Suicide, COVID-19, and Ketamine

A mother losing her child to suicide is as bad as you think it is. If you have found yourself here, you, like tens of millions of others have been touched by suicide and the mental-health crisis. When most people think about suicide, they don’t imagine a young child taking his or her own life. Suicide is the stuff of other people’s nightmares. When it happens to you, the reality of our grief is insurmountable. No amount of therapy can help you make sense of what just happened or take away your pain. There’s no going back to “OK.” Time simply stops. The event continually replays in your head, wondering what you could have done differently. Certainly, getting help is a first step. Seeking professional help is a first step. A mental-health provider can offer therapy, medications, and support groups. Most never see it coming. Picking up on the subtle signs of mental illness only becomes apparent well after the fact. These signs are even more difficult to see in a young child.
Hayden Hunstable, took his own life just four days before his thirteenth birthday. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, 18 students committed suicide in Las Vegas. More than 100 adolescents jumped to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2020. 228 U.S. police officer suicides in 2020. Then there are the isolated cases of Drew Robinson, a major league baseball player who lived through his suicide attempt.

The COVID-19 crisis has been gasoline to the fire that is the existing mental-health crisis, as the lockdowns have clearly exacerbated the problem. More adults and adolescents are depressed than ever. While suicides during the lockdowns have not increased as many thought they would, the resulting increase in mental illness is undeniable. About 1 million actually go through with the act and ultimately die. Suicide is truly a hijacking of our brain telling us to end our life prematurely. What if there were a way to remove this hijacking device and grant us time to work things out so we do not want to commit suicide? Ketamine is the one drug we have available to us today that can stop suicide in its tracks. Most people have never heard of ketamine. Even those who have still probably do not know it could be used for stopping suicide. Ketamine is not the final answer in ending suicide, but it is one tool we have that can change the course. Imagine if your loved one is determined to end their life, and you could get them the help they needed. Most people would think this to be a reasonable action. If we could give ketamine to a person who is acutely suicidal, this may grant the time necessary to find the help needed to save your loved one’s life. After reading this book, you will be able to more fully understand what suicide is, how to prevent it in many cases, and its devastating cost to our society. To all of the people who say more studies are needed to know if ketamine really helps suicide and depression, I offer you this admonition before first trying the drug: if you are that person suffering from depression and suicide, the risk versus reward is clearly in favor of using ketamine now. This book brings together many different aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, the mental-health crisis, suicidality, and how ketamine can help. This book is important for the wider interest because it addresses considerably more than just ketamine, including the mental-health crisis, the toll of suicide on our society, and the negative consequences we have all endured with the COVID-19 crisis. Throughout this book, you will encounter many stories about suicide, mental-health, lockdowns, and how ketamine changed the course of people’s mental illness. Today, two decades later, these findings and data may be at their most important, as the world (or society) continues to lose its bet to suicide.

This book is dedicated to the invisible lives lost from suicide.