The intended audience of Prerequisites to Suicide is those who live with depression or suicidal ideation, yet often suffer in silence without understanding or hope. It is also for those who care about the suicidal but feel ill equipped to help due to a lack of understanding. The book is about the good, bad, and ugly of the often unfathomable pain, shame, and self-hate that the suicidal live with. The author’s personal experience surviving severe childhood abuse with resultant PTSD and major depressive disorder is what gives him the authority to address the issue, more so than a career in counseling. He discusses the areas in one’s life that lead to the act of suicide, which include many choices made that could be done differently. These “prerequisites” tend to be universal in the author’s understanding.
Making small changes can influence the trajectory of a depressed person’s life or death. The author is a suicide survivor.
About the Author
The author, Joe Barrett, was primarily raised in a small, logging town in Oregon called Cottage Grove. He was raised with terror and pain along with his siblings. Emotional abuse was extreme and led to much self-hate and pain to all who lived in the home. The author joined the Navy at eighteen and became a medic with Navy Special Ops. Upon his honorable discharge he began college and received two bachelor’s degrees in psychology and religion during which he took a year off to feed refugees in Thailand. Following college he received a Master of Divinity from a conservative seminary in Kentucky. He no longer can endorse American Christianity, and finds he can never believe in hell, though he has lived there most of his life. He was a minister and a chaplain.
He left the ministry to be an addiction therapist, family therapist, and batterer intervention provider. His most rewarding work was as a treatment liaison to Family Court as well as Veterans Court. He worked until early retirement from the VA at fifty-eight due to a major depressive disorder with suicidal ideation.
