"Yoda Saved My Life": Breaking a Cycle of Suicidal Ideation

Source: Travis Langley

A man who once stopped and visited with me during a convention book signing (back in the pre-pandemic days when that could happen) told me that he had suffered PTSD from his military experience, as someone who had returned home when his fallen brothers-in-arms never could. The torment drove him to consider suicide more than once.

What finally ended his cycle of repeatedly feeling suicidal? "Yoda saved my life," he said. It was something Yoda said in "The Empire Strikes Back" that did it. One particular sentence uttered by the fictional Jedi master—essentially a Muppet voiced by Frank Oz—helped him break out of that spinning chain and interrupt his cycle of suicidal ideation.

Also Saved by "Star Wars"

That veteran is not alone in such an experience. A different Yoda quote—"Do or do not. There is no try"—is credited with saving writer Radel Huley:

Now, for me, there were two options—to get better, or, to not get better. When I weighed out the ability to choose one of two options, the effort seemed clear, life seemed worth it. With the eight words of a 2' 2" Jedi Master, I would tell myself that my sadness was life or death, and death was not an option. Thanks to a little green man named Yoda, I would get better. —Huley (2016).

Major depressive disorder sufferer Heidi Fischer outlined half a dozen ways in which Star Wars saved her life, starting with its emphasis on hope and finishing with the fact that it kept her from feeling alone. At times during dark states of suicidal thinking, Fischer (2021) had to "dig deep to convince myself to stay. And that reason was 'Star Wars.''

Though I personally never felt anything so severe, I have mentioned during several convention panels that the overwhelming popularity of "Star Wars" back when the first movie came out (the one not yet renamed "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope") made me feel less lonely, less alien in the world if so many others could also enjoy such things.

Metropolis, Illinois.

Source: Kevin Robbins, used with permission.

Superman, Too

This does not seem specific to "Star Wars," to be sure. Amanda Pardo (2017) describes how Zack Snyder's depiction of Superman saved her. After hating the bulletproof, godlike, celebrity god throughout her childhood, throughout a lifelong struggle with severe depression including two suicide attempts, she finally saw him keep trying to do his best in a world that treated him poorly, and suddenly he was a man, a hero she could find inspirational. "After I watched 'Man of Steel,' I felt a positive emotion that I can’t explain—I felt inspiration after years without it, and my depression didn’t hinder my actions as much," she wrote.

The great lesson of superhero stories tends to be one of persistence, pushing onward despite any odds. Others have also reported ways in which Superman stories in film or comics have saved their lives (e.g., Castle, 2016). Reading a comic book in which Superman tells a suicidal girl that she is stronger than she knows and that it's never as bad as it seems helped one depressed young man move on (Comics Guide 101, 2015).

Heroes Everywhere

"Star Wars" and Superman provide only a couple of examples from the countless stories and characters that have sparked hope and given some suicidal individuals the things they needed to hear to keep going at key moments in their lives. Fiction, especially fantastic fiction, can help people think outside the boxes in which they feel trapped and shift their thinking just enough at just the right times.

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