The word "committed"

"Committed suicide." You'll hear it from doctors, police officers, journalists, friends, family. You might use it yourself. It's the phrase most people reach for without thinking.

But language carries weight. "Committed" is the language of crime — committed murder, committed robbery. It frames the death as something the person did wrong, rather than something that happened to them.

The shift in language — from "committed suicide" to "died by suicide" or "took their own life" — isn't just political correctness. It's a recognition that suicide is a health outcome, not a moral failing. The person you lost was ill, or in pain, or both. They didn't commit anything. They died.

This matters because language shapes how people think about the death — and about you. When someone says "committed," it subtly reinforces the idea that the person who died did something shameful. And that shame lands on everyone who loved them.

You might not care about this. Some bereaved people don't. The language debate can feel irrelevant when you're in the middle of the worst experience of your life. That's fine.

But if the word "committed" has been landing wrong — if you've flinched hearing it, or felt a flash of anger when someone uses it — now you know why. It's not oversensitivity. It's a word doing damage it doesn't need to do.

You get to choose your own language. And you get to not correct other people's, if you don't have the energy. Both are fine.