I'm going to talk more about suicide below this point. Because the game is so short, and it's free, I'm not going to mark spoilers.
Suicide can be a difficult thing to make art about. One thing it has in common with other difficult things is that, while you're just trying to tell a story about one specific set of characters at one specific time period, it's hard not to sound like you're making a more general statement, and that can be dangerous. In this game, for example, your actions can prevent another character from committing suicide, and I think that's something a lot of people who've known someone who've done this struggle with. The idea that, maybe, if they'd done the right thing or said the right thing, maybe they could have saved their friend. It's a difficult needle to thread. I think this game does quite well, with the subject. Firstly, the creator makes it clear that the game was inspired by a personal experience so, while she doesn't go into detail, I'm inclined to give her more leeway, and take the story as her working through her own personal feelings, which makes it feel far less like she's making any kind of grand statement about how to handle the issue. She's working through how she handled this very specific event, or how she imagines handling it, or what else might have happened, and she's inviting us to go along with her.
Secondly, there is some evidence that feeling suicidal, hitting the absolute rock bottom of deciding to do it, is...well, I'm going to need to explain this a little more, or it will sound completely wrong. Imagine your mood, general feeling of wellbeing, is something out of ten. Say, most people without mental health issues, are generally at about a five. Some things can make them feel happy or elated, or make them feel sad, but it's hard to keep feeling intense emotions over a time period, so your mood will generally go back to about five. If you're depressed, your mood might start to slip down, so your average is a two or three. That might mean that everything feels harder, like something that would normally only take you down a point or two is taking you down to one or even zero - because you're starting from a lower point - which is the danger zone. What I wanted to say at the start of this paragraph is, there's some evidence that hitting zero is temporary, like, for example, the fact that suicide rates for all groups decreased when kitchen ovens changed so they could no longer be used to gas yourself. Having this little roadblock, that made the decision slighter harder to go through with, meant that more people didn't go through with it. They waited a few days, and their mood was able to recover to a two or a three and then some of them obtained help and/or their circumstances changed, and they were able to take themselves out of the danger zone over a long period. Other people - because the suicide rate didn't drop to zero - will have stayed with a general mood at a two or three, and there will have been things that dropped them to zero over and over until one of them was the time they actually went through with it. I am not any kind of qualified medical professional, and this is not a professional opinion, this is just something that makes sense to me. In the game - spoilers - the main character can choose to spend the afternoon talking to her roommate, realising she's depressed, and can then help her find professional help in the long term so she's able to work through her depression. I think it's very important that the creator mentioned the professional help aspect because, as she says, you cannot be responsible for another person's mental health full time. Even with the best of intentions, you're not qualified, and it's dangerous for both of you. In doing this, the main character is helping to take her roommate out of her zero mood for the day, and then helps her to find long-term help to deal with her depression so she's at lower risk of hitting zero over a longer time period, and that seems, to me, like a healthy story to illustrate how someone might help someone else deal with depression and suicidal feelings. An unhealthy story would be, for example, one that implied that the one afternoon's chat was all that was required, and then the problem just went away, or one that implied the main character had to make herself personal responsible for her roommate. It would be especially bad if the story further implied that the Power of Love was required to cure depression, because neither love nor depression work like that. Another story, One Hit Wonder, which deals with the aftermath of someone commiting suicide has one of her friends despairing over feeling like he wasn't there for her as much as he should be. Another character asks; how do you know that you weren't? How do you know how many times you called at just the right time, or popped round, or gave her something to look forward to? I think that's important.
I related to this game on something of a personal level because, in my first year of university, a neighbour of mine committed suicide. I didn't know him personally, but a flatmate of mine was dating a flatmate of his, and a friend of mine was friends with him. I saw him, talking to that friend, in the student bar a few hours before he went through with it, and I saw him carried out on a stretcher a few days later (...he wasn't found until his flatmates noticed the smell). I also attempted suicide myself, at the age of thirteen. Luckily, I was depressed due to circumstances - living with abusive parents - and I haven't felt that depressed since I was able to move out because I've never been in circumstances quite that bad since.
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