The project emerged the way great ideas emerge: looking for something else. “We were doing research for another project and trying to understand Why suicides by firearm have increased in the United States. We realized that it was a very complex issue and that was when we began to wonder how this problem is in Spain. Because I, as a professor at the Complutense University, listened to my students talk about anxiety attacks, about taking pills, about self-harm, about taking their own lives.”
Conchi Cejudo, the director of Suicide, the invisible pain. The first transmedia project about suicide in our country. A bet by RTVE Play consisting of a four-episode documentary, a three-episode podcast and additional interactive content. Because what Conchi Cejudo and Toni Garrido (producer of the project) saw when they dug a little, was that suicide “is a public health problem that must be addressed urgently.”
Because suicide is already the main cause of external death in our country. And the absolute first cause in young people between 15 and 29 years old. We are at numbers never recorded before. Last year, 4,227 people took their lives in Spain, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). 11 people a day. One every 2.5 hours.
And there only data on completed suicides is collected. According to the WHO, “for every person who dies by suicide, at least 20 others have attempted it. If we do the math, that means that in Spain there are 80 thousand people who try it every year“explains the project director.
Survivors and survivors
People who survive a suicide attempt are called survivors. As the singer Zahara, which is one of the testimonies of the documentary and addresses her suicidal ideations since she was 12 years old, after being a victim of bullying and sexual abuse. Or as Bea, a 19-year-old Mallorcan who stars in the first chapter. A brilliant student who ended up attempting suicide after becoming obsessed with her academic results and her weight. Because no one is safe from these types of thoughts. Suicide does not depend on age or social class.
People who have lost someone to suicide, on the other hand, are called survivors. And some of them don’t talk about what happened. Largely because of the stigma, which is something to which the documentary also dedicates a chapter. A scenario that is definitely changing, but that was not always like this: in one of the chapters, the son of a person who committed suicide during the Franco regime shows how his father, like the rest of the people who took off their life, They were not buried with the rest of the neighbors and with normal tombstones. They deprived them and their families of all dignity.
Poor trauma management can lead to more suicides in the future. This is what happens in certain areas of Spain, where suicide rates are higher than in the rest of the country. Rural areas of the Eastern Andalusia (a specific area that includes the provinces of Jaén, Córdoba and Granada), of Asturias or Galicia statistics always dominate. And this is largely due to the so-called ‘vicarious suicide’, which is nothing more than following the example of a family member or close person who has previously taken their own life in your environment.
All of these terms are addressed in the documentary, which also tells the stories of projects such as Sergio, a firefighter from Madrid that one day he realized that he was dealing with more cases of suicides and attempts than accidents or fires. He thus started a pioneering initiative in Spain with which they help people with suicidal ideations and has already transcended the fire department and is made up of health professionals who work on the project altruistically.
The 40’s club
How is our country currently in terms of suicide care?: “What we have seen when doing this project is that prevention, as well as intervention and postvention, are three paths that should be transversal in the different areas. In emergencies, in health, in education… and that is not happening. There are people asking for help and the administration is overwhelmed. Especially the young ones. We talk to teachers who tell us that they don’t know what to do, that they are seeing suicide attempts and self-harm. But there is a lack of resources and training. “Teachers are just teachers and I wish they had the tools they don’t have to know how to help them,” says Cejudo.
Compared to other industrialized countries, we are lagging behind: “Spain is not in the club it should be in, which is that of the 40 countries that do have a national plan to fight suicide. They are United States, Denmark, Austria, Scotland, Finland, Germany or Norwayto give you some examples, but not Spain”.
“There are a lot of associations that are asking the government of Spain to sit down and draw up that plan. Because here there are totally different protocols in the Autonomous Communities, which are the ones that have the transferred powers. There are communities that are getting their act together, How often getting your act together is simply sitting down and talking to see what can be done; They are sharing what the police, firefighters, schools or health workers are finding“says the director, who adds that this lack of protocols means that some professionals do not know how to address this problem and “there are cases of survivors who have to repeat over and over again what has happened to them or who get into fights.”
The invisible pain
Suicide, the invisible painis the director’s first audiovisual project, which highlights the work of the director, Alvaro Gimenezand that he remembers that “we decided on the name of the project after seeing a Twitter thread, in which a girl who had survived a suicide attempt and was in the hospital with numerous injuries, did not understand why everyone was interested for her broken bones and other physical injuries, but no one cared about the pain she felt inside. There we saw the title that could help put words to it, a pain that many people feel and need to be heard.
Regarding the difficulties that the recording team has encountered, he emphasizes “that sometimes we have dropped stories; we were about to go to a place to tell the testimony, and at the last moment they told us that they were not yet there.” prepared to talk about what had happened to them.
The director, however, remains that “There are tools, There is light. When you give tools to people who are having a hard time, you help people who are directly committing suicide and the entire society. It helps us realize that it is a problem that can affect us all. Because we all have someone close to us who has had an experience related to suicide. What is necessary is to listen. Sometimes that’s enough, just listening. There is no need to give advice or downplay importance. When a person is in an emotional sequestration, it is impossible to develop thoughts for the future. It is not our responsibility to act as psychologists, but we all have the ability to listen and make that person who is having a bad time feel heard and cared for.”