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  • Showing only topics with the tag "suicide". Back to normal view
    1. What do you think on how suicide prevention is handled in the world? What can be done better?

      I was inspired to write this after reading this reddit post. It ranted about people who attempt to disuade people from commiting suicide by telling them that they are selfish because of the impact...

      I was inspired to write this after reading this reddit post. It ranted about people who attempt to disuade people from commiting suicide by telling them that they are selfish because of the impact it will have on other people (I do think it is explained better in the post if you are interested).
      However I have also been thinking about how suicide prevention is handled by most governments. I am not sure of exactly what process happens in other countries, but in America if you fail a suicide attempt you can be involuntarily put into a mental health asylum for a temporary period of time, and from reading many accounts of what people have experienced in these asylums and from my ongoing experience with suicidal idealation I very much feel i would be 10x more likely to commit suicide if I was put into such a facility once i got out.
      But I also wanted to talk about other ways individuals may try to disuade people from suicide which i find problematic. Before i continue, i do want to say that I am not blaming these people, they have very good intentions. But something that has bugged me for a while has been that whenever people discuss suicide/mental health problems the first thing that is done is just recommending suicide hotlines/telling the person in question to seek a therapist/psychologist. While these options can be good for many people, i want to mention that

      1. Suicide hotlines (mainly 811) are known for reporting people to police and having them put in mental health asylums (often times unnecisarlly). And staff at these suicide hotlines are often uneducated or rude to callers, or will just not answer or even hang up.
      2. Many people in these circumstances do not have access to trained proffesionals. Even if you live in a country with public healthcare, you may be in a situations (mainly abuse) where you cant get access to one either way.

      Anyways sorry for the rambling, my brain is tired and i just wanted to get this out there. But based off of the above points, do you think that suicide prevention in society is flawed, and what could be better? While i do agree that it is flawed and there are ideas related to government on how to handle suicide prevention, i do not know what could be done on the individual level. To me one of my only resources apart from seeing other people experiences online is music (mainly Elliot Smith, Linkin park, Soundgarden and Nirvana) which I deeply relate to. But anhedonia can prevent enjoyment of such things.

      29 votes
    2. I don't think time helps

      I've been rewatching Ozark. The third season features a bipolar character, and his storyline has been hitting me hard. There is an emphasis on "getting better". Staying somewhere and getting...

      I've been rewatching Ozark. The third season features a bipolar character, and his storyline has been hitting me hard.
      There is an emphasis on "getting better". Staying somewhere and getting better. Giving things time.
      It's been making me wonder if time really makes things better.

      Time heals wounds, but it doesn't fix broken things. It helps with grief. It helps forget the things that make it worse.

      Twelve years ago, things got bad enough in my life that I attempted suicide. I had no psychological safety nets at the time. No mental security. What saved me at the time was a mix of luck, a couple of smart decisions on my part, and the good will of some people I barely knew.

      I have since spent a lot of time creating and nurturing safety nets to make sure this never happens again. A variety of social, technological and mental mechanisms to stop me at every step, should things ever get this bad again.

      And now, I'm... alive. Things got bad this last month. Really bad. Worse than twelve years ago. Worse than they've ever been. But I'm alive. My safety nets worked. I wouldn't be writing this without them.

      I'm getting the feeling that I'm going to carry this burden for the rest of my life. Time didn't fix shit. I just got better at defending myself since.

      27 votes