Article October 8, 2012 Issue

Breaking the spell of suicide

Dorothy Estes

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What? You ask. A spell? What does it mean that suicide is a “spell”? Am I trying to tell you that someone is working hocus-pocus on the hundreds of thousands of people who commit or attempt to commit suicide every year worldwide? Not necessarily. What I think of as a spell, Mary Baker Eddy aptly calls, “aggressive mental suggestion” (Church Manual, p. 42).

Have you ever thought you wanted to commit suicide? Or entertained even momentarily the thought, What’s going on in my life is so awful, I’d like to die? Many people have experienced this at one time or another, most—hopefully—only having a momentary thought, not taken too seriously. Others entertain these thoughts more chronically and persistently. And far too many follow through on them.

Where do you suppose such a dark impulse comes from? You might answer, “From one’s own thought; from how an individual is thinking about his or her own circumstances.” If you believe you or others have a mind separate from God that can think depressing, deadly thoughts, then you’ll continue to believe you and others can think such thoughts and possibly act on them because you believe you have no choice.

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