When is it being suicidal?

[Diamonds&Rust]

Some thoughts on suicide & the discussion here:

 

1. Suicide is a very personal topic. The reception of suicide varies across different belief systems, some examples are: a selfish and terrible injury to loved ones, a gesture of supreme and restorative honor, an unforgivable rejection of God, or the only true expression of free will.

 

2. Because it's so personal, you'll get a range of really personal responses. Many of those responses are informed not just by the beliefs on suicide mentioned above, but intense emotions that can go with this topic. Some have had friends or family commit suicide and still live with that pain. Others may have attempted suicide themselves and experienced a disorienting loss of autonomy in a psychiatric hospital, followed by an eventual orientation to the assumption that life is worth living.

 

3. The dominant belief in my culture (& probably yours) seems to be that suicide is an extremely serious mental health emergency, which has sometimes been called a thank-you-later approach to suicide prevention.

 

4. To your original question of whether "being suicidal" involves actual attempts or just plans or just ideas, the answer is understandably vague. People who work in mental health, trained to take "being suicidal" seriously, draw a line between the thoughts and behaviors you described. Someone who has attempted suicide and likely will again is the most urgently suicidal person. Someone who has thoughts of suicide but has not planned when/how is less urgent, but probably still considered suicidal. An existentialist who reveres suicide as the best possible end to human life, but otherwise functions normally, would probably not be considered suicidal. A precise definition of a vague term is probably not so important in a collective sense.

 

5. It's not always clear to mental health workers how suicidal someone is, and so they're trained to get over their hesitation to ask questions about it. Do you have a plan to commit suicide? What method will you use? Have you planned when you will do it? One thing that stands out from training I received before working at a suicide hotline was that no one kills themselves because they were asked questions about their intent to commit suicide--essentially, you won't put the idea in their head from asking questions. The questions help determine how suicidal someone is.

 

6. Thoughts of suicide with less urgency are sometimes called suicidal ideation, which is serious but usually not enough to warrant an involuntary psychiatric hold. Within suicidal ideation, there's ideation with or without plans (which includes details like what you'd include in your suicide note, where you'd do it, or what method you would use) and also with or without means (which includes the ability to follow through with a plan, such as the physical energy to do it, or the materials such as rope or poison).

 

7. People who believe that suicide is a route to eternal damnation may wish to give you more time alive to consider whether to accept that belief they have. This can be especially upsetting if you are annoyed by religiosity, but it's not inherently judgmental and has more to do with their beliefs about the benevolence of life.

 

8. Even those who do not consider suicide a moral failing are usually quick to offer help to those who are considering suicide. It seems insufficient, however, to call suicide a permanent solution to a temporary problem; life itself is temporary, so this is usually referring more to the pain involved in leading someone to consider suicide. The urgent referral to professional counseling is also aligned with the thank-you-later approach.

 

9. In mental health, it's common to ask a suicidal person to consider a contract wherein the suicidal person agrees to postpone suicide for a definite amount of time; this is designed to help the suicidal person, but in practice it's more a way to enable the mental health worker to offer support while reducing the stress of feeling that their intervention may have deadly consequences. This is especially true when working with someone who uses threats of suicide in a manipulative way.

 

10. Many posters here mention potentially-unseen negative consequences of suicide, such as the pain others will experience when they must cope with your death. There are other reasons to remain alive. The experience of hopelessness is related to despair, but may exist even in those with happy lives who do not present as depressed.

 

11. Viktor Frankl wrote a book called "Man's Search For Meaning" which relates a lot to this issue. Dr. Frankl suffered through multiple concentration camps during the Holocaust, and it ultimately informed his unique brand of psychotherapy (logotherapy) which focuses on helping a patient find or restore meaning to his or her life. In a more recent foreword, it's revealed that Frankl would often begin therapy by asking a suicidal patient why he has not yet killed himself or herself, and using their answers as a route to this goal of restoring meaning. The book is very good, and you may be interested in reading it:

 

Man's Search For Meaning: Viktor E. Frankl: 9780671023379: Amazon.com: Books

 

I know that you said the answer to your loneliness and hopelessness cannot be found in a book, but that book is not about answering questions for other people. Many suggest that it changed their outlook on life and meaning, and not in the same way that people discuss cognitive-behavioral workbooks or self-help resources.

 

You can at least approach with curiosity how someone remained optimistic even after the indignity, pain, and loss of what many consider to be humanity's darkest half-decade. It is not a preachy or flowery narrative; it dwells needlessly on neither philosophy nor horror.

 

Another resource I first found on this board a very long time ago is this:

Suicide: Read This First

 

That website is designed to prevent suicide, but the information they share could be very helpful to someone who is experiencing a crisis.

 

I'm truly sorry you're feeling this way, and especially that you are dissatisfied with some responses to those feelings. All I can say to try to put that in perspective is that it's a very difficult topic for many to discuss, and that it does not appear that anyone here wants to make light of it or minimize your true feelings.

[WordvAction]

Somedude:

 

You don't want to do this at all. I'd say seek help from a therapist but you said you have tried that and failed.

 

A few years ago I was like you. 20 years old, never even kissed a girl in my life, had extreme anxiety and ocd, and to top it off, found out I had a major health problem. I felt the rest of my life was going to be crap, that my family cared but didn't understand the pain I was going through, and I had no girlfriend to make it all better.

 

I started to take the pills, before I stopped myself, looked in the mirror, and thought, "WTF am I doing". I called my parents who were able to give me the love and support I needed at that moment. They may never understand the emotional pain I felt I was going through, just as I may never understand the emotional pain you are going through. I can tell you this though; NOTHING is worth taking your own life. It has been 2 years since this happened, and now I am graduating at the top of my class, and after a rough patch, finally have a girlfriend

 

I feel like your main problem is stemming from the fact that you have never had a serious girlfriend. You're basing your confidence and happiness on this concept. You're looking elsewhere for happiness. You need to find this in yourself. Find a hobby that you enjoy that gets you socializing with others; when you finally have confidence in that hobby and find happiness within yourself, you will find the girls loving you.

 

I don't know how old you are, but I can tell you two things: people out there care about you much more than you think, AND you've spent too much of your life trying to find happiness to give up now, GET up, GET out, and GO find it man.

 

Hope this helps

[somedude81]

Uh, this thread.

 

I'll come back to it later.

 

And yes, I read over everything that was said by everyone.

[Million.to.1]

This article was helpful to me once.

 

I liked how blatant it was.

[snug.bunny]

Uh, this thread.

 

I'll come back to it later.

 

And yes, I read over everything that was said by everyone.

 

You being suicidal must not be a top priority for you, given the above response. Seems you've been preoccupied with your height and women's weight as of late (yes, I suppose that's more important).

[OhHey]

It's not worth trying to commit suicide, it can so easily go wrong, and leave you physically ****ed up and therefore worse off for the rest of your life.

 

Oh yes.

 

In my Grandma's nursing home two guys there tried suicide...One used a .22 pistol and merely made himself dependent on a staff of nurses. Not to mention having his bowels drained daily by enema and unable to walk.

 

He's 35 now, been there 6 years. It was over a girl.

 

 

To answer the OP, anyone seriously considering it is suicidal. Not just ones that actually attempted it. In my non professional opinion.

[betterdeal]

Thoughts of death, dying, or contracting a terminal illness, are quite common. I think they appeal to our darker side, our need to be heard, for others to understand how we feel is genuine, to be the centre of attention, or just to stop the world spinning around so fast.

 

There's a quantum gap between that and turning on yourself. Suicide is an aggressive act which, when planned out as opposed to being an impulsive thing, takes a lot of self-loathing to enact. If you are at that point, if you hate yourself, wish to destroy yourself, to no longer exist, seek help. Take a time out from the self-loathing for a bit and trust others to make some decisions for you.

[HeavenOrHell]

I think there's being suicidal, ie actually thinking/feeling you might, or will, go through with it, and there are suicidal thoughts; despairing thoughts because you want the pain to end, but you don't feel you'd actually do it, or *know* you won't.

I've had lifelong depression and anxiety, black thoughts are pretty common for me, I've never found life easy and probably never will (I'm in my 40's), but I've made enough of a life for myself (helping others mostly) to keep me going, but I battle on a daily basis, it does help to know it will all be over one day, that sounds depressing, but it's how I feel, life can be incredibly lonely and hard, but I also feel very lucky for the wonderful things I do have in my life.

Also, we only get one chance at life, and there is always the chance things will get better, yeah yeah I know But even people who have had failed suicide attempts have said they are so glad they did not succeed because their lives did improve.

[HeavenOrHell]

I hope you can find your way through it, you're not alone in how you feel, trust me.

[OhHey]

The most suicidle people seem to be the ones you least expect to be(They hide it out of embarrassment they don't want help and they are set on a decision) Those are the ones most likely IMO, because they don't care to mention their plan, they are set on the decision and it is final. They usually act pretty happy and give things away, money, belongings. Then Boom... I had a friend in school do this not 5 years ago and cought EVERYONE by surprise. He was a crew chief in the air force on an F-16 jet, had a home, two daughters and a wife... He cought his wife cheating and after he was ok(seemed like) said he is over it, living fo rhis daughters ect ect...even go ta new GF and built a new home. One day he killed himself and that was it. He was only one year older than me and I miss that guy.

 

People that state they are going to kill themselves or hint about it are the ones who want help...they hate thinking like that and really seeking out some help with it. These people I take seriously, because they could in fact do it....but they need some real intervention right now. Talking and wishing about dying is not the thing a healthy, happy person does and to say these people are seeking attention by talking about suicide is a joke....these people want help and this is how they try to say how hard it is fo rthem and they want people to notice them.

 

Never write. off a person threatning suicide as a mere attention whore... Attention they want, yes, but not the way you think.