
So we went back and forth for a while.
And she goes, well, I guess I could start thinking
about something bigger than myself.
Oh, wow.
And that will lead us into the spiritual component
of preventing suicide.
Stay with us.
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