The Neglected Suicide Epidemic1

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On a January morning six years ago, Jonny Benjamin walked halfway across the Waterloo Bridge2. Waterloo Bridge: 滑铁卢桥，英国伦敦一座跨越泰晤士河的桥梁，得名于1815年英国取得胜利的滑铁卢战役。, in London, stepped to the edge, and prepared to jump. Benjamin, who was then twenty, had just been given a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder;3. diagnosis: 诊断，诊断结论；schizoaffective disorder: 分裂情感性障碍，症状有出现幻觉、妄想及思维障碍，或躁狂发作及抑郁等等。he felt that all the days ahead were doomed. As he was about to leap from the bridge’s walkway, a stranger approached him, and began to talk. The man, who was about the same age, asked Benjamin to join him for a cup of coffee. “It’ll get better, mate,” the stranger said. “You will get better.”

Benjamin didn’t jump. As the years went on, he forgot the name of the man who had persuaded him to go on living. This January,to help raise awareness of mental-health issues, Benjamin—with the support of celebrities like Stephen Fry, Boy George, and David Cameron—launched a social-media campaign to find the man he had nicknamed Mike.4. 今年一月，为了提高人们对精神疾病的认识，本杰明在史蒂芬·弗莱、乔治男孩和戴维·卡梅伦等名人的支持下，通过社交网站开展了一次搜寻活动——寻找“迈克”（这是他为救命恩人取的昵称）；campaign: （专为某一目的的）活动，运动。“I didn’t expect to find him,” Benjamin told theGuardian. “It felt like looking for a needle in a haystack.5. look for a needle in a haystack:大海捞针。I couldn’t remember anything about him.” But millions of people shared the story online; the hashtag “FindMike” was among Twitter’s trending keywords in the United Kingdom and as far a field as South Africa,Australia, and Canada.6. hashtag: 标签；far a field: 在远方，广泛的。The Good Samaritan’s girlfriend saw the plea on Facebook and encouraged her boyfriend to go public.7. the good Samaritan: 仁慈的撒玛利亚人。该词的典故来源于《圣经》，引申义为“心地善良的人，乐善好施者”；plea:请愿。He did, and the two men met once again—this time with a hug.

Mike is Neil Laybourn, a thirty-one-year-old native of Surrey who works as a personal trainer.8. Surrey: 萨里郡，英格兰东南部的一个郡；personal trainer:私人教练，个人健身教练。He still walks over the Waterloo Bridge on his commute9. commute: 通勤，定期往返。, a daily reminder of that day, six years ago, when he saved a man’s life simply by asking him to talk. The connection wasn’t even so hard: it turns out that the two men grew up ten minutes away from each other. But it was Laybourn’s basic sense of compassion,Benjamin said, that did the trick: “When he came along it burst the bubble of that world I was in. I felt faith, like I could talk to him.”10. compassion: 同情，怜悯；do the trick: 达到效果，发生效力；burst: 使爆炸，使胀破；bubble:泡影，幻影。

A week after Benjamin was reunited with Laybourn,Le Monde,the leading newspaper on the other side of the English Channel,published the results of a medical study of French fifteen-year-olds,which revealed that almost twenty-one per cent of girls and nine per cent of boys reported attempting suicide in the past year.11. 本杰明和莱伯恩重聚首之后一周，英吉利海峡对岸的著名报纸《世界报》刊登了一项医学研究的结果。该研究在法国15岁青少年中间进行调查，发现几乎有20%的女孩和9%的男孩在去年都曾有过自杀未遂的经历。Le Monde:《世界报》，法国第二大全国性日报，在法语国家和地区极具影响力，国际知名度颇高；English Channel: 英吉利海峡，是分隔英国与欧洲大陆的海峡。That’s a shocking number, and it speaks to12. speak to: 证明，为……作证。a global trend. In the United States, suicide rates have risen, particularly among middle-aged people: between 1999 and 2010, the number of Americans between the ages of thirty- five and sixty-four who took their own lives rose by almost thirty per cent. Among young people in the U.S., suicide is the third most common cause of death; among all Americans, suicide claims more lives than car accidents, which were previously the leading cause of injury-related death.

不算不知道，一算吓一跳：世界卫生组织公布的数据显示，全球范围内每40秒就有一人自杀身亡。45年来，全世界的自杀率上升了60%，这并不包括自杀未遂的情况，自杀未遂发生的频次比自杀身亡要高出20倍。这些数字，是丧钟，亦是警钟。从此刻起，让我们扪心自问：我们对引起自杀这一高危险性全球疾病的心理、社会、生物、文化和环境因素是否具备了基本认识和预防意识？我们如何才能进行有效干预，拯救宝贵的生命呢？

In May 2013, citing the “substantial” rise in suicide among the middle-aged, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described suicide as “an increasing public health concern.”13. cite: 提出，举出；Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:美国疾病控制与预防中心。作为美国的政府机构，该中心为保护公众健康和安全提供可靠的资料，通过与国家卫生部门及其他组织的有力的伙伴关系来进行增进健康的决策，促进公民健康。That realization has begun to spread: in the same month,Newsweekran a cover article called “The Suicide Epidemic,” noting that, around the world,self-harm takes “more lives than war, murder, and natural disasters combined.” In America, these numbers—which many experts believe are lower than the actual figures, owing to under-reporting—cannot simply be attributed to the toll of a long recession, or increasing gun ownership: clinical depression is also on the rise.14. owing to: 由于，因为；toll: 损失，代价；recession: 经济衰退，经济不景气；clinical depression: 临床抑郁症，亦被称为重性抑郁症，这种精神疾病会对患者的家庭、工作、学习、日常饮食与睡眠等身体功能产生负面影响。Suicide rates declined in the nineteen-nineties, but since 1999 more Americans have killed themselves each year than in the one before.

Alan Berman, the executive director of the American Association of Suicidology and the president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention, has said that in the developed world ninety per cent of those who attempt suicide suffer from psychological ailments.15. psychological: 心理上的，精神性的；ailment:（身心或精神的）失调，疾病。“We have effective treatments for most of these,” Berman said last year. “But the tragedy is, people die from temporary feelings of helplessness—things we can help with.” The relentless intensity of those feelings has always been dif ficult to convey to those who have not experienced them.16. 那些感情（无助感）是如此强烈，如此残酷，以至于一直难以传达给那些没有亲身经历过的人们。relentless:残酷的，无情的；intensity: 强度，强烈；convey: 传达，表达。This is why Jonny Benjamin now works with a British nonpro fit called Rethink Mental Illness, whose mission is to provide support to those contemplating17. contemplate: 计划，打算。suicide—to help them in the same way that Neil Laybourn helped Benjamin walk away from the edge of a bridge.

In 2003, Tad Friend wrote inNew Yorkerabout the Golden Gate Bridge18. Golden Gate Bridge: 金门大桥，美国旧金山市的地标。它跨越连接旧金山湾和太平洋的金门海峡。, which had been identi fied as the “world’s leading suicide location.” The iconic status of the span19. span: 跨度。此处指金门大桥的桥墩跨距，建成时曾是世界上跨距最大的悬索桥。, and its majestic view, seemed to draw jumpers to its walkway. “Several people have crossed the Bay Bridge to jump from the Golden Gate; there is no record of anyone traversing the Golden Gate to leap from its unlovely sister bridge,”20. Bay Bridge: 此处指旧金山－奥克兰海湾大桥（San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge），当地人多简称为海湾大桥（Bay Bridge），是一座位于美国旧金山湾区，连接旧金山、耶尔巴布埃纳岛和奥克兰的桥梁，是目前世界上最宽的桥梁；traverse: 穿过，走过。Friend wrote.

A local California doctor named Jerome Motto told Friend that he has participated in several efforts to erect a suicide barrier on the bridge,21. erect: 竖立，支起；barrier: 障碍物，屏障。after one of his patients killed himself there in 1963. But the jump that had most touched him took place the following decade. “I went to this guy’s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,”Motto recalled. “The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare22. bare:（房间等）无装饰的，空的。apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau23. bureau: （有抽屉的）写字台，办公桌。. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’ ”

This, of course, is what Neil Laybourn did for Jonny Benjamin. Writing after their reunion, Benjamin said:

I wanted to let people know that it’s OK to have suicidal thoughts and feelings, and that in fact it is a very human experience. I also hoped to show people that through talking about it, and by having someone else listen, it is possible to overcome the darkness that overwhelms a person when they feel helpless. This is something that I learned from my exchange with Neil on the bridge six years ago, and a message that I’ve been trying to pass on to others.

The feelings that drive people toward suicide can be treated—in Jonny Benjamin’s terms, the bubble of that bleak24. bleak: 无望的，暗淡的。world can be burst. But, despite the numbers and the losses,suicide is a phenomenon we push away, we mystify, even—it must be said—romanticize, as if science cannot begin to confront its cause.25. 然而，面对着那些关于自杀的数据和那些逝去的生命，我们仍拒绝谈论自杀这一现象，我们将其神秘化，甚至——我必须要指出来——浪漫化，就好像科学无法探其根源似的。We invoke the brilliance and torment of women like Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, in whose suicides we see mystical forces that speak of the suffering of artists.26. 我们援引弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫和希薇亚·普拉斯这两位女作家的才华满溢与痛苦挣扎作例子；在她们的自杀身亡中，我们看到了一股展示艺术家们痛苦悲歌的神秘力量。invoke: 援引，提出；Virginia Woolf: 弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫（1882—1941），英国女作家，被誉为20世纪现代主义与女性主义的先锋，代表作有小说《黛洛维夫人》、散文《属于自己的房间》等；Sylvia Plath: 希薇亚·普拉斯（1932—1963），美国诗人、小说家，代表作有传记小说《钟形罩》等；speak of: 为……提供证据，证明。We’ve diagnosed something similar in the recent death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, from a drug overdose, in order to make sense of, to celebrate, his art.27. Philip Seymour Hoffman: 菲利普·西摩·霍夫曼（1967—2014），美国演员、导演，2005年以传记电影《柯波帝：冷血告白》获得奥斯卡最佳男主角奖；drug overdose: 服药过量，吸毒过量；celebrate:歌颂，赞美。

When the writer Primo Levi28. Primo Levi: 普里莫·莱维（1919—1987），意大利化学家、小说家。莱维是纳粹大屠杀的幸存者。代表作有《如果这是一个人》、《休止》等。killed himself, in 1987, a great many scholars of the period were concerned and confused. Alfred Kazin found it dif ficult to reconcile “a will to blackness and self-destruction in a writer so happy and full of new projects.”29. 阿尔弗雷德·卡津觉得很难理解“一位如此快乐、拥有许多新项目的作家怎么会走向黑暗与自我毁灭”。Alfred Kazin:阿尔弗雷德·卡津（1915—1998），美国作家、文学批评家；reconcile: 使和谐，使一致。Another identi fied “a sudden uncontrollable impulse.” But William Styron30. William Styron: 威廉·斯泰隆（1925—2006），美国小说家、散文家。代表作有《苏菲的选择》和下文提到的《看得见的黑暗：走过忧郁症的心路历程》。, who had not yet writtenDarkness Visible, offered a different view inthe Times:

To those of us who have suffered severe depression—myself included—this general unawareness of how relentlessly the disease can generate an urge to self-destruction seems widespread; the problem badly needs illumination31. illumination: 启示，启蒙。. Suicide remains a tragic and dreadful act, but its prevention will continue to be hindered, and the age-old stigma against it will remain, unless we can begin to understand that the vast majority of those who do away with themselves—and of those who attempt to do so—do not do it because of any frailty, and rarely out of impulse, but because they are in the grip of an illness that causes almost unimaginable pain.32. 自杀一直被视为一种不幸的、可怕的行为，但自杀预防仍会继续受到阻碍，由来已久的偏见仍会继续存在，除非人们开始去了解那些自杀者以及自杀未遂者，他们中绝大多数人并不是因为脆弱，也绝少是出于一时冲动而这样做，而是因为一种疾病紧紧攫住了他们，使他们遭受了常人几乎无法想象的痛苦。hinder: 妨碍，阻碍；stigma: 耻辱，污名；frailty: 脆弱，意志薄弱。It is important to try to grasp33. grasp: 理解，了解。the nature of this pain.

Faced with the hardened refusal to understand Levi’s death,and the will to explain it as exceptional, Styron remarked that “the overwhelming majority of survivors have chosen to live, and what is of ultimate importance to the victim of depression is not the cause but the treatment and the cure.”34. exceptional: 例外的，罕见的；ultimate:根本的，首要的。

The language here is essential: treatment and cure, because this is a disease that can be diagnosed and managed. This is broadly understood now, but still some part of us keeps alive the stigma and the romantic strangeness, refusing to hear what Styron knew.