Just when I was feeling better, there came another disturbing news.

Saturday evenings are happy times for line dancers in Singapore, because these are the days when line dancers come together to dance their favourite dances, soak themselves in jokes and laughter, catch up with friends, to basically just let down their hair and have fun.

However, this Saturday evening was shrouded in shock and sadness. As everyone was on their way to jam sessions around the country, news that one of the pioneering line dancers in Singapore had passed away spread amongst us. Francis, who stopped line dancing for a while, had committed suicide, jumping down from a hospital building just last night. It took us a long time to realize that it was indeed true.

Depression, they said. Apparently she had gone to the hospital for yet another spinal operation for a chonic condition that I do not know much about. Were the operations too much for her to bear? Was it the emotional trauma of not being able to lead the active life she once loved? Or was it something which ony she, in her own heart, knew about that caused the depression?

I first met Francis when I started line dancing in 1999. I was a newbie, while she was the star in the few jam sessions that were available during that time. It was tight-knit line dance community in those times where everyone knew everyone. Naturally, I knew Francis and Francis knew me. But just as mere acquiantances. I never talked to her except probably a few times later in the form of simple greetings and perhaps asking her if she could show me a dance step or two, to which she obliged. She was a tall, skinny girl who was in tune with the latest line dances and had a particular liking for hot and fast dances cherographed to pop songs. She enjoyed her dance, and you could see that from the way she swayed, hopped and grooved to the beat.

Suicide is not easy to accept, not only because it is sudden, but because it could have been prevented. I blamed the hospital. I blamed the people who were with her the last moments of her lives who did not realize that she was depressed and hence did not do any precaution. The VT shootings, and this case, they could have been prevented by early intervention, counselling, medication and close supervision. Why didn't someone do something?

Yet in my heart, I know that things are not as simple as they seem. Take the VT shootings, for instance. Cho was clearly a disturbed individual, yet he managed to fall through the cracks in the system and did what his deluded mind set out to do. It is easy to say what could have prevented such a tragedy, but if I was his psychologist then, I may not have that foresight too to realize the gravity of it.

Which is why my heart feels more burdened now. The immense responsibility that I as a psychologist has sunken in, which strangely, was not too apparent before. Just last week I was faced with the possibility that my client could do something bad to himself, and it was not apparent until I discussed it with someone and pieced everything together. But what if something bad was to really happen despite all the intervention? Worse still, what if it happens without me realizing at all?

There will be questions asked - by the family, my organization and even myself. How could I, as the attending psychologist, allow that to happen? But perhaps the questions are not the main issue, but the main issue is that guilt that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Friends who consoled me after my last post are right - I am only human. But we are talking about another human life here.

I am reminded yet again by Leslie Cheung's suicide on 1st April 2003. In his suicide note, he thanked his family and friends, including his psychiatrist. Which meant that he was actually visiting a psychiatrist regularly then. Why then was he allowed to play out his suicidal plan? Why was he left alone to complete his mission? Why was no one alerted? My supervisor at work has always reminded me that if I sense that someone has depression, I should always check for suicide tendencies immediately. Has no one asked Leslie "do you have thoughts of hurting yourself?"

So, psychologists, counsellors and psychiatrist are indeed only human. We have judgemental errors, we make mistakes, we are sometimes blinded by certain significant things which we thought were insignificant at that time. But it is a human life that is sometimes in that hands of these professionals. It would take them to attend to the cries for help, yet sometimes it is just not done for so many reasons which may have seemed insignificant then but become significant after the tragedy occurs. Funny thing is, only after it happens then when all the "should have"s and "what if"s come in. Guess who shoulders the burden if these questions.

Wonder how Leslie's psychiatrist took the news?

These people are probably experienced in their field, obtaining a Masters or something higher in their area of expertise. Yet things like this happen. What more for a mere low-achieving Honours graduate handling such cases?

It's such a heavy responsibility to bear.