J. K. Rowling One of Many Who Has Felt Suicidal

March 28, 2008— -- When the most famous author in the world said that she not only had a depression in her 20s, but that she felt suicidal during it — and further, that she was not ashamed — she struck a heroic blow against the evil power of stigma that surrounds mental illness.

"What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time, and I am quite proud that I got out of that," J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, was reported as saying in the Sunday Times of London this week.

Indeed, shame is one of the greatest enemies when confronting suicidal thoughts, because it diminishes the likelihood that people will reach out for help when they desperately need to.

Suicidal thoughts often emerge from depression, an illness that descends on someone like Rowling's Dementors descend on characters in the Harry Potter books, bringing a cold, dark, deadening, hopeless feeling.

While the suicidal thoughts sometimes understandably relate to life circumstances, at other times they may be wholly irrational, springing up without warning. William Styron, another novelist, described this phenomenon in a memoir of his own illness called Darkness Visible:

"Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me…"

Suicide is responsible for just over one percent of deaths in the United States, with the impact particularly pronounced in young people, for whom it is the third leading cause of death. A greater proportion of our population, about four to five percent, report having made a suicide attempt. And more still, about 13 percent, have thought seriously about suicide.

The overwhelming risk factor is clearly depression (and its cousin, bipolar disorder). One study from a Swedish community found that the risk of suicide in people with severe depression was 79-fold higher than in those without it. A U.S. twin study showed a 23-fold increase in attempted suicide for people with depression.