Kate Spade found dead (apparent suicide)

So sad. I was just watching a YouTube video of her giving a tour of her glam NYC apartment.
 
Well.....aside from the sad part.........I have to throw a selfish and irresponsible in there. She has a 13 year old daughter. No matter how many therapists this kid sees, she will always think that her mother did not think she was worth staying around for.
 
AxelAnnie said:
Well.....aside from the sad part.........I have to throw a selfish and irresponsible in there. She has a 13 year old daughter. No matter how many therapists this kid sees, she will always think that her mother did not think she was worth staying around for.
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So can you even imagine being in so much pain and knowing what it will do to your child, you still can’t see another way out? It is terrible that in this day and age we have not yet figured out how to reach people before this happens. People don’t commit suicide because they don’t care, they commit suicide because they are in so much pain they can’t see any other choice.

It is extremely sad for the entire family.
 
mag said:
So can you even imagine being in so much pain and knowing what it will do to your child, you still can’t see another way out? It is terrible that in this day and age we have not yet figured out how to reach people before this happens. People don’t commit suicide because they don’t care, they commit suicide because they are in so much pain they can’t see any other choice.

It is extremely sad for the entire family.
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Yes I can imagine.........vividly. It is horrid. There are always alternatives. And having your child live with that is just unthinkable.
 
allezfred said:
It's not if you can post thoughtless crap like that.
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It's not a thoughtless crap. Teen-age children whose parents commit suicide most likely to blame themselves for the cause.. and experience sense of abandonment. My good friend's brother just hung himself on Saturday. we're going through this now..

https://childmind.org/article/coping-with-a-parents-suicide/
"After a suicide, children need to know that they’re not to blame. Being natural narcissists, kids tend to put themselves at the center of the narrative: If I had behaved better, if I had come home right after school, if I had tried harder to cheer Mom or Dad up, etc., this wouldn’t have happened."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/he...reavement-is-only-the-beginning-of-grief.html
"Children often feel a sense of abandonment, and struggle to process emotions towards their dead parent. “Children have an omnipotent perspective and tend to feel responsible for things that are happening in their environment,” says Bowden-Jones. “One of the biggest things is to understand it wasn’t their fault, they’re not to blame.”
 
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AxelAnnie said:
Well.....aside from the sad part.........I have to throw a selfish and irresponsible in there. She has a 13 year old daughter. No matter how many therapists this kid sees, she will always think that her mother did not think she was worth staying around for.
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It sounds like you've had personal experience with this subject.

If so, I'm sorry. If not, you are seeing it through distorted lens of someone who thinks she understands suicide. Which I assure you from personal experience contemplating suicide is not something someone does selfishly. It's a brain disease that hurts so bad, and you think everyone is better off and happier without you.
 
once_upon said:
It sounds like you've had personal experience with this subject.

If so, I'm sorry. If not, you are seeing it through distorted lens of someone who thinks she understands suicide. Which I assure you from personal experience contemplating suicide is not something someone does selfishly. It's a brain disease that hurts so bad, and you think everyone is better off and happier without you.
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A lot of people who are left behind after their loved one committed a suicide feel this act was selfish. Children when becoming adults do say "i wish my parent loved me enough to keep on living at least for my sake, even if he/she was suffering, her/his sense of parenthood should have prevailed over the personal pain". I heard such comments with my own ears.
 
AxelAnnie said:
Well.....aside from the sad part.........I have to throw a selfish and irresponsible in there. She has a 13 year old daughter. No matter how many therapists this kid sees, she will always think that her mother did not think she was worth staying around for.
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That is absolutely not how it works. A person in that state isn't evaluating the "worth" of their family before deciding to act. They're in extreme pain and often erroneously believe that those around them will be better off if they're gone.

Also, please act with sensitivity when using words like "selfish", "irresponsible", or predicting how someone's family will respond. FSU has members who have lost a loved one to suicide, and it's not something to be judgmental or cavalier about. You definitely don't "have to throw a selfish and irresponsible in there".

My heart is with the Spade family. I hope they can eventually find peace.
 
Tinami Amori said:
A lot of people who are left behind after their loved one committed a suicide feel this act was selfish. Children when becoming adults do say "i wish my parent loved me enough to keep on living at least for my sake, even if he/she was suffering, her/his sense of parenthood should have prevailed over the personal pain". I heard such comments with my own ears.
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First of all, Tinami, I'm sorry for what you and your friend are going through. I hope you're doing as well as you can.

Your quote is interesting. In your example, the child is basically asking their parent to stick around and continue facing pain just for their sake. I wouldn't judge anyone for feeling that way or wanting that. But couldn't that be interpreted as just as or more selfish than someone taking their own life? Is asking someone to keep suffering in order to be there for them selfish?
 
Tinami Amori said:
A lot of people who are left behind after their loved one committed a suicide feel this act was selfish. Children when becoming adults do say "i wish my parent loved me enough to keep on living at least for my sake, even if he/she was suffering, her/his sense of parenthood should have prevailed over the personal pain". I heard such comments with my own ears.
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It's possible. But AxelAnnie said that her child will always think that she wasn't worth enough to her mother, no matter how much therapy and that simply is not true and AxelAnnie has no way of knowing how the daughter will cope.
My best friend's mother not only killed herself when my friend was a teenager but told her child that she will kill herself when her child doesn't come home right away. The child didn't come home. The mother killed herself. My friend went to therapy and, as far as I know from what my friend told me, my friend accepted that the mother was sick. There was also once a comment that suggested my friend is angry with something the mother didn't but I have not once heard my friend blame themselves.

So, how a child reacts and gets over the suicide depends on the child and therapist. I hope for Spade's daughter that she can accept that her mother was sick and find peace and comfort in the fact that her mother is now at peace.
 
I find this discussion interesting. Some may say this isn’t the time or place to have this discussion, but I think it is important. Unfortunately nothing can bring back Kate Spade, however if people can learn something from this discussion and that helps someone else, at least that would be a very small good thing.

Anyway, what I see happening here is a reframing of the issue in order to support a preconceived notion. What I mean is the idea that suicide is “selfish” or that there is always “an alternative.” There probably is an alternative, but that is not the issue. What is the issue is how the person is feeling and thinking at the time they decide to die. At that time they don’t see an alternative, and, as many posters have commented, truly believe that their loved ones are better off without them. It doesn’t matter that they might be wrong. What matters is that is what they believe at time. Spending time arguing that they were wrong is pointless and hurtful and does nothing to prevent further suicides.

There is some interesting information here: https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

A brief summary:
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US
There are 44,965 deaths by suicide per year
For every death there are 25 attempts
Suicide costs the US $69 billion annually.
 
Terrible news. For what it's worth, various news articles state that Kate Spade left a note for her daughter indicating that this was not her fault.

We never know what's going on inside a person, no matter how outwardly successful. Mental illness is real, and it can affect anyone. We've been no stranger to this on FSU.

RIP, Kate Spade. Anna Wintour said it best: you were authentic years before we started talking about authenticity.
 
RockTheTassel said:
First of all, Tinami, I'm sorry for what you and your friend are going through. I hope you're doing as well as you can.

Your quote is interesting. In your example, the child is basically asking their parent to stick around and continue facing pain just for their sake. I wouldn't judge anyone for feeling that way or wanting that. But couldn't that be interpreted as just as or more selfish than someone taking their own life? Is asking someone to keep suffering in order to be there for them selfish?
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What children feel and what the suicidal parent intended to convey or reasons why he/she took his/her own life, can differ. The issue of "selfishness" is often discussed. Some people feel it is selfish, some don't, and both sides have reasons..... it's about 40/60 towards "it is not".... But both opinions exist.
http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-suicide-a-selfish-act
 
Suicide is a risk factor for some mental illness and should be viewed as a symptom and not a deficit of character.

People don't have control over suicidal ideation. Not all therapies work, and people are often told to "just get over it", "you shouldn't feel that way" etc.

Protective factors only work so much. Antidepressants only work so much.

The pain is real. The suffering is real and suicide is the solution they see to ease the suffering of others.

And NO ONE knows how her daughter will cope with this. We aren't fortune tellers...
 
Tinami Amori said:
A lot of people who are left behind after their loved one committed a suicide feel this act was selfish. Children when becoming adults do say "i wish my parent loved me enough to keep on living at least for my sake, even if he/she was suffering, her/his sense of parenthood should have prevailed over the personal pain". I heard such comments with my own ears.
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This is true. I’m one of those children, although there were mitigating circumstances with my father, who was drugged up in a hospital in terrible pain. But a six-year-old doesn’t comprehend that. Only as adults do we forgive being abandoned.

But I don’t blame the first victim, the suicide herself. Clearly if there was another way out for her, she would have taken it.
 
Wow. Very sad.

Ok, my mother died fairly unexpected (weeks warning) 10 years ago and I was 36! That was tough enough.

I didn’t have kids cos, frankly kids bore me but if I have to for some reason justify myself, I say that my mother passed on MS to me and I don’t want to pass it on. (It’s not proven I would)

But wow wow wow to have a child and do this. I know depression and mental illness is hard , but way to pass it on. No way will this girl get over this at various phases in her life. My god, I felt my mother missed out on so much dying when I was 36! Knowing my mother wanted to check out when I was 13 and not wanting to see me grow up would have destroyed me.

I’m sorry, there’s sympathy for those with mental health issues, but there’s also sympathy for those left behind.

Horrible news 😰
 
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