Exit: The Appeal of Suicide

The drive from LA to Oceanside was amazing.

I've never seen so many green hills in all my life.

I thought I was in Kentucky.

There's an ugly rumor going around that I've been preaching

a prosperity message.

I don't know where it began, but it's got to stop, okay?

Do you ever get depressed?

I do, yeah.

Do you ever get depressed?

All the time.

I will forever resent my parents for bringing me

into this world.

Did you ever have chronic depression?

I did.

And what caused that?

When I was 10 to 12 years old, I was gang raped

by 3 men from my church.

From your church?

Yes, from church.

Did you change the church?

No, I stayed.

They weren't members of your church?

They had snuck in and just kind of left after a few years.

Do you ever get depressed?

Yes.

What causes it?

I don't know, apparently a chemical imbalance.

So, have they fixed it?

No.

It just sort of hits you in the face.

You wake up and you think you're going to have a good day,

and then you're just feeling heavy.

You feel like your body's made out of lead.

It hurts to move.

And you can't explain it, and that's what's so frustrating

about depression, because you don't know where it comes from.

It's only when a celebrity dies that the world is reminded

that they have an appointment.

Passing is much more common than people think.

Every minute, 100 people die.

Every hour, 6,000.

Every day, 150,000.

Every year, 54 million human beings

kick the bucket.

They die.

It's kind of depressing if you think about it.

And then there's the death of actor and comedian

Robin Williams, who committed suicide.

For many years, he suffered from chronic depression

and the tragedy is that he didn't know why

he was depressed.

In fact, the "New York Times" and Mayo Clinic say nobody knows

why people get depressed.

Is suicide very big in colleges?

Yeah, it's the second leading cause of death

among college students.

Why do so many celebrities kill themselves?

They don't always get the help that they need because people

are judged, you know, when they seek professional help.

Do you think depression is a mental illness?

I do think it can lead to a form of mental illness.

So, that makes it really hard for them

if they're a celebrity to come out publicly and say,

"I'm mentally ill, because I'm depressed."

Yeah, it's not just them. That's for everyone.

It could drive them to suicide.

It could add to their depression where everyone looks at them

kind of sideways and says, "Hey, you got a mental illness."

Because it wasn't too long ago that we had

derogatory names for buildings that we kept the mentally ill

in, like the mad house and the nut house.

And so, there's a tremendous stigma for celebrities

that come out publicly and say, "I get depressed.

I am therefore mentally ill."

I wanted to ask you very much what you--how you found

speaking out and how it made you feel.

It made me very nervous at first.

For me, waking up every day and feeling sad and going

on stage is something that is very hard to describe.

There's a lot of shame attached to mental illness.

You feel like something's wrong with you.

What's alarming is that the depression has resulted

in an epidemic of suicides.

Nearly half a million Americans are taken to the hospital

every year because of suicide attempts.

Back in 2013, "Newsweek Magazine"

addressed the epidemic and could give no reason

for the increase, saying that it had nothing to do

with unemployment and nothing to do with guns.

They said, "This year, America is likely to reach

a grim milestone: the 40,000th death by suicide,

the highest annual total on record."

According to the World Health Organization,

a massive 350 million people suffer from depression.

Perhaps you could move to Denmark,

listed by the United Nations as the happiest country

in the world.

Before we make a decision to move, listen to this.

You can say we are the happiest country in the world.

I like to say we're the least unhappy.

The country has the highest cancer rate

in the world.

Large portions of the population

also suffer from alcoholism and depression.

And that's what's so frustrating about depression,

because you don't know where it comes from.

You know, you can't explain it.

Do you ever consider suicide?

I have, yeah.

I actually tried attempting it a few times

when I was a teenager.

I'm 23 now.

Did you ever have suicidal thoughts?

Yes, frequently.

Did you ever attempt to commit suicide?

I did once.

What happened?

It was halfway through, it's just like--I just realized

I didn't want to do it.

Do you ever think about suicide?

Yes.

What causes your depression?

I think about a lot of stuff. I overthink.

So, what do you think about?

I don't know. I dropped out of school.

I don't have my dad.

Do you ever think about suicide?

Yeah.

I tried it before.

What did you do?

I took pills, I tried to, like, shoot myself,

and I tried to hang myself.

Three different occasions?

Six different occasions.

No, I just don't think life is generally worth living, so.

You ever consider suicide?

Yes, all the time.

Isn't that scary?

I suppose, but you get kind of used to it after a while.

There was such an epidemic

that psychologists reclassified depression as a mental disease,

and this paved the way for antidepressants.

While many say that these have been helpful in treating their

depression, antidepressants remain controversial

because they sometimes come with horrific side effects.

I don't look like I usually look.

My hands shake real bad.

Medication, nothing I can do about it.

And my face, I feel like a balloon.

My face is all swollen because the medication.

When Robin Williams was interviewed by "The Guardian,"

they asked him if the death of Christopher Reeve,

his good friend, was influential in turning him back to alcohol.

Listen to what he said.

He said, "No, it's more selfish than that.

It's just literally being afraid, and you think,

oh, this will ease the fear.

And it doesn't."

And he was asked what he was afraid of,

and this is what he said.

"Everything.

It's just a general all-around arggghhh.

It's fearfulness and anxiety."

Notice his words.

He said, "It's more selfish than that."

What did he mean?

Well, when a friend dies, it's terribly sad,

but when you die, it's terrifying.

The Bible says this, that every single human being is held

prisoner to the fear of death all their lifetime.

It says, "Who through fear of death have been living

all their lives as slaves to constant dread."

That's the dread that we all feel, like a

and you can't explain it, it's just like a horror.

And it seems to be irrational, but if it is a fear of death,

then it becomes rational.

You're not mentally unstable.

There's something in you that says, "Oh, I don't want to die."

That's normal.

That's sane to want to preserve your most precious possession.

You have this really morbid fear of death,

which I've had my whole life.

And so, my husband and I spend hours sitting, talking about it.

This is like from a child you had it, didn't you?

Did you find that you'd be doing something, you'd be happy,

and then it would almost be ruined because then

you'd think about dying.

Yeah. I mean, it was there.

I'm glad I found out this is quite common.

I'm so pleased to meet somebody else.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Somewhere around 5 or so, I turned grumpier or sour.

I can only think, when I became aware of my mortality,

I didn't like that idea.

What do you mean this ends?

You know, this is--this doesn't go on like this?

No, it ends.

Once I realized that, I thought, "Hey, you know, deal me out.

I don't want to play in this game."

And I never was the same after that.