The Rev Georgie Baxendale and Rose Fitzpatrick report on a new Scotland-wide suicide awareness campaign.

PERHAPS Che Guavara has never had much space in Life and Work, but he has something worth saying when he puts the price on a human being in these terms:

“The life of a single human is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest person on earth.”

So what is the exact price of one life? It’s said that the average person contains enough fat to make seven bars of soap, enough sugar to sweeten ten cups of tea, enough lime to whitewash a hen house, enough phosphorous to tip 2000 matches, enough potassium to explode a small cannon, enough sulphur to rid a small dog of fleas and enough water in which to take a shallow bath.

So, the total cost of raw materials which makes up one person is £8.10. That figure is way out.

Consider this for a second. In 2020, 805 people disappeared from our tiny country with no fuss and little mourning except by those who loved them most of all.

Now, 805 amounts to a substantial Church of Scotland congregation. So if a congregation disappeared over the space of one year, would it go unnoticed? Surely the General Assembly would be convening a committee to ask questions and to report back in five years? Police Scotland would be involved and the Scottish Government would take time out from the pandemic to consider what was going on.

But you see these people left this world in secret, and even their families find it hard to discuss why they left or where they went. And the route they chose is viewed as a dark place and is called ‘committing suicide’. We use that phrase so lightly, and in its use we imply guilt on the part of the one who travels that road. It asserts blame and takes us back to an age when suicide was a crime and those left behind in its wake were shunned.

In our work with the National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group we believe that every life matters, and that suicide prevention is everyone’s business. We all have a part to play… we can all do something to help save a life. We now understand that many people who take their own lives suffer from mental health conditions. But many don’t. Most people will never think that suicide is the answer to their problems. But some will. When the vast majority of us walk in the dark side of life we never feel that our family, our friends, would be better off without us.

But some do.

As a Church we have to be in the hope business. Rabbi Hugo Grynn retold a story of a time when he was imprisoned with his father in Lieberose Concentration Camp.

It was the eve of Channukah and the winter of 1944. It was a place where no one dared to hope. And his father ripped threads from his striped uniform and dipped it in their ration of margarine to make a candle.

Young Hugo protested: “We need the food. We can’t afford to waste it on a candle.”

And his father responded: “We have seen that it is possible to live up to three weeks without food. We once lived without water. But you can’t live at all without hope.”

We can all do something to help save a life.

This is a call for revolution. We recently launched Scotland’s first suicide prevention awareness campaign in a generation:

‘United to Prevent Suicide’. It has been developed with people of all ages who have had experience of the impact of suicide.

Over 2,000 people across Scotland have already signed up at www. unitedtopreventsuicide.org.uk.

Are there ways you can become a part of this revolution and save a life by simply signing up and spreading hope?

And if you’re nearing the edge, where hope is disappearing and disappointments far outweigh happy endings, have the audacity to hope and to ask for help and cling fast to the words of a prophet who had a fairly chequered career with a number of down times. His name was Jeremiah. Engrave his words on your heart like the letters on a stick of Ayr rock. Recall them when the day is dark and the brae is steep. “‘For I know the plans I have for you’ declared the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.’” ¤

The Rev Georgie Baxendale is a minister of the Church of Scotland and Rose Fitzpatrick is the Retired Deputy Chief Constable of Police Scotland.