Andrea.
Please note: This post explores the topics of suicide, gun violence, and self harm. Please read at your own discretion.
My friend, Andrea, bought a 9MM handgun in the fall of 2021. She bought it legally and then took a firearms safety course. Four months later, it was with that gun that she ended her life.
I will never know her intent behind the purchase of that firearm. She recently had gone through a divorce and had to move out of the wonderful farmhouse where the couple had lived. The weekend prior to her death, hiking with a good friend, she gave no hint that this would be their last walk.
Andrea was a highly sensitive person, a term adopted by psychologist Elaine Aron to describe people who display increased emotional sensitivity, stronger reactivity to stimuli, and have a complex inner life. Comprising up to 20% of the population, highly sensitive people experience life differently – and likely process emotional pain differently as well.
During my research for my Empty Fix art series about addiction, I found that sensitivity was a dominant trait among the hundreds of people I interviewed who were suffering from drug addiction. Sensitivity matters, especially where emotional pain can drive self-harm behaviors. In fact, researchers are studying the extent to which sensitivity monitoring can reduce suicides.
The other risk factor that we need to better understand is the presence of a firearm in the home. Women attempt suicide more often than men, but women’s attempts are less “successful” because they usually choose less lethal means. A major study out of Stanford University concludes that gun ownership changes the picture: women who own handguns are 35 times more likely to die of gun suicides than women who don’t.
“Suicide attempts are often impulsive acts, driven by transient life crises,” the authors of the study note. “Whether a suicide attempt is fatal depends heavily on the lethality of the method used — and firearms are extremely lethal.”
I don’t know for how long Andrea was experiencing suicidal ideation. I now know her sensitivity made her vulnerable and the gun, in a moment of anguish, gave her lethal means.
When someone vulnerable and troubled has access to a gun, intervene.
