Jessica Fashano: Suicide Leaves Wall Street Almost Clueless

Jessica Fashano, 27-year-old Citigroup analyst, committed suicide December 18th. Aside from the fact that Fashano was taking medication for clinical depression, Wall Street is clueless.

Her employer is not alone in viewing suicide, a killer of both members of Generation Y and the aging, as an enigma. Despite all his mounting troubles, Mark Madoff's decision to take his own life still remains baffling. After all, he wasn't the first professional who had more than his fair share of scandal. Doesn't a family of wife and child trump all that kind of mess? The best and brightest in many professional paths such as law are being chronicled all too often as suicides after what seems to be a temporary setback. That could be losing a job or not getting a promotion.

Perhaps the best insight into the kind of mental processing which precedes the act of suicide has been given by Jack Hoffman. In his biography of his brother famous counterculture activist Abbie 'Run, Run, Run,' Jack describes the suicide as entrance into an alternate reality. Once Abbie opened that door and entered, then his way of seeing the world in no way resembled the traditional "sane" kinds of decision making you are accustomed to. The secret to suicide prevention might be to reach people before they are ready to open that door.