One public at my org killed herself.
I remember that in the months leading up to it, her complaints were seen as a total "flap" that needed to be covered up by HCO -- every time I heard it mentioned, it wasn't, "How can we help her?" it was, "How can we distance ourselves from her, and 'handle' her and convince her to walk back her statements?" There was such a lack of empathy, even in the wake of her death, when the biggest goal was to prevent her family from making a big memorial for her, so that her death would pass by as quietly as possible. Initially I could hardly stand it, especially because she had been on services for a very long time, and was higher up the Bridge than I was (wasn't she therefore inherently saner, I thought?). I knew her and we'd always been very friendly when we ran into each other, having our lunches together, getting coffee together, that sort of thing.
Recently I learned that she had been dropping abundant hints that she was going to kill herself -- but no one sought help for her (
real help, not just reporting her to Ethics lines -- UGH). I wonder if things really still would have gone the way they did if people had chosen to help rather than disconnect. I wish I'd known about her troubles, but I wonder what I really would have done when I was in the midst of the brainwashing -- I probably would have been too afraid of HCO myself to have gotten involved.
So tragic.