Citation

Campo R. J. Am. Med. Assoc. JAMA 2024; 331(10): e889.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, American Medical Association)

DOI

10.1001/jama.2023.27993

PMID

38470382

Abstract

With the US suicide rate reaching a new high in 2022, poetry--especially that of John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and other confessional poets who wrestled with intense emotion before ending their lives--seems ever more relevant. In "Aftermath,"1 the speaker describes the harrowing suicide of a patient in the hospital, her matter-of-fact tone belying the shock of self-harm happening in the very place devoted to care and healing. The middle-stanza lyrical dream wishes somehow to reverse the mortal injury. It comprises long lines and extended between-stanzas silences, which seem to provide breathing room for reflection, demonstrating how poetry imaginatively and structurally can articulate the longing to comprehend and prevent suicide. The act of poem-making itself after this traumatic event further illustrates the utility of what could be considered a form of written expression therapy, a modality increasingly used to treat posttraumatic stress disorder.2 We might even wonder if the nurse-poet, in processing her own grief through writing, in turn imagines whether her patient might have been saved by writing himself. The poem's devastating last line seems a warning to us to do more: the burnout implied in the dispirited "Some of us cry. All of us get back to work." may be itself a risk factor for suicidal ideation3,4 and demands care and attention from our colleagues and workplaces, not least the opportunity to speak and write about experiences of powerlessness.

Language: en

Keywords

*Suicide; Humans