How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention by Susan Rose Blauner

How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention by Susan Rose Blauner

NOW WITH A NEW CHAPTER AND AN UPDATED RESOURCES SECTION

Suicide has touched the lives of nearly half of all Americans, yet it is rarely talked about openly. In her highly acclaimed book, Susan Blauner--a survivor of multiple suicide attempts--offers guidance and hope for those contemplating ending their lives and for their loved ones.

Each word written with thoughtful intent; each story told with the deepest of honesty and humility, and in doing so Blauner puts forward a life-saving book.--Daniel J. Reidenberg, PsyD, Executive Director, Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (www.save.org)

I continued to romanticize my death by suicide: who would find me; what I'd look like. I spent hundreds of hours planning my funeral, imagining the remorse of my family and friends. I wrote good-bye letters, composed wills, and disrupted the lives of everyone close to me. Then reality hit.--Susan Rose Blauner

The statistics on suicide are staggering. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 800,000 people die by suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds, and for each completed suicide there may be twenty or more attempts.

In How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me, Susan Blauner is the perfect emissary for a message of hope and a program of action for these millions of people. A survivor of multiple suicide attempts, she explains the complex feelings and fantasies that surround suicidal thoughts. In a direct, nonjudgmental, and loving voice, she offers affirmations and suggestions for those experiencing life-ending thoughts, and for their friends and family.

With an introduction by Bernie Siegel, M.D., this important, timely book has now been updated with a revised resources section, and a new chapter on the author's experiences since the book's initial publication.

Susan Rose Blauner, MSW, LCSW, is a writer, motivational speaker, artist, performer, and educator who works to shift people's perceptions about suicide ideation, behavior, and mental illness. She received the Survivor of the Year Award for Outstanding Innovation in Suicide Prevention from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in 2002, and she turned eighteen years of suicidal thoughts, three suicide gestures, many psychiatric hospitalizations, and decades of counseling into the life-saving resource, How I Kept Alive While My Brain Was Attempting to Kill Me: One Person's Guidance. Susan travels across the United States giving motivational keynotes and seminars to help de-stigmatize mental illness, educate practitioners, first responders, and military people, and empower individuals and families affected by mental illness and suicide. She's appeared on Good Morning America, American Family, and in the film A Secret Best Not Kept. Susan earned a master's degree in social work from Simmons College in 2015, at the age of 50, after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and undergoing two surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation.

She now resides in New England with her dog, Fiona, and strives to improve her quality of life. Visit www.susanblauner.com for additional details.