Rocks in My Pockets. Directed by Signe Baumane. New York: Zeitgeist Films, 2014. 88 minutes.

The S Word. Directed by Lisa Klein. Los Angeles: GOOD DOCS, 2017. 94 minutes.

Suicide is a topic with wide relevance to many disciplines, as well as being an issue that personally affects many. As such, having an awareness that suicide may affect some—if not all—students in any given classroom should be considered when screening either of the two films reviewed here. Suicide researchers have long drawn attention to the potential impacts of media portrayals of suicide: they can both enhance understanding and encourage help seeking (Papageno effect) and potentially generate increases in suicidal behaviour (what has long been known as the Werther effect—named for the eighteenth-century book, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which depicts the death of a young man, and was associated with a number of so-called copycat suicides at the time) (Niederkrotenthaler et al. 2010). Such debates became especially heated following the airing of Netflix’s adaptation of Ten Reasons Why (Niederkrotenthaler al. 2019; McKenzie et al. 2020). These potential effects are subject to significant debate but I raise them here because they are important to consider when introducing the topic of suicide to the classroom, and particularly when doing so via the medium of film.

The two films reviewed here share a concern with first-person accounts and subjective experiences of suicide and offer significant potential for learning, yet they contrast starkly in their approach and representation of suicide. Considering their different approaches and limitations, if treated carefully, will offer further arenas for fruitful debate and discussion among students.

Rocks in My Pockets is a quirky, surreal animated film directed, produced, and animated by Signe Baumane. Baumane shares a compelling story of the lives of herself and five women in her family—each of whom has encounters (mostly fatal) with suicide. The film begins with the story of her grandmother and weaves a fascinating story that touches on political upheaval, war, and gender relations in twentieth-century Latvia—raising important questions about the social and genetic determinants of suicide and “madness.” The title of the film originates in Baumane’s darkly humorous commentary about her grandmother’s (non-fatal) suicide by drowning when she had neglected to put “rocks in her pockets,” which might have made the attempt more effective. This wry aside, as well as the visceral opening of the film—which depicts another method of suicide and includes discussion of ways to make the method more “successful”—offer a challenge for the use of this film in the classroom.

Indeed, though I work on a daily basis with the topic of suicide, I was surprised to find myself shocked at the blunt and visceral depiction of methods in the opening minutes of Rocks in My Pockets. Portrayed via an animated rabbit, the impact was no less unsettling, delving straight into the embodied aspects of suicide practices: from “shitting and pissing” during death (2:00) to Baumane’s commentary on how to make a particular method more effective. Suicide prevention literature urges particular caution in depicting or discussing methods in detail. However, Baumane’s film is undoubtedly informed by her own intimate experiences, encounters, and reflections on suicide—and highlights that such caution can serve to shut down particular aspects of what is otherwise framed as essential and important, namely the lived experience of suicide.

The detailed discussions of suicide methods might make the film unsuitable for some student groups and contexts. In particular, I would be wary of sharing this film with younger students, with students who might not have access to broader support networks and services, or if there was limited space for post-screening discussion. The film may be more suitable for advanced courses—especially those addressing feminist/gender politics and mental health— and would be especially useful in opening up complex discussions around intersections between politics, history, gender, and mental illness. Helpful companion reading could include Joan Busfield’s classic Men, Women and Madness: Understanding Gender and Mental Disorder (1996) or broader reading on the medicalization of mental distress (Horwitz 2002; Rimke 2016)—since several of the stories Baumane portrays tackle the impact of medication and treatment on women’s lives and experiences.

The S Word provides a strong contrast to Rocks in My Pockets. While The S Word also focuses on personal perspective and lived experience of suicide, it is a documentary set in twenty-first-century United States and is much more directly engaged with suicide prevention (a topic interestingly absent from Rocks in My Pockets). In this sense, The S Word is useful for addressing mental health and illness, and particularly the role of “service user” or “lived experience” perspectives. The importance of the views and experiences of people who have direct experience with either a condition/issue (such as suicide) or mental health services (“service users”) is increasingly accepted within mental health fields more broadly. A companion here would be readings from “mad studies” and survivor- and service user–led researchers, such as Brenda LeFrançois (LeFrançois et al. 2013) and Diana Rose (2022). The S Word is also accompanied by a number of free resources specifically designed to support the public showing of the film or its use in classroom settings. Thus, there is a careful consideration in the materials—and the content of the documentary—that clearly reflects a concern with some of the debates noted above about the potentially harmful effects of sharing knowledge about suicide.

The documentary centers on photographer and activist Dese’Rae L. Stage, who is increasingly well known through her work on the Live Through This project and website. Stage’s story and journey—including ups as well as downs—helps ground and guide the narrative of the documentary, which encompasses the stories of several of the people Stage has photographed and interviewed over the years. This allows the film to feature a reasonably diverse set of voices and experiences with suicide—some of which suicide prevention research and discourse rarely include. For example, Kelechi Ubozoh speaks compellingly of the challenges of facing suicide as an African American woman, and her story brought to mind the important work of Kamesha Spates (2019), one of very few scholars addressing this topic, and whose work resonates strongly with Ubozoh’s account. The S Word also features Leah Harris, whose story encompasses parental mental illness, the care system, and the abuses of the psychiatric system in the United States. The broad range of perspectives featured might enable a useful discussion of intersectionality in relation to suicide and mental illness, with sexual orientation, race, gender, parenting, and socioeconomic class all featuring (albeit rarely directly). However, the film lacks explicit attention to correlations between poverty, socioeconomic inequality, and suicide as well as to the effect of structural violence, racism, oppression, and inequality more generally. I recommend the edited collection, Suicide and Social Justice (Button and Marsh 2020) to help educators to draw out these issues.

Despite their different approaches, The S Word and Rocks in My Pockets could be used in the classroom to explore the impact of discussing or portraying the realities of suicide. This is an issue of considerable debate. For some, there are concerns about safety and the possibility that discussing suicide could trigger suicidal behaviour in others. This perspective sits alongside a sometimes overwhelmingly positive focus on the benefits of opening up and breaking down the silences and stigma that are said to pervade experiences of suicide. Educators might also ask students to analyze the normative expectation that suicide (or mental illness) can only be spoken about in the context of a “recovery story”—paralleling critiques of the “it gets better” narratives featured in LGBT+ suicide prevention advocacy (Grzanka and Mann 2014). A further companion piece here might be the excellent paper by Woods et al. (2019) examining the use of recovery stories in mental health advocacy.

Amy Chandler is a professor of the sociology of health and illness at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She leads research focusing on multi-disciplinary, qualitatively driven studies of suicide and self-harm, as well as the sociology of mental health and illness.