Panel discussion explores the deeper roots of suicide, ways to prevent it

Eric Gudan, left, Peter Malinoski, Father Jerry Byrd and Jessica Inabnitt take part in a Sept. 12 panel discussion about suicide at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

Suicide is a tragically growing phenomenon in the U.S. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the suicide rate in the U.S. increased 35% between 1999 and 2018.

And according to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is becoming more prevalent among younger people. In 2023, it was the second leading cause of death of people between the ages of 10 and 34 and the fourth leading cause of death of people between the ages of 35 and 44.

The pro-life ministries of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish and St. John the Evangelist Parish, both in Indianapolis, hosted a discussion on the phenomenon of suicide during a Sept. 12 session of its pro-life film series.

The session, held at Holy Rosary, featured a 2022 Public Broadcasting System documentary Facing Suicide and a panel discussion afterward. On the panel were two Catholic psychologists, Peter Malinoski and Eric Gudan, both Holy Rosary parishioners; Father Jerry Byrd, Holy Rosary’s pastor; and Jessica Inabnitt, St. John’s wedding and events coordinator. Her son Tyler died by suicide when he was 18 in 2009.

‘Witnesses of hope’

The documentary told the stories of people who were on the verge of taking their lives and how their relationships with friends and relatives played a crucial role in their survival. It also explored neurological and social factors that can lead to people being at a greater risk of suicide.

Gudan appreciated how the documentary “talked about meaning and community” to help people “avoid despair” and how it portrayed people who were “witnesses of hope” in the lives of those considering suicide.

Malinoski remarked that a “big weakness” of the documentary was “its underlying anthropology, which was operating from an essentially secular perspective.”

He noted that the film’s exploration of suicide focused too much at “the end of the causal chain,” the factors and causes of suicide closest to the act of suicide itself.

“We need to actually go much further upstream,” Malinoski said. “When there are a lot of struggles around suicide, we’re dealing with real questions around identity. Who am I? Who is God? Who is my neighbor?”

These questions, he said, are best answered in the Catholic faith that helps people struggling with these questions find “greater interior integration.” Such integration prevents the troubled side of a person’s psyche from dominating and possibly leading to suicide

Father Byrd reflected on how the difficult issues of the people shown in the documentary are those that’s heard about often in the sacrament of penance and in his broader priestly ministry.

He wondered sadly if such people “know who Jesus is?”

“Do they know that they’re loved by God, that the Father delights in them and loves them as sons and daughters?” he asked. “Those are the questions that are going through my mind.

“For anybody that’s in a situation that seems so dark, I know where there’s light.”

‘The loneliest grief’

Inabnitt shared with the people at the film series session the dark places she found herself in after her son Tyler died by suicide in 2009.

“The grief of suicide is the loneliest grief that anybody will ever have to go through,” she said, “because the only person that you want to see or talk to at that moment is the person that is gone. And the only person that you can be mad at, because they are gone, is the person that’s gone.”

For her, the loss of her son also led to guilt, much like it does for many friends and relatives of those who have died by suicide.

“There’s so much guilt involved,” Inabnitt said. “Why didn’t I answer the phone? If I had just called five minutes before. All of that.”

At the time of her son’s death, she said that she and her son were largely inactive in their faith. After Tyler’s suicide, returning to the Church revived hope in Inabnitt.

“Early on, I knew that I couldn’t get through that without my faith and without being close to the Lord,” she recalled. “So, little by little, I started going to Mass every Sunday. And then, it was going to Mass more than just on Sundays.”

The life she found in her faith and taking part more and more in the life of the St. John community eventually led her to serving on its staff.

Now 16 years after Tyler’s death, Inabnitt is convinced that a secular and scientific approach alone is inadequate to solving the problem of suicide.

The focus that faith in general and the Catholic faith in particular puts on communion among people, she said, can be a factor to help individuals, families and communities avoid the tragedy of suicide.

“We need to dive deeper,” Inabnitt said. “We’re called by God to be present with Jesus in the Eucharist and then also to be present with each other.”

‘Everybody can be present to someone’

Gudan reflected on the factor of communion during the panel discussion.

“You have to have somebody who understands,” he said. “The desire to be understood and how much we need that as human persons is just really profound.

“We’re supposed to be good at that as therapists and psychologists, but everybody can be present to someone and hear them and understand them. And that’s a very powerful healing experience.”

Father Byrd added his own thoughts on the importance of personal connections with God and other people in the Catholic faith that can help people who are struggling and might be on the path to considering suicide.

“We’re united together on a physical level, a spiritual level and emotional level,” he said.

Suicide, Father Byrd went on, “breaks that person-to-person communion.”

“We’re created for union with God and union with each other,” he said. “We have that opportunity to assist each other in this life, and to receive that gift of the other person assisting us. And when we cut life short through suicide, it steals that away.”

He noted that the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that suicide is gravely contrary to the love of self, of others and of God. At the same time, Father Byrd discussed how the catechism also teaches that people have “reason to hope in God’s mercy” in the face of another person’s death by suicide. (See #2280-2283 for what the catechism teaches on suicide.)

“What’s going on in that moment [of suicide]?” Father Byrd wondered. “We’re not there in that moment. God is, and I can’t begin to presume on God’s mercy or God’s justice—one way or the other. So that’s why the catechism tells us to be hopeful toward his mercy.”

Malinoski and Gudan spoke of the difficulty of assessing the mental state of a person who dies by suicide.

“Thinking about [suicide] in specific cases invites trying to assess the state of a person’s soul, not just the state of their mind, but the state of their soul,” Gudan added. “That is always a really tricky thing.

“How free was the individual in the moment where that decision was taken? That gets to questions around how compromised was their capacity to understand what was going on? Sometimes when you are in a dark place like that, you get very much tunnel vision. How was the will in that situation?”

Malinoski spoke about how, through the years, he’s treated many people who struggle with substance addiction or who “have habitual difficulties in seeing things clearly,” people who might be at a high risk for suicide, noting that it can be hard to know the degree of true freedom such people have.

“I’m not sure where it’s at, but I try to help somebody take the next good step that they can,” Malinoski said. “We try to increase freedom and reduce internal and external pressures.”
 

(To learn more about Peter Malinoski and his clinical psychological practice, visit www.soulsandhearts.com. To learn more about Eric Gudan and his clinical psychological practice, visit www.integritaspsych.com. For a list of mental health support groups and vetted Catholic counselors, go to tinyurl.com/ArchIndyMentalHealth. For information on the You Are Not Alone ministry for survivors of suicide loss at Our Lady of Fatima Retreat House in Indianapolis, go to tinyurl.com/FatimaYANA. If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call the national suicide and crisis hotline at 988.) †