Suicide isn't painless

The people in Telford who taunted and laughed at a man who was preparing to plunge to his death from the top of a town centre car park are not sick, they are deluded.

They probably thought it was all a bit of a joke, almost like a scene from some new TV show: 'I'm a non-entity, I want to get out of here.'

They have clearly never known the consequences of such a death. I don't feel outraged, I feel sorry for them.

About 6,000 people kill themselves in this country every year. And each one is a tragedy.

My sister Gillian killed herself in 1999 when she was 42. It was terrible. I suppose I still haven't really got over it.Why she did it no-one really knows though it's fairly easy to piece together the clues. She'd had a series of setbacks. She was separated from her husband, she'd been in a relationship which was going nowhere, she'd lost a baby.

She had stopped taking anti-depressant pills – and coming off these, it is now clear, can be extremely dangerous. They do mess with your brain and when they are withdrawn you don't immediately get back to normal.

I think I blame them as much as anything, though there is no proof it was their fault.

Still, at some point, it would seem, she was simply overwhelmed by the pressures she was under and concluded there was only one way to deal with them.

Something very immediate must have pushed her over the edge even though. The day before her death, we had been at a family party and she seemed on good form.

Suicides, it seems to me, have no thought for anyone else because their minds are so filled with their own despair, their thoughts are so black and bleak there is nothing anyone can offer them that would help.

It is possible the people in Telford who were taking selfies with that poor man in the background thought it was such a stupid stunt he couldn't possibly mean it.

After all, those of us who are of reasonably sound mind and mildly cheerful disposition can't really understand the overwhelming darkness which must descend on someone on the verge of taking their own life.

It is no use thinking they might consider the people they leave behind, the people who love them. Because, as far as I can tell, they are, if anything, convinced their families and friends would be better off without them.

It's almost certainly not true but that is probably how they see it. Gill had three children as well as her wider family. They were, and remain, devastated by this loss.

They have had no choice but to get on with their lives. But it's been hard. Even now, not a day goes by when they don't think of her, wonder about her, wish she was still with us.

I know because I feel the same way. It is worse than the loss of friends or relatives through illness or old age because you know, pretty much for certain, that if only Gill had managed to get through the crisis which killed her, she would have gone on to live a happy and fulfilled life.

In the last couple of years, all Gill's three children have married. We have done our best to help make these weddings the great celebrations they ought to be. And they have all been joyful occasions.

But there is always one person missing, the regret at her absence and the thought of how proud she would have been to see her children all grown up and happy.

It is often said committing suicide is a selfish act. To some extent, that must be true. But when you get to the point where you are planning to take your own life, you're not thinking rationally so selfishness doesn't really come into it.

Occasionally, suicides are doing us all a favour. We are well rid of the mass murderer Fred West, for instance, who killed himself in jail before he could come to trial.

Sometimes killing yourself is a rational thing to do. If you suffer from a terminal illness, perhaps, and you can't bear the thought of the long-term deterioration it involves.

Generally, though, they are irrational and cannot be easily explained, which is why it is so painful for the people who are left behind.

Life is precious and few of us willingly throw it away. Those who are thinking about it certainly don't need the jeering encouragement of a baying mob of idiots taking selfies.

Even so, the idea the police should investigate these ghoulish spectators and take some sort of criminal action against them is faintly ridiculous.

I just hope these clowns never have to deal with a suicide in their own families. Then they would see how much of a joke it really is.