There was really no other topic I could write a blog about today. Not exactly the cheeriest thing for a Monday, but it is one of those things that seems to have affected a lot of people. A lot of my friends, and a lot of people out there, seem to have been knocked for six. You think of suicide being the last option of the lonely, yet that doesn’t seem the picture painted of Gary Speed.

I was sat on my sofa on Sunday, just mooching about, watching some telly. I flicked over to my laptop, and as I loaded up the Guardian site, I saw my phone flashing. A friend had texted me just saying, ‘Gary Speed is dead, WTF!?’ The page came up in synch, and there it was. At first I thought, maybe he had a heart attack? You hear about sports men with that kind of thing happening. Super fit in life, taken early. But then I saw on a Google news stream that he had hung himself. A young man, with a wife and 2 children, must have either hid a depression spectacularly, or had something eating him up that he couldn’t share. But this speculation isn’t healthy, or appropriate. We do have a morbid fascination, as a nation, with the death of people.  Do we really need close-up pictures of Shay Given in tears? Sure, it was a powerful image, but really, that was very hard to watch.

I remember during my sixth form, we went to a Samaritan’s training day to see how people were trained to talk to people who were suffering from depression. That was my first real exposure to the idea that people needed help to stay alive. That the world can become such an overwhelming experience that you want to give it up and end your life. Listening to the counselor recount how they had heard people die on the end of the phone. People who had phoned because although they wanted to die, they wanted someone in the world to know that it had happened. It still hurts thinking about it now. About how resilient these people are, who support these people who have given up. Sure they try and stop it happening, but sometimes words can’t change anything. And I was amazed at how non-judgemental they were, and how I couldn’t be them.

My only other experience of suicide was strangely at work. Quite early in my time at the NSPCC, I was walking from a building to my office. Next to us is a large multi-story car park. As I walked, I saw a flash of something fly past the window. Normally I wouldn’t pay attention, but it was large, and looked quite pink which is an odd colour for something that seemed to be flying. I didn’t hear anything, as the glass was double glazed, but then I heard people screaming in our building. At the window, I saw why. There, in a broken, awkward shape, lay the body of a naked young man.

It was the first time I had ever seen a real dead body. It sounds trite, and cliché, but there was an element where you could see that life wasn’t there. It wasn’t someone posing as dead. There was a real motionless feeling, that it would float on an ocean, and then slowly sink to the bottom. But the screaming and crying was getting louder where I was, and I realised the selfishness of the act. Sure, he must have been terribly sad to have reached a point where he felt no one was there, but he killed himself in a public way. He affected all those people who saw him die. People were sent home because of what they saw, and I doubt in his sorrow he cared about that. You could argue why should he, but we impact other people’s lives in a constant way. Our presence and absence hugely impacts all sorts of people in ways we can’t comprehend. Like words, action and inaction, everything has a power and a weight that we can’t fully understand. It reminds me of the whole Schrödinger's cat paradox. Until we are observed, we both exist, and don’t exist. Maybe in their final act, a suicide is observed, and they exist.

We all feel so disconnected at times, but there are ways to get help, and so many accounts of the horror and sorrow depression can lead to. Whether it is through professional help, the Samaritans, or just family and friends. We need to build these scaffolds to get us through the day to day. Winston Churchill referred to his depression as his Black Dog, which hung around constantly. This was an immensely powerful man, who fought long and hard, but it was always there. I end with a quote by him, to show how it is always there for sufferers of depression and mania.

"I don't like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don't like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second's action would end everything. A few drops of desperation." - Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

- Anand