Originally posted on MySpace in June 2006 

            Suicide, suicide attempts, and suicide gestures arose again and again as part of my life and horribly, part of my children's lives. While I may discuss philosophy and social impact of suicide (and everyone knows how I love to discuss) dealing with suicide is part of my life.  There is an emotional context I cannot escape, especially when I look at my children.

            Patricia's first suicide gesture occurred during the first year of our marriage and gestures occurred every two or three years for the rest of our marriage. After our divorce, she made as many as six attempts between 2003 and 2006.

            Patricia's brother Jeff committed suicide twelve years ago. We left Glen with some friends while we took Jessica and attended the funeral. Jeff's death occurred shortly after his divorce and after he lost custody and visitation with his three-year-old son.

            There are days I look at my children and simply cannot imagine how all of this affects them, a mother in jail, a mother in and out of the hospital with suicide attempts, a mother that worked very hard to insure the children felt her pain and shared it.

            My children are victims of their mother's involvement with suicide acts.

            Everyone with direct experience with Patricia believes that she will eventually end her own life; the question is if she will attempt to see if the children and I precede her.

            There, that is the personal side.

            I believe our story illustrates that, more often then not, suicide is a social event. In most cases, taking your own life impacts others. The gesture, the attempt, or the success impacts your family, friends, your old high school English teacher, and others you cannot imagine.

             I concede there are those among us that live in a social vacuum; their acts do not impact a great deal further then the acts of Society to pronounce their death and to throw dirt on their grave.

            Society often acts on individuals as restraints on the minority. Murder laws are meaningless to the majority of individuals, they are written to address the few of us who require them. This is a general function, not absolute, and I reject its application to suicide. 

            I am not discussing the individual's right or lack of right to commit suicide. In the majority of States, attempting suicide is a crime. Despite my personal involvement, I always considered these laws somewhat nonsensical. Again, this is not my focus; I am looking at society and suicide.

            I focus on a single question is suicide a private act?  Given the social aspect of the act, how does Society define questions of privacy, victimization, and Society's involvement?

Suicide and Mental Illness

             First, let us consider the relationship between suicide and mental illness. Ancient Romans and Japanese cultures would promptly point out that the relationship between suicide and mental illness often does not exist. In both these cultures suicide often proved an act of intelligence or bravery, not mental illness. There are also those acts of courage within our own society where the hero sacrifices his or her own life to save others. Finally, there is suicide in the face of terminal illness.

            I conclude that suicide is not always the result of mental illness, but how do the issues of privacy and society impact suicide when it is a function of mental illness?

            This question is part of an emerging area of thought and focus within our society. By definition, personal issues of health, to include mental illness, are assumed to be protected by privacy concerns.  Recent regulations finally putting the 1996 HIPAA law into effect are pushing this change. No longer can you call a hospital and find out if your friend is in the emergency room.

I will point out these regulations and statutes are specific to the actions of those within the healthcare industry, healthcare providers and insurance companies. The hospital is prohibited by HIPAA from telling you about your friend, but there is no law prohibiting you from telling others about your friend's hospitalization.

There are thousands of examples where there is no expectation of privacy regarding one's struggle with mental illness.

An excellent example is when an individual brings their own mental illness to the public; take the recent individual in Santa Fe who filed a restraining order against talk show host David Letterman. She filed the paperwork and testified at a hearing about how Letterman invaded her mind and other issues.

A depressing example is when mental illness results in horrible events. The recent murder of two Albuquerque Police Officers picking up an individual for a mental health evaluation.

Little, if anything about the suspect in these murders is private, unlike Patricia he has not been convicted, the history is out there for all of us to look at and evaluate.

The ancient pattern common to the discussion of individuals and society emerges. Our freedom speech extends only so far -- falsely yelling "Fire" in a crowed theater is an example. Your right to swing your arms ends where another individual's nose begins. Your right to privacy regarding your mental illness ends as it impacts others.

I am sort of shaking my head about the debate over Kendra's Law, a proposed law that would allow a judge to order you into mental health counseling. Anyone going through a difficult divorce knows that judges order people into mental health treatment all the time, Judge Jewell ordered every member of my family with the possible exception of Montie into mental health treatment and the entire family partook in two and an attempted third psychological evaluation labeled as a custody evaluation.

While the Court seals the actual evaluation, the psychologist's verbal report is not sealed and is public record. Both oral reports on the psychologist's opinion on my family's mental health are available for any member of the public to review.

This is an example of where information about my children's mental health is available without the consent of my children, their parents, or the court appointed Guardian Ad Litem.

These professional opinions proved of such low quality and high inaccuracy that I do not worry about the public aspect, but I am not arguing the right or wrong of the issue. I am pointing out the reality. This information is legally out there whether I approve or not. 

Back to suicide as an aspect of mental illness, how an individual broke their arm may be a private matter, but the broken arm itself is difficult to keep private, unless you set it yourself and hide in a room until it heals. The reason why you attempted suicide may be private, but the fact that you made the attempt is often not.

Often your suicide attempt is a crime and if nothing else generates a police report. Even in states where it is not a crime, if the police are involved it is a public incident and a public police report is created. Two of these police reports concerning suicide gesture or attempts by Patricia in the last three years are such records.

            Suicide and its relationship to Domestic Violence

            Understanding the relationship between suicide and domestic violence proved a watershed for me. I was working toward understanding Patricia as an abuser and discovered the JEC Domestic Violence Benchbook at http://jec.unm.edu/resources/benchbooks/dv/ch_1.htm. The book is a New Mexico work dedicated toward educating the legal community on Domestic Violence.

            In a domestic violence situation, the abuser uses threats of suicide, suicide gestures, and suicide attempts as a method of controlling the victim, as a method of getting the victim to comply with the demands of the abuser.

            I described Patricia's history of suicide gestures in a letter to the Guardian Ad Litem in September of 2002 in which I request sole custody of the children:

Every two or three years, Patricia Rae Avery would threaten suicide. Her mother did this and she had one brother commit suicide. These incidents took the form of involving her current best friend in the crisis, having the best friend contact Stephen A. Avery and warn of the suicide threat, await Mr. Avery's intervention, and then pretend the incident had never occurred. The children were witness to several of these incidents, the latest in January of this year.

Initially, Patricia's suicide acts involved only me, when I became immune to this attempt at control; she expanded the audience to her current best friend as described above.  When I refused to respond to the involvement of her friend in the January incident, Patricia's next incident directly involved the children. All in the attempt to provoke a response and action by me in the classical abuse outlined in the benchbook.

The other classical involvement of suicide in domestic violence is the scary one --  murder/suicide. The abuser kills the victim and then kills herself (himself).

What are the privacy considerations when suicide acts are connected to Domestic Violence?

My response -- None.  Once an individual's acts are tied to Domestic Violence the protection of the victims outweighs the privacy of the abuser.

The overlap between mental illness and domestic violence complicates the issue in horrible ways. How often have we looked at acts of violence arising out of mental illness and been able to trace back to a progressive pattern of incidents leading to the final atrocity?

Suicide and the Media

            Time and time again, the Courts rule that public figures do not enjoy the same rights to privacy that private individuals do. This is easy with publicly elected officials but also applies to individuals that place themselves before the public.

            Look at the fuss with Brittany Spears and the evaluation by the State of California's Child Protective Services of her parenting abilities. Brittany, as a public entertainer, has less right to privacy then other less public figures.

Conclusion

            Suicide acts are not always a health issue, can be associated with domestic violence, and are subject to public scrutiny by those individuals before the public.

            Even when suicide acts are a component of mental illness, HIPAA address the actions of healthcare providers and insurance companies only.

            Surprisingly, New Mexico law, under very specific circumstances, allow for information that could include information on suicide acts to be privileged.

31-21-6. Protection of records. (1989)

All social records, including presentence reports, pre-parole reports and supervision histories, obtained by the board are privileged and shall not be disclosed directly or indirectly to anyone other than the board, director, sentencing guidelines commission or sentencing judge, but authorities of the institution in which the prisoner is confined shall have access to all records and reports concerning the prisoner, and the sentencing judge, board and director shall have access to all records concerning the prisoner. The board, in the case of parole records, and the sentencing judge, in the case of probation records, in their discretion, whenever the best interest or welfare of a particular probationer or prisoner makes such action desirable or helpful, may permit inspection of the reports, or parts thereof, by the probationer, prisoner or his attorney. The sentencing guidelines commission shall have access to the social records for statistical and policymaking purposes only and shall not release any information identifying any individual.

 Surprise, surprise this statue address the actions the New Mexico Parole Board or sentencing judge, but the statue only addresses their actions, not the actions of other private citizens associating with the Parole Board or sentencing judge.

            And as Ms. Ella Frank, Executive Director of the Parole Board, noted in regards to the Victim's Right section of the New Mexico Constitution, there is no provision for enforcing the statue.

            This is the foundation of why I feel free to communicate about Patricia's suicide acts.

• All of her acts impact the children for whom I have primary responsibility

• Although Patricia's suicide acts are arguably tied to her mental illness, her mental illness is a matter of public record through the actions of both the domestic court and the criminal court. I will never forget Rod Green from Channel 7 going on and on after Patricia's sentencing about her drug problems and the Judge's order for drug treatment, none of which was accurate and they corrected it before the next broadcast.

• The relationship between suicide and domestic violence is well established and our case history presents a strong history of Patricia utilizing suicide acts as an act of domestic violence. Patricia's criminal record records Patricia's conviction as a domestic violence crime. This it can be argued that Patricia's suicide acts are an essential and relevant aspect of her domestic violence history. This covers bother her unrepentant history as an abuser and the reality of murder/suicide profile when dealing with someone convicted of conspiring to kill me.

• Patricia's crime and my subsequent involvement of the media made us public figures and diminishes our right of privacy. Yes, this does belong at the bottom of my list.

Although, New Mexico law provides specific instructions to the Parole Board and sentencing judges regarding confidential information, this statute does not cover private citizens such as myself. The only relief available to Patricia, and Patricia only, is a private lawsuit filed by her against me.