Description

Suicide, Attempted Suicide and
Self-Harm Recovery
By Katy Sara Culling

ISBN: 9781849913690
Published: 2010
Pages: 151
Key Themes: manic depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, suicide, recovery

Description

A serious pro-survival, pro-recovery book, written because I have been the survivor of many suicide attempts, not to forget also the person left behind after actual suicides, and the victim of serious self-harm in myself and those I love. I have not attempted suicide or self-harmed for 8 years and I do not plan to do so again, but I always have my plan to hand.

Starting at the age of 11, I have attempted suicide 443 times, sometimes barely surviving, twice dying, only to be revived and for fifteen years I was a person who self-harmed, cutting and bloodletting, sometimes as self-harm, sometimes as a suicide attempt. The two are definitely linked but not all self-harm is suicidal, not all suicide attempts are meant to kill, and sadly about one million people kill themselves every year, not all of them meaning to. As I have also been the victim left behind when someone I loved took their own life, I really can see the issue from all perspectives. Allow me to fill you in on my personal experience first of all, so you know you are talking to someone who really has been there before herself. Pull up a chair, or sit back in bed, and we will talk.

About the Author

Katy Sara Culling was born in Liverpool, North England, in January 1975, sharing her birth date rather aptly with Virginia Woolf. Daughter of Sue and Paul Culling, her family moved back to its roots in Derbyshire, where she grew up along with her younger sister Beth, in the village of Castle Donington, on the Derbyshire-Leicestershire border. However, even as young as 5 she exhibited symptoms of bipolar disorder manic depression, leading her to be loud and talkative, often in trouble. She also worried a great deal about death to an extent that is very unusual in one as young as she was. Not just her own death either.

She attended a private school for girls, Loughborough High School, where she was an extremely high achieving student. Unfortunately, due to bullying and also to numb her rampant mania and depression, she developed anorexia nervosa and began to self-harm. She found that the anorexia and self-harming took over her life and made coping with mood swings easier because she did not feel their full effect anymore.