Finding out about death on Facebook

My Friday should have been a typical one, work, have a drink after work, go home.

Instead, filled with flu I headed out to a very early morning meeting in Pretoria and then headed home to work on the couch.

This meant that I only logged on to my facebook in the afternoon. This was where I found out that yet another one of my friends had died.
A bit of further investigation revealed that he had taken his own life. The day after his birthday.

Now I understand that social media is the way of the future in terms of information dissemination, just look at the latest earthquake in Japan and all the consumer generated content that was then broadcast across the traditional media channels.

I am however feeling quite freaked out about the amount of friends I have lost over the last year or so and found out about their death via Facebook.
This time however, I have had a sleepless night about why? Not why did he do it, but why did no one step in and do more to help him deal with his depression.

Rob was recently dealing with a break-up of his relationship and for months he has been posting very tragic messages on Facebook about his feelings, which were obviously him reaching out. I had been in contact with him sending him songs that I would listen to and make me feel better about my own break-up. He seemed to be coming out of the deep depression, going out more and showing more joy in his posts. Unfortunately, in hindsight, he was just covering up.

I am not close enough to him to know what triggered the final decision to end his life except his birthday.

My concern however is peoples shock and horror at finding out that he had committed suicide. There are always signs. In hindsight, we can always see the signs. People start pulling back from friends and family, spending more and more time alone. It has become common for people who are feeling low and isolated to broadcast their pain on social media.

I have lost the trust of my nephew who was displaying the exact posts and pain that Rob was displaying. The difference is I spoke to my brother who confronted him about his posts and depression. My nephew de-friended me on Facebook, so I could not see his post anymore. I can only hope that I managed to save him from killing himself then and we can only hope that he has been thought to think of the pain he would leave behind if he ever did decide to take his own life. Maybe one day when he is older we can maybe discuss it and he can see that my intentions were not to alienate him or sell him out, but that my intentions were good. For his own good.

So today, I am going to ask everyone to take a good look at the people around you. Hug them, kiss them, tell them that you care and they mean so much to you. Open up that circle a little wider and find the people that might need you to tell them that too, to the people that might be feeling a bit down, sad, overwhelmed and hopeless. Today is the day you reach out.