Suicide and its relativity to Stephen King’s Suffer the Little Children
Suicide is defined as an intentional, self-inflicted death that occurs in all
cultures and usually is executed by people who are suffering from some sort of
extreme emotional pain and feel unable to cope with their problems (Shneidman
6). Suicide is seen in our culture to be something that happens to only the
“crazy” people. But the reality is that normal, everyday people commit
suicide as well. Since suicidology is a fairly new field of scientific study
there is still much to learn about it. Some theories and other scientific
information have been discovered and are very interesting. In Stephen King’s
Suffer the Little Children a teacher suffers from fear, anxiety, defeat, and
delusional attributes and the end result was twelve students murdered the
suicide of herself. These symptoms of suicide are explained later in the
research paper. Suicide began being studied scientifically a little over one
century ago by a man named Emile Durkheim. But the specialized study of the
causes associated with suicide and suicidal behaviors, as well the assessment,
treatment, management, and prevention of such behaviors, has only been recorded
in the last half of this century (Maris 1). Why do humans kill themselves? Each
day people go out into the workplace, school, or some sort of other activity and
experience the threat of failure; what degree that possible threat my affect is
a whole different story. We all know that life is sometimes enjoyable, usually
routine, and almost always difficult. We experience happiness and joy along with
contentment and love. Much of our life is also taken up by the routine,
everyday, and emotionally neutral actions of life. Then on the flip side there
are the negative emotions that we feel like sorrow, shame, humiliation, fear,
dread, defeat, and anxiety. When we digest these negative emotions psychological
anguish and disturbance can be the result (Meyer 23-24). Regrettably, some
people live in a state of constant disturbance. This disturbance is sometimes
caused by physical pain, but usually psychological pain. The teacher (Miss
Sidley) in Suffer the Little Children seems to have taught for a long time and
is very strict. I believe she got burned out teaching and was waiting for
someone to violate her, but nobody ever did. So to compensate she imagined that
the students were one by one becoming evil starting with one particular boy
named Robert. After class one day she stood in her classroom thinking, “What
was it I saw when he changed? Something bulbous. Something that shimmered.
Something that stared at me, yes, stared and grinned and wasn’t a child at
all. It was old and it was evil and…”(Meyer 538). This delusion that was
just taken out of the story is due to psychological pain. Psychological pain is
the main contributor of suicide. Psychological pain is not the same as bodily or
physical pain. It is how you feel as a person; how you feel in your mind. It
refers to how much you hurt as a human being. It is mental suffering; mental
torment. Suicide is never the end result of joy or contentment. Pain by its very
nature makes us want to stop whatever action we are doing or escape from it
(Lester 34-37). When a person is likely to take his or her own life in the near
feature it is called lethality (suicidality). When dealing with a highly
suicidal individual, it is not useful to directly address the lethality of their
particular situation (Shneidman 31). The effective way to counsel a suicidal
person is to approach them with the question of why they are in this situation
and what mental thoughts led them into the state of killing themselves. You
basically try to do anything to lessen the person’s lethal thoughts.
Perturbation is also a key factor in lethality. This is felt pain. Alone, mental
anguish is not lethal, but mixed with perturbation makes a deadly formula for
self-inflicted death. Perturbation supplies the motivation for suicide and
lethality is the terminal trigger. (Shneidman 32-33). Miss Sidley finally had to
find a way to deal with felt pain that she was feeling and she did so in this
quote, “That night Miss Sidley cut her throat with a piece of broken
mirror-glass,” (Meyer 543). She finally mixed the mental anguish with her felt
pain and ended up with a deadly formula. As mentioned in the previous paragraph,
a small number of suicides are caused by physical pain. Physical pain differs
from psychological pain in one way because it is not the type of pain that is
centrally involved in suicide. Physical pain usually leads someone to commit
suicide by getting someone to assist him or her in the act, for example, if
someone is suffering from Aids. Assisted suicide is the most common suicide for
people suffering from various incurable diseases and sicknesses that are too
painful for them to handle (Jamison 46). As stated previously, suicide depends
largely on psychological pain. And furthermore, the primary source of severe
psychache is aggravated psychological need. Psychache is hurt, anguish,
soreness, or aching misery of the mind. Clearly, an important part of our
overall attitude has to do with biological needs: oxygen, food, water, and
favorable temperature. But, once these needs are satisfied our actions are
influenced by our need to reduce our inner tensions by satisfying a variety of
psychological needs. These needs may include the intangible desire to achieve,
to affiliate, to dominate, to avoid harm, to be autonomous, to understand what
is going on along with many other needs. Everyone lives his or her lives in
pursuit of psychological needs (Shneidman 101-103). Miss Sibley wasn’t able to
obtain one or more of her psychological needs. She felt like she was not the
dominant figure anymore and that she was losing control of her class. This made
Miss Sibley, not only delusional, but also scared. This trait is displayed in
the following quote, “She fled screaming down the corridor, and the few
late-leaving pupils turned to look at her with her with large and
uncomprehending eyes.” (Meyer 540). So when a person commits suicide, that
individual is attempting to block out psychological pain that comes from unmet
psychological needs crucial for that particular person. The activities that we
do at home, in school, on the streets, on the job, during the day, at night, and
in our dreams and fantasies are expressions that to one degree or another
motivate our life as a whole. Therefore, suicide is a result of our larger life
routines. Suicides tend to fall into one of five categories of psychological
needs. These categories reflect different kinds of psychological pain. The
categories are as follows: ╥ Thwarted love, acceptance, and belonging:
related to frustrated needs for succorance and affiliation. ╥ Fractured
control, predictability, and arrangement: related to frustrated needs for
achievement, autonomy, order, and understanding. ╥ Assaulted self-image
and the avoidance of shame, defeat, humiliation, and disgrace: related to
frustrated needs for affiliation, dependence, and shame-avoidance. ╥
Ruptured key relationships and the attendant grief and bereft ness: related to
frustrated needs for affiliation and nurturance. ╥ Excessive anger, rage,
and hostility: related to frustrated needs for dominance, aggression, and
counteraction (Shneidman 37). But these five categories are not the only kinds
of suicide. Each case should be looked at and understood in terms of its own
details. Now, on a more positive note, I will talk about suicide prevention and
the methods used. For the most part, the causes of suicide originate from an
individual’s predisposing personality and genetic weaknesses. Misdiagnosing or
wrongly treating a potential lethal psychiatric illness, or not taking a
situation seriously, can and often does have tragic consequences. Together,
doctors, patients, and their family members can minimize the chances of suicide,
but it is hard, delicate, and exasperating venture. Seeing the goal is easy, but
reaching it is a long hard road. Most individuals who commit suicide tell
someone about how they feel before they do it. Some individuals act purely on
instinct and do it at a moment’s impulse. Fortunately, for those who do tell
someone about their mental condition it allows the possibility of treatment and
prevention (Jamison 236-237). Getting a patient to open up is an essential part
of therapy, but there are other key risk factors. In Kay Redfield Jamison’s
Night Falls Fast, he says, “ In addition to an individual’s stated plans
about suicide, there are other major risk factors that need to be evaluated: the
presence or absence of a severe sleep disturbance or of mixed states; current
alcohol or drug abuse; ease of access to a lethal means, especially firearms;
lack of access to good medical and psychological treatment; recent severe causes
of stress, such as a divorce, job loss, or death in the family; a family history
of suicidal or violent behavior; social isolation, or a lack of friends and
family; close proximity to a first episode of depression, mania, or
schizophrenia; and recent release from a psychiatric hospital” (Jamison 237).
For therapist, it is important to get an accurate and in depth history of
violence in a patients life. Some patients have a hard time recognizing the
violence in their life because they grew up with it. This is especially common
in women. After an evaluation has taken place by a medical official an important
decision has to be made. This decision is whether or not the patient is able to
cope with their problems or if they might need to be hospitalized. Hospitals do
not prevent all suicides from happening, but save many lives. Patients that do
get admitted to a psychiatric hospital and do not end up committing suicide end
up relieving their own stress as well as their loved ones. Unfortunately
patients and doctors are increasingly seeing hospitalization as a defeat and the
last resort (Jamison 239). Obviously, in Miss Sidley’s case the delusional
thoughts, feelings of fear, anguish, and defeat caught up with her in the end.
She couldn’t find a way to meet her psychological needs and the end result was
suicide. Was she suicidal before she thought she saw changes in her students?
Yes. It’s just too bad that none of the students saw it coming because it
could have been prevented with some suicide prevention therapy.

BibliographyJamison, Kay R. Night Falls Fast: understanding suicide. New York: Random
House, 1999. Lester, David. Making Sense of Suicide: an in-depth look at why
people kill themselves. Philadelphia: Charles Press, 1997. Meyer, Michael. The
Bedford Introduction to Literature 5ed.. Boston, New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 1999. Maris, Morton M. Review of Suicidology. New York: Guildford
Press, 1997. Shneidman, Edwin S. Definition of Suicide. New York: Wiley, 1985.
---, The Suicidal Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.