The Weight Of The Unspoken Word

Well-chosen words can move me, but so can words left carefully unspoken.

Too often, the news brings us stories of people who have died or gone missing. Some of these stories have missing words with their own gravity, like miniature linguistic black holes. When the news presents an adult gone missing from their family without an obvious explanation (like “hiking alone” or “nighttime swim”), I scan the article for words like “depression” and “troubled” or for other signs that the family’s fear is a very specific one about suicide. When an apparently physically healthy person dies without explanation, I look for the same words, or for the discreet circumlocutions that sometimes replace them.

We’ve gotten more careful with language. That’s good. The media has listened to expert advice about how to report on suicide, and has outgrown traditional terminology that carried ancient judgments. Those judgments — that suicide is a crime, that it’s sin, that it’s shameful, that it’s an act of violence against the self and against family, are pernicious. They deter people from seeking help, because they tell people suffering from depression and anxiety “you’re a bad person for even thinking about that, you’re a bad person for feeling the way you do.” That message, that lie depression tells us, is genocidal. More Americans died by suicide last year than any year on record, probably more than car crashes, around 16 nine-elevens. Good messaging on this subject saves; bad messaging kills.

Good messaging isn’t easy, especially in the context of reporting deaths. The media is also understandably loath to invade the privacy of the deceased or their loved ones, or jump to conclusions about a death in a way that could simply stigmatize suicide further. So when someone like Sinéad O'Connor dies without explanation and without “signs of foul play,” the media implies, but doesn’t ask. Stories about O’Connor mention her history struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts, her efforts to de-stigmatize those afflictions, and the excruciatingly tragic death of her young son by suicide and her recent vocal anguish over it. But when it comes to her death, they don’t ask the questions, they don’t say the words. The missing words hang there, heavy, like lead weights.

Could the media do that better? I’m not sure. I suppose the media could hold off on implying anything about the cause of death until and unless one ...