Everybody you meet has a secret smile, and a secret pain.
If your secret pain feels like a weight you can no longer carry, please talk to someone. Anyone. Lay down your burdens, and give your shoulders a rest.
If you're in the US, there's the National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
LGBT folks in the US might also consider The Trevor Project Lifeline: 1-866-488-7386
I don't know about international numbers or other region- or culture-specific services; perhaps others can reply with the ones they're aware of.
If you're in the US, you may also wish to think twice before calling the cops on a loved one, particularly if they're only a danger to themselves (and not you or others). Police in the US rarely receive training[0] in dealing with suicidal individuals, and are instead trained to escalate the situation and or use violence for a resolution[1].
There are numerous examples of the police turning up on a suicide call and killing the individual, even when unarmed[2][3]. They simply aren't qualified to deal with suicidal individuals and should only be used when other's safety is at stake.
I suspect this is a driver of the increased suicide rate. People are afraid to tell others because they don't want to deal with the police/authorities, so they don't get the help they need.
My sister attempted suicide as a teenager and the police that responded spent hours ransacking our home and further tormenting my family for no good reason. Then to think of her being locked up in the hospital (I wasn't able to see her for at least a week).
If I were having such thoughts, I certainly wouldn't tell anyone for this precise reason.
There also seems to be this weird stigma about admitting that you have ever contemplated suicide. People seem to take that as some sort of signal that you are completely unhinged.
Maybe I'm a nutcase, but I've taken the time to prepare a set of scenarios under which I would no longer want to live, and think about what would need to be taken care of to exit the world without undue burden on those that depend on me. That seems like an eminently rational thing to do.
>> ...but I've taken the time to prepare a set of scenarios under which I would no longer want to live, and think about what would need to be taken care of...
I believe professionals would categorize what you wrote there as "planning suicide". So long as you have not started "taking care of" those things you have not begun executing your plan. Planning is a rather big step beyond contemplating - I hope you're doing better now. You may also want to consider that actually getting your affairs in order could be an enabler.
It's evaluating a set of contingencies. Like, the general staffs of armies make war plans that they will never execute, unless the particular parameters fall in place, all the time. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.
I think what is missing is what set of circumstances would trigger you to execute your plans. If it’s “world wide epidemic which causes extreme pain and suffering with less than 5% chance of survival” that is one thing. However if you are planning your suicide in case you lose your job or your significant other cheats on you then that would be concerning and reason to seek help.
There's no need to imagine such an epidemic. We're all going to die. And sometimes that involves extended periods of pain and suffering, with no chance of survival. In civilized places, voluntary euthanasia is available. Elsewhere, one needs to plan ahead.
We need to decouple the concepts of "assisted suicide in cases of terminal illness" (may not be assisted, may not be terminal) from other types of suicide.
The public health responses to you should be very different to the people who experience rapid onset despair.
As a person who lives in the US, this isn't something that I would generally think of if I were considering whether to tell someone that I was planning suicide. Reading your account however, maybe it's something I should be worried about.
When I was a kid my oldest brother enrolled in some free counseling from a church. They had him fill out why he was going to counseling so he honestly wrote down that he had been having suicidal thoughts.
So this church freaked out and sent a pastor and someone else over to force him to promise not to kill himself.
Which as you can imagine was horrible and completely broke his trust in the system.
Also taught me to never ever be honest with people about serious things like suicide unless you've already know how they will react or you think you are a real danger to yourself.
Suicidal thoughts from time to time are fine. The issue is when you start to have real intent to carry them out. That's when you need help.
Telling anybody associated with the government that you're thinking about suicide instantly triggers a type of panic. I think it's very similar to the situation with drug overdoses, where calling for help can often get you into additional trouble. It's very likely, IMO, that there are people who have suicidal ideation but won't talk about it because they don't want to get committed, or worse. Then they don't get any help or advice and feel even more alone and do something that may have been preventable if they'd not been too scared about the consequences of openly talking about it.
It is important to take your mental health seriously before it reaches crisis points. By crisis, I mean where other people make choices for you as a result of your forfeit of authority in the situation.
There was a situation in Canada where police incident reports were shared with the U.S. border authorities under a law enforcement information sharing agreement, and a few people were denied entrance to the U.S. as a result of historic crisis encounters with police. Cops aren't bad, but institutions can be callous. Similarly, the record of a mental health crisis (or failing to disclose it) can have an impact on certain kinds of insurance, security clearances, (as above) travel, custody agreements, and by extension, jobs.
Learn to stay mentally healthy, and realize that it is an investment you make, often at the cost of other immediate things, which pays off as the result of sound decisions compounded over years.
100%. I think the physical “keep your body in shape” movement must be followed by a “keep your mental health/resilience in shape” movement in the coming years.
+1 be careful, even if they don't use violence they tend to go on conservative side and put your loved one in 72h hold and if it's late night or proper mental hospitals are full then they will end up spending those hours with crazy people they pick up on the street. It will be more traumatizing (especially for females since they will be surrounded by crazy males from the streets).
Yep. Back in my student / tutor days at university, I had a student with severe mental health problems. One afternoon, someone at his dorm called the police with the idea of helping him. He died of that day while being restrained by the officers who came to help.
Many officers don't receive sufficient training on how to deal with mental health crises, and sometimes the result of contact is bad.
Suicide by cop is not uncommon. Even if you're not seriously suicidal, just severely depressed, I suspect that it can be tempting. In my experience, I'm too ineffectual when severely depressed enough to consider suicide. But faced with someone with a gun, all it takes is threatening them. I recall relatively recent video of a young woman who was killed after she charged a cop. At the entrance of a university parking garage.
I would be thinking really fucking carefully about posting this. If a loved one has a specific plan to commit suicide you need to take that really fucking seriously. Death by cop is so much smaller than suicide rate in the US.
As a person who has been badly affected by the police and the health system because of suicidal thoughts, I think you should think “fucking seriously” before you give advise to people with suicidal thoughts.
You may not like it, but the system utterly sucks and you can be easily, even casually, abused. In fact the likelihood is high this will happen. And the kicker? No one gives a damn if you do get abused, and if you die then your mental illness will be used against you for the reason that some cop killed you.
I thought the parent was taking it seriously, and I also think that part of taking that seriously is recognizing that someone who is that despondent might attempt suicide-by-cop.
I, for one, can count the number of times that talking to someone has helped my depression on 0 hands. That includes professionals.
I don't know how other people who've suffered depression most of their lives feel, but I can't stand this advice. It reeks of being the lowest effort possible by someone who has no understanding whatsoever of what they're talking about and prefers to just parrot something that sounds good to them. I'd honestly rather have people tell me they think I'm a weak pussy who should just suck it up, because at least their being open and honest about their lack of give-a-damn.
I think the best talk I had from a therapist in the early aughts went, "In general, the only things we know that help with depression are: exercise, some sunlight, a little social interaction, and self-care; bathing, brushing your teeth, etc. Medicine can help some but results are inconsistent, talk therapy is rarely helpful."
He spent two years just keeping me accountable on the little day to day things and while it didn't immediately cure my depression my quality of increased dramatically. The idea that something like keeping my room tidy would help with my depression sounded absolutely god damn insane at the time, "I want existence to end and you're telling me to make my bed?" ..but somehow those hundred small things mattered, life's pretty good these days.
I survived my deepest depression by showering and shaving every day. Then forcing myself to get dressed and go be with other people, even sitting in a coffee shop and feeling miserable, hiding it behind a smile and a book.
Being home, alone, unshaven, unclean, in an unkept house made me feel worse because of all the things I saw that needed to be done, and the isolation allowing me to think about that and only that.
A bit of tidying made my space feel better (less cramped) and a bit of tidying each day reduced the sense of burden compared to seeing the whole place as one big mess. Same for the self-care and other aspects.
Every undone thing is an extra stressor because it's an extra thing that you know needs to be done, but in a depressed state you do not feel able to do or that there is sufficient time to do (it seems overwhelming, even when in reality it's a small chore).
Being somewhat social (even as an introvert), being physically active and getting my sunlight, and maintaining a decently tidy home (I still suck at cleaning the shower often enough, and I never make my bed), have made an immense difference.
There's also the benefit of routine and ritual. That's part of what the showering and shaving did. I'm lying in bed and I haven't shaved yet, I need to shave, let's get up and shave. I have to do this, once it's done it's done and I can move on. Now I'm out of bed and I can maybe do something else or not, but the ritual helped force me out of bed and gave me even the chance to have a healthy day.
Your comment rings so true for me. I have had nearly the same experience with depression, talk therapy, and ritualistic self-care.
> (I still suck at cleaning the shower often enough, and I never make my bed)
I stopped using the top/flat sheet, which means "making the bed" is as simple as fluffing the pillows and shaking your duvet/comforter/quilt out over the bed. The flat sheet is responsible for probably 95% of the effort in making a bed. Coming home to a made bed is nice.
Bonus: when you buy sheets in the future, you can invest the top sheet savings into a comfier bedspread.
Excuse me if I stray out a little (I wholeheartedly agree with your comment) and ask you how is that your bed needs making. Are these things uncommon over there?
People need to change the sheets and pillow cases and duvet covers. When some people are depressed they find these habits harder to maintain. After a while they've become deconditioned, and they're still unmotivated, and it can be hard to get back into a routine.
Sadly I know. But you already needed to wash traditional bed dressing, actually one more sheet. The task of making the bed is much simpler with duvets, at least for me: I just take the thing with both hands, shake it a little and place it all over the bed. Compare that with placing correctly the upper sheet, the blanket and the covers. It's like ten seconds vs one or two minutes.
I was cynical about talking to people for the longest time. I figured I would forgo seeking the "cookie cutter" advice and went to see my priest -- expecting him to tell me "well you are weak in faith, pray more, say these prayers" etc.
He begins by telling me, "If I take this baseball bat, and smash your knee, would you come tell me, or would you go tell a doctor?"
I said, well obviously the doctor. He said "Ok, go and do likewise."
I went to counseling that week, which included temporary relief via SSRI's. I am still coping, but it is _worlds_ better than it was years ago.
Talking to people, especially that have the same philosophies, helps. If you haven't found the right people to talk to, keep looking. They are out there. It took me 4 tries, but glad I did. I live with a spouse that does not understand depression what so ever, so it is an absolute lifeline to be able to talk to an understanding professional.
In other words: less than 25% of them are right. About the same experience here.
My personal gripe: Most psychologists are feminists. If you explain them a problem you have, they’ll percieve it in a gynocentric way. They are in denial that men can be on the receiving end of a problem or injustice, so much that one of them posited to me that male and female suicide rates were the same. Which tells a lot about the state of science on men’s problems.
This can be true, but it's not necessarily always so.
Many years back, my partner was sexually assaulted, so I attended a few of her counseling sessions with the local Rape Crisis center as a support person. The female counselor commented that I was "very brave" to do that - something I found very odd.
Years later, my partner said that the sessions I didn't attend were little more than "man hating" and "man-blaming" for all of the world's wrongs.
I have also attended counseling, as I've recently started to understand the level of physical and psychological abuse that was inflicted upon me by my mother (and her boyfriend, as well as my stepfather) while I was growing up. My counselor was also female, yet not once did she belittle my suffering as less because of my gender. As I described a few events, I'd even hear her let out a gasp or draw a sharp breath, or a few words of concern.
It seems possible to me that you've come across individuals with their own concerns and agendas that lie outside the requirements of their jobs, but I couldn't write off an entire profession based on that.
I wish people would not down vote this. It's actually really common for people who identify as feminists to basically be hating on men. I wrote about something similar here (and I'm a woman, if that matters to anyone):
See if you can ask your family doctor if you can get a male psychologist then? Mine was quite lenient, at least, and talked me through the options, wanted my opinion, etc.
Men are feminists too, and often more eager and agressive feminists than female ones; as much as top MRAs are often women. Like any ideology, it is not a question of gender, surprisingly.
I, for one, can count the number of times that talking to someone has helped my depression on 0 hands. That includes professionals.
Yea I'm in agreement with this. No direct effort to "help" has been useful at all.
You know what would be helpful, is if people actually started being honest about how not together their own lives are. Forget depression, I just want the average person to actively acknowledge and vocalize that they don't have all the answers and haven't figured things out.
One of the biggest sources of anxiety for me is looking around and seeing all the people who "have their shit together" and thinking that I'm the only one over here drowning. Yet when you talk with them one on one, it's pretty clear they don't have any better handle on things than anyone else.
I suffer from clinical depression. Talking absolutely helped me, as did medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. But when suicide is on one’s mind, there is no time to make an appointment. Sometimes the act of talking it out with a third party can help give you the strength you need to seek a more effective treatment.
I’m sorry that talk therapy didn’t work for you. It has, however, shown to be effective at disarming suicidal thoughts long enough for other outcomes to seem attainable.
Well there are short term coping mechanisms (talking, friendships, leisure, rest, work...); there are antidepressant drugs; and there’s finding a goal in life that transcends most problems on the way. I’ve been 12 years depressed since graduation, and things are piecing up together now, so I don’t know if psys were directly helpful, but at least they helped my wait until I found a greater goal.
This is the American attitude toward people and things we find distasteful. We seek to wash our hands of them, not fix or rehabilitate. We throw criminals in jail and forget about them, we hand off the mentally "ill" to clinicians and forget about them. The last thing we would do is help them ourselves, or see what in our society might be so damaging. Every person for themselves, autonomy and independence is the American way. Fundamentally we seek to reaffirm Puritanical attitudes of being born good or bad, and by emphasizing how "different" we are, how "specialists" must handle "those people" and not just friends who can listen, we create distance and make ourselves feel better. The opposite would be to humanize them, but that makes us extremely uncomfortable.
You're getting downvoted, but I am not sure that's really fair.
I've been thinking this topic today. I happened to lose a (young) family member to suicide a couple days ago and, shit, that bothers me immensely.
Every time the subject of suicide comes up the first thing that is said is "call the hotline," however, in the last couple days, I have been questioning if suicide hotlines are evidence based. I have zero idea if the topic even has been studied, or even if it could be studied. I wonder if our resources can and should be better allocated. I wonder if people are calling suicide helplines instead of calling their doctor.
Or even people are saying it just because it makes them feel good. Because preventing suicide is actually hard and telling someone to call a phone number is easy.
I'm just pondering right now, I have no answers.
Personal story: I called a suicide hotline once and it was extremely unhelpful. It was the opposite of helpful, it actually made things worse.
The Fremont bridge in Portland had a sign with a # for suicide hotline, and it was the wrong number I believe for over a decade. Only when a road crew maintenance guy had to take it down for repairs did somebody check. It wasn't even in the news, I just happen to talk to one of the workers who told me.
I can’t promise that it’s the same for everyone. But for me, the pain faded. Thinking about it still brings up some emotions, but so much else has happened since then that the loss is nowhere near the forefront of my mind.
God, they are worse than unhelpful. In Australia, if you call Lifeline from a mobile, even if you don’t disclose who you are they are will still call the police on you. This happened to me, and I specifically called to talk myself down to a third party who I believed would listen, and I would not have to deal with the consequences of not dealing with uncaring and ill-equiped authorities who will take you to a psych facility (read: uncaring ED) at best, or shoot or maim you at worst.
No such luck.
When the media adds the number for Lifeline it’s just lazy and backside covering. Hell, for a long time the media were so badly informed aboutvsuicide they wouldn’t even report on it.
So yeah, suicide hotlines are not only ineffective, they can be positive detrimental to your health.
That's awful, but the US suicide hotline doesn't do that, one of the only places that won't call the cops on someone seeking help, unless they state that they are immediately killing themselves.
Posting an anonymous comment on Reddit? I don't know, at this point anything is as effective as that. I'm just tired of seeing these hotline numbers shared across all forms of media as if they were the solution to everything. Real therapy, as far as I know, is the only effective solution. There's no low cost solution other than maybe trying to form deeper relationships with the people around you.
It sounds like you do not know much about the topic, but still felt compelled to contradict the most common suicide prevention advice in a public forum while offering no evidence.
Maybe not a great thing to do on a high-traffic website on the day of a high-profile suicide.
> not a great thing to do on a high-traffic website on the day of a high-profile suicide.
It's the only time people seem willing to discuss suicide. A week from now everyone will have forgotten that suicide is a real epidemic. I'd rather see people discuss real solutions instead be of endlessly repeating the same pointless things.
And I think people, including the person you responded to, would be open to that discussion if you had in any way supported your arguments with facts. If you want to propose "real solutions" provide some supporting evidence for why suicide hotlines do not provide good value for cost and what alternatives do.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy is scientifically proven to work. Basically any CBT book on amazon on the subject, look for best sellers, read reviews - $3.99 plus $1.99 shipping is your cost. Another book, The Power of Now I personally recommend. Everything else you need is in the KJV.
Yes, most of the books start off listing the studies and the results. I seem to remember the best seller one, Feeling Good, actually goes into the history and discovery, including the actual tests and results incrementally, although I don't have my copy immediately available.
When I say scientifically proven, I mean it. If it doesn't work, the researchers would honestly like to learn about your situation and why it didn't work.
Yes, I did. CBT is done self directed. In a professional setting with somebody is possible, but it is more like giving you homework. I have never been to a group or "professional" In the studies (I believe to be in Feeling Good but it could have been in a dozen other books I read) they split up groups an gave CBT training to one and the other one was a control. However, getting to that study there were a series of other studies of ideas (which had to be changed because of the results) that lead up to CBT. I seem to remember the author talking about going to conferences and how they changed their ideas as they broke down what the models.
Then yes, there was actually a study of the book Feeling Good (kind of meta), and told to read it with a checkup every 6 weeks just like you guessed it in the quote. There are other CBT books that are smaller and to the point, more tactical approach to learning the methods (I think one is called Learning CBT) of Feeling Good. The second half of Feeling Good goes into drugs, which at the time was written no long term studies had been done or possible. From my personal research, these drugs do not work and cause more damage then good. I have found that through suffering and depression, and then working my way out of it, I believe I am better off then just taking a drug. I feel they are supressing some kind of natural force that is needed to build character, but for some people they are needed as a "backstop" to get out of a hole. On another note, depression has grown several folds since the introduction of antidepressants. I do not even consider that there is actually a thing as a drug that can do what they claim, but that's my personal belief.
> Everybody you meet has a secret smile, and a secret pain.
Star Trek V!
Sybok: Let us explore it together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me, and gain strength from the sharing.
That's part of the stigma. Some of the concepts and models sound goofy (crazy) to those who haven't experienced it. Freud though... I'm not impressed with him in the slightest.
> Everybody you meet has a secret smile, and a secret pain.
There's another good quote I've heard: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Maclaren) I have heard it with " you know nothing about" at the end.
Everybody you meet has a secret smile, and a secret pain.
If your secret pain feels like a weight you can no longer carry, please talk to someone. Anyone. Lay down your burdens, and give your shoulders a rest.
If you're in the US, there's the National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
LGBT folks in the US might also consider The Trevor Project Lifeline: 1-866-488-7386
I don't know about international numbers or other region- or culture-specific services; perhaps others can reply with the ones they're aware of.