The CDC itself, in an editorial note, suggested that the party would rock on once the economy rebounded and our Dennis Hopper–cohort rode its hog into the sunset.Īrtist Mark Rothko (d. This spring, suicide news paraded down America's front pages and social-media feeds, led by a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which called self-harm "an increasing public health concern." Although the CDC revealed grabby figures-like the fact that there are more deaths by suicide than by road accident-the effort prompted only a tired spasm of talk about aging baby boomers and life in a recession. He is the author of the first comprehensive theory of suicide, an explanation, as he told me, "for all suicides at all times in all cultures across all conditions." He also has much more than a theory: he has a moment. "Because," as he says, "no one should have to die alone in a mess in a hotel bathroom, in the back of a van, or on a park bench, thinking incorrectly that the world will be better off." He hopes to honor his father, by combating what killed him and by making his death a stepping stone to better treatment. The look fits his work, which is dedicated to interrogating suicide as hard as anyone ever has, to finally understand it as a matter of public good and personal duty. He wears an off-and-on beard, which grows in as heavy as iron filings. Physically, he is an imposing figure, 6-foot-3 with a lantern jaw and a head shaved clean with a razor. Joiner is 47 now, and a chaired professor at Florida State University, in Tallahassee.
He wanted to know why people die at their own hands: What makes them desire death in the first place? When exactly do they decide to end their lives? How do they build up the nerve to do it? But unlike most other survivors of suicide, for the last two decades he has been developing answers. Survivors of a suicide are haunted by the same whys and hows, the what-ifs that can never be answered. To Joiner, however, the only real failing was from his field, which clearly had a shaky understanding of suicide. Even some of his peers and professors-highly trained, doctoral-level clinicians-failed to offer a simple "my condolences." It was as though the Joiner family had failed dear old Dad, killed him somehow, just as surely as if they had stabbed him themselves. His girlfriend fretted about his tainted DNA. He overheard one relative advise another to call it a heart attack. For centuries suicide was considered an act against God, a violation of law, and a stain on the community. This didn't seem like the easy way out.īack home for the funeral, Joiner's pain and confusion were compounded by ancient taboos. They ruled it a suicide, death by "puncture wound," an impossibly grisly way to go, which made it all the more difficult for Joiner to understand. "Is this the answer?" it read, in his father's shaky scrawl. The investigators found slash marks on his father's wrists and a note on a yellow sticky pad by the driver's seat. Inside, in the back, the police found Joiner's father dead, covered in blood. It was parked in an office lot about a mile from the house, the engine cold. By nightfall he hadn't been heard from, and the following morning Joiner's mother called him at school. What makes some people, such as Vincent van Gogh, desire death in the first place? Corbisīut Dad had left an unmade bed in a spare room, and an empty spot where his van usually went. Suicide was understood to be for losers, basically, the exact opposite of men like Thomas Joiner Sr.-a successful businessman, a former Marine, tough even by Southern standards. He wasn't a brittle person with bad genes and big problems. He knew that the desire for death-the easy way out, the only relief-was a symptom of depression, and although at least 2 percent of those diagnosed make suicide their final chart line, his father didn't match the suicidal types he had learned about in school. Six weeks earlier, on a family trip to the Georgia coast, the gregarious 56-year-old-the kind of guy who was forever talking and laughing and bending people his way-was sullen and withdrawn, spending days in bed, not sick or hungover, not really sleeping. His focus was depression, and it was obvious to him that his father was depressed. At the time, Joiner was a graduate student at the University of Texas, studying clinical psychology.
WHEN THOMAS Joiner was 25 years old, his father-whose name was also Thomas Joiner and who could do anything-disappeared from the family's home.