On virtue signaling during Suicide Awareness Month.
In the last five years, I have lost two of my friends to suicide.
Short. Brief. Final.
There were no proper goodbyes. No final conversations that could prepare me for their absence. One day, they were here; the next, they were not. And to this day, I still find myself wondering whether I could have done more. Whether I was a good enough friend to convince them to stay. Whether I could have alleviated some of the burden that made living unbearable. Whether there was something beyond talking that I could have done to help.
Sometimes, I feel as though I was merely masquerading as their friend, standing by with my hands tied behind my back while they suffered. I know I was neither their only friend nor necessarily their closest one. I know that their lives were never mine to control. But none of that changes the fact that they are gone, and I am still here, left to wonder what I failed to see.
Last September, we had an entire month dedicated to suicide awareness, with World Suicide Prevention Day falling on September 10. Yet my frustration with this annual observance has less to do with the concept of awareness itself than with how people choose to participate in it.
“You are loved.”
“There is so much to live for.”
“Talk to your loved ones.”
Every year, social media becomes saturated with these familiar phrases. They are posted over pastel backgrounds, accompanied by ribbons, hearts, and carefully selected words intended to convey compassion. For a moment, everyone appears to care. Everyone appears to understand. Everyone appears to be an advocate for a cause that deserves far more attention than it receives during the
other eleven months of the year.
But how much of it is genuine?
Too often, suicide awareness becomes another opportunity for virtue signaling: a convenient way to present oneself as compassionate, socially conscious, and morally upright without having to engage with the uncomfortable reality behind the message. People share the same recycled quotes, collect the approval of like-minded audiences, and move on with their lives. The performance is complete. The obligation to care, apparently, has been fulfilled.
What bothers me is not that people talk about suicide. It is that some people seem more interested in being seen talking about it than in understanding what they are talking about.
How do they know that suicidal people are loved? How do they know that those people have so much to live for? How can they confidently tell someone to reach out to their loved ones when they have no idea whether those loved ones are safe, available, or even part of the problem?
These statements may sound comforting to the person posting them. They may even be well intentioned. But intention alone does not make a message meaningful, and a comforting sentiment does not automatically become helpful advice simply because it is repeated often enough.
For someone who feels profoundly isolated, being told that they are loved can feel less like reassurance and more like a reminder of everything they cannot feel. Being told that there is so much to live for does not magically make the future look bearable. And being told to reach out means very little to someone who has already tried, only to be dismissed, misunderstood, or abandoned.
The problem is not that these words are always wrong. The problem is that people use them as though they are universally applicable, as though a complicated human crisis can be addressed with a handful of sentences designed to fit neatly into a social media post.
Worse still, some people are willing to express concern for suicidal individuals in public while having little patience for them in private.
The truth is that supporting someone in psychological distress can be exhausting. It requires time, patience, emotional energy, and a willingness to remain present when there are no easy answers. Sometimes, it means listening to the same fears repeatedly. Sometimes, it means confronting the uncomfortable reality that affection alone cannot fix another person's suffering. Sometimes, it means admitting that you do not know what to say and choosing to stay anyway.
Not everyone has the capacity to provide that kind of support, and I do not believe that everyone should be expected to sacrifice their own well-being to save another person. There must be boundaries. There must be room for exhaustion. Nobody can single-handedly carry another person's entire life.
But there is a difference between acknowledging one's limitations and pretending to care about a subject while refusing to look beyond its most convenient talking points.
If you cannot help someone, you can still be honest about that. You can direct them toward professional support. You can learn to recognize warning signs. You can share reliable resources. You can stop treating their suffering as an inconvenience that disappears once you have exhausted your patience.
And if you are unwilling or unable to do any of those things, perhaps you should at least question why you feel the need to make your compassion so publicly visible.
There is another peculiar form of self-importance in the way people approach these awareness campaigns. Sharing an official awareness poster or a reliable source of information might genuinely help someone recognize a warning sign or find support. Yet some people seem more interested in composing their own grand declarations of empathy, making themselves the centerpiece of an issue that has nothing to do with them.
The message becomes less about the people who are suffering and more about the person who wants everyone to know that they care.
At that point, awareness becomes branding. Compassion becomes an aesthetic. Human suffering becomes an opportunity to cultivate a more flattering image of oneself.
And when the month ends, the ribbons disappear from timelines, the carefully worded captions are forgotten, and everyone returns to business as usual. The people who were suicidal in September may still be suicidal in October. The people who felt alone during an awareness campaign may remain alone long after its hashtags have disappeared.
Suicide does not operate on an annual schedule. Neither does depression. Neither does grief.
Mental illness is not always poetic. Suffering does not always produce an inspiring lesson. It is ugly, repetitive, frustrating, and difficult to understand. Sometimes, people suffer without being able to explain why. Sometimes, the people who love them cannot reach them, no matter how desperately they try.
No amount of hearts, ribbons, or inspirational typography can make these realities more comfortable.
That is precisely why genuine engagement matters. From those who can share their experience about their lowest point. From those who can share their experience dealing with suicidal people. From those who actually write emotionally-conscious posts.
Will that help suicidal people better? Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact that they put their effort and not reducing the awareness to ‘who can virtue signal the most’ is enough.
It asks more of us than the performance of concern. It asks us to learn when we do not understand, to listen when we cannot relate, and to recognize the limits of our own perspective. It asks us to understand that awareness is not simply knowing that suicide exists. It is acknowledging the people affected by it without reducing their experiences to a collection of easily digestible slogans.
I cannot say that better awareness would have saved my friends. I cannot know whether a different conversation, a different response, or a different version of myself would have changed anything. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
But I know that losing them has left me with questions that no social media post can answer. I know that grief does not disappear because someone has declared that life is beautiful. And I know that the last thing a serious conversation about suicide needs is another person congratulating themselves for participating in it.
If Suicide Awareness Month means anything, it should mean more than reminding everyone that suicide exists. It should mean making an effort to understand the people behind the statistics, the suffering behind the warning signs, and the realities behind the words we so casually repeat.
You do not have to be a savior. You do not have to possess the perfect words. You do not even have to understand everything that a suicidal person is experiencing.
But if you claim to care, let that care amount to something beyond being seen.
Because some people are still here, struggling to find a reason to stay. Some are trying to ask for help without knowing how. Some have already reached out and been turned away. And some, like my friends, are no longer here to hear what we have to say.
They deserved more than words that sounded good.
They deserved to be taken seriously while they were still alive.
