Mental health

As someone who has worked for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health for 40 years retiring in 2013, I know a thing or two about suicide. I spent six years working on an in-patient acute unit, and another 28 years as a police officer for the Boston Metro Area DMH police department. I knew over a dozen clients who eventually committed suicide.

Reading the recent news aricle (“Suicide prevention prompts debate,” Boston Herald, Aug. 11), I was amused as city councilors ended up debating semantics. Is it proper to say someone “committed suicide” or should we say someone “died by suicide.” Does it really matter? Someone is dead either way.

Over those 40 work years in mental health, I knew and spoke with as many as 16-20 clients or former clients before they took their own lives. I also, as a police officer, saved the lives of two people from dying at their own hands. The second individual was only 22 years old when I saved her and 16 years later I met her again. She recognized me and thanked me for keeping her alive.

Preventing suicides is not about adding more infrastructure at the top of high-rise garages. We as a society need to do better when it comes to mental health issues. Too many mentally ill folks still roam our streets untreated and many of them might end up so hopeless that suicide seems the answer to the pain that won’t leave them.

I thank City Councilor Ed Flynn for trying to do something . However, concern about proper railings at the top of the garage roof is just a tiny part of an answer. We need to be doing something for individuals living in dark places inside their heads before they walk inside a garage and head for the roof.

Too many politicians think it is time to stop stigmatizing those who have taken their own lives. I agree with that too, but I am more concerned with how to help folks stay alive.

In reality, the folks who go around saying they want to kill themselves, rarely do. It is the folks who keep everything inside themselves that often end up dead by their own hands.

Preventing suicide means encouraging people to seek help, have the help actually there along with long term care. If someone jumps off a parking garage, what good are cameras? What good are higher barriers over the edge? What good comes from city councilors debating how to properly save people from doing themselves in ?

As a society we need to be doing much better when it comes to the accessibility of good health care for both the body and the mind. Too many folks are out there looking for help in all the wrong places.

Sal Giarratani

East Boston

Illegal immigrants

Our governor is all for spending taxpayer’s money on illegal immigrants. A billion dollars spent on people who should not be here.

However, many taxpayers are not OK with it. Why can’t we pass a bill that puts the tax burden on Governor Healey’s supporters and let the rest of us spend our money where we want to? After all, we are a democracy, aren’t we?

Lynn Oldach Engle

Winchester