Mary Kennedy's Life May Have Been Saved If Her Suicide Threats Were Taken Very Seriously

Apparently Mary Kennedy had threatened more than once that she would take her own life before her actual suicide. Now experts tell Hollywoodlife.com that when someone threatens suicide, they must be taken extremely seriously.

Listen, who knows if anyone or anything could have deterred an intensely depressed Mary Kennedy from taking her own life. After all, it appears she had suffered from depression and addiction issues for years, and had certainly received some treatment.

Nevertheless, Mary was giving Robert Kennedy and other loved ones a clear warning sign that she was serious about suicide, whenever she sadly threatened to take her own life.

Experts that we talked to at Hollywoodlife say that talking about suicide is one of the key warning signs that someone will actually try it.

‘I would say that anyone who threatens to commit suicide, even if you think they are just bluffing, that should be treated as a full-fledge suicide attempt,” explains Dr. Jeff Gardere, a contributor to Healthguru.com. “You can’t take a chance by not responding. For me as a psychologist, if the person says the words, ‘I want to kill myself,” and they are sitting in my office, I have to have them committed because there’s always the possiblity that they are suicidal.”

Celebrity therapist, Dr. Gilda Carle agrees that if someone you care about threatens to take their life like Mary Kennedy, you must take them at their word.

“This should be a lesson for everybody. If someone says they want to hurt or kill themselves, take them very seriously. Or at least observe them very carefully. Maybe they are just trying to get your attention or have you feel sorry for them, but they may mean it. You don’t want to walk away from them.”

Unfortunately, Mary was living alone. Robert had custody of her two younger children, and her two older children were away at school. And while she had loving sisters and friends, they weren’t with her all the time and she reportedly she felt “lost” and “alone,” according to a friend.

Not a good situation for someone who is depressed and suicidal.

Depression is such a black hole, it could even have taken away Mary’s instinct to live for the sake of her four children, say the shrinks.”Sometimes people can be so depressed that they think their children are better off without them. That’s how worthless they feel,” explains NYC psychologist, Dr. Robi Ludwig. “She may have felt that she was harmful to other people, that her life was meaningless and that her loved ones would benefit from her leaving the world. It is a warped and distorted way of thinking.”

And so, so sad. Even Robert Kennedy admitted to The New York Times that his estranged wife was in “a lot of agony for a lot of her life.”

So if you know anyone who is suffering from the agony of depression like Mary Kennedy, do NOT dismiss any threats of suicide they make. They may be deathly serious.