Facebook Suicide Note: RIP Gabby Josephs
If you recall, we recently posted about Facebook’s new effort to combat suicide in conjunction with Lifeline. Today comes news of a beautiful, reportedly bubbly young woman (pictured) who posted to her account shortly before throwing herself under a train. From The Independent:
Gabrielle Joseph, 16, posted a message to friends on the social networking site hours before taking her own life. The teenager, from Briton Ferry in South Wales, went on to post a message to a friend saying: “I am going to kill myself tonight.”
The words were written after a boy she had planned to go with to the cinema called off their date.
The news of her Facebook message came out at an inquest about her death, which occurred in April.
I’m not sure if things have changed or if my perspective on them has changed, but it seems as though the world is a more dangerous place if teenage suicides are triggered by a canceled date. Even when we felt “suicidal” about a boy’s rejection when I was in high school, there was always enough perspective to understand that it wasn’t the end of the world. I was lucky to have a parent there for me, reminding me that things would be different. Perhaps Josephs didn’t.
All that being said, surely this wasn’t the only thing that was troubling the young model. While the headlines are focusing on the fact of the date being the precipitating factor, there’s something missing, right? Even her father said she seemed “groggy and pale” the day of the event, which was out of character for her. I wonder if we’ll find out there were drugs involved—and when I say drugs, I actually mean either illicit drugs or newly prescribed antidepressants.
liz | 1:50 PM | suicide, facebook suicide note, gabby josephs, gabrielle josephs
A tragedy in every sense of the word. Similarly tragic is the notion absent evidence to the contrary that an individual has committed suicide because of one seemingly minor temporary event. How often have we heard it glibly said, “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” For those those of us who know someone who has taken his or her life this notion marginalizes that person and the pain he or she was experiencing.
[In the United States after so many years of claimed progress towards reducing the incidence of suicide it actually increased. It was supposed to be so different, National Strategy for Suicide Prevention: Goals and Objectives for Action (1/2001) at http://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content//SMA01-3517/SMA01-3517.pdf
A tragedy yes one that many of us face every second of every day. Most likley she showed sign was before the broken date. I know in my case, cries often go unheard or they are expected so much that they are ignored. I hope that isn’t what happened here. But its hard to know. I can tell you my therapist has heard me plenty so have others in my life. I do wonder what the fog she was in was all about? Did she take some of the drugs we take like Seroquel or the like?
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