How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me: One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention

Written by Susan Rose Blauner and Bernie S. Siegel, MD

Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

"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 forty 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Apr 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666195842

Susan Rose Blauner

Susan Rose Blauner, MSW, LCSW, is a writer, motivational speaker, artist, singer, and educator who changes the way people think about suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior and mental disease. She is the 2002 recipient of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Survivor of the Year Award for Distinguished Creativity in Suicide Prevention and transformed eighteen years of suicidal ideation, three suicide gestures, multiple psychiatric hospitalizations and decades of therapy into the life-saving resource, How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me: One Person’s Guide to Suicide Prevention. Susan presents motivational keynotes and seminars throughout the United States designed to destigmatize mental illness; enlighten practitioners, educators, first responders and military personnel; and empower individuals and families affected by mental illness and suicide. She has appeared on Good Morning America, American Family, and in the documentary A Secret Best Not Kept. Following a 2008 breast cancer diagnosis, two surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation, Susan went on to earn a master’s degree in social work from Simmons College in 2015, at the age of 50. She now lives in New England with her dog, Fiona, and continues to find ways to enhance her enjoyment of life. For more information, visit www.susanblauner.com.