We here at Idol Chatter can fulminate all we want about media coverage of Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt, but Therese Borchard over at Beyond Blue, a blog all about mental health, can actually speak to how we can process and understand this sad news. Check out her post here. The most instructive part of her comments, to me, was this:

“What triggered it?” is everyone’s first question, a query that has always annoyed me. As if his break-up with Kate Hudson was the rationale behind his slashed left wrist and stomach full of pills. Such justification is our way of staying out of it, of segregating ourselves from those who can’t handle messy breakups. By assigning pain to a specific event or circumstance, we can hypothetically remain immune to that hopelessness inherit to a suicide attempt. Because we’re not dating Kate Hudson. And if we were, surely a breakup wouldn’t take us to that pathetic place.