Welcome to my first blog.

David Webb is a friend and colleague as well as a survivor of many suicide attempts. He has recently written 'Thinking About Suicide: Contemplating and comprehending the urge to die.' 

The book is based loosely on David's PhD, the world's first PhD on suicide written by someone who has survived it. It is not an academic book, though David does have a cerebral approach to the issue. He writes of the absence of interest in first person accounts in the suicidology literature and he laments the general lack of respect for the intense anguish and 'crisis of self' that leads to the urge to die. Mental health services take little interest in the lived experience of suicidality and often dehumanise it with the rituals of diagnosis, treatment and coercive practices. He also criticises the code of silence around suicide that denies people safe spaces to tell their stories.

David then unravels the mystery of his own suicidality and his breakthrough to a life worth living. No, it wasn't antidepressants, psychotherapy, drug rehab or other mental health interventions that saved him from his own hand, but the insight he gained from his practice of gyan yoga - the yoga of self inquiry. He lost his long held urge to die when he surrendered himself to the silence at the heart of his being, beneath his mind and all thoughts. He suggests later that the silence may also be the black hole of his despair. The difference is that when he saw it as silence he faced it and found peace, but when he saw it as a black hole he ran from it and lost himself in terror.

It's difficult to capture such a deeply introspective work in a few lines. The book will help readers understand suicide from a first person perspective, and compel them to respect the perilous spiritual pathway into and beyond despair. 

Buy the book online at http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/product.php?xProd=528&xSec=116. Or visit David's website www.thinkingaboutsuicide.org