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SOS intervenes and prevents 1 suicide every 25 hours. Help us to continue saving lives and supporting those facing emotional crises. You can make a real difference by either volunteering or donating to ensure their vital services keep running.
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I’m Thinking About Suicide; I’ve Lost Someone to Suicide; I...
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Talking about feeling worthless, hopeless, like a burden, or like others will be “better off” without them are common indicators of suicidal thoughts or behavior; some evidence suggests that...
- Yes. Some people take their lives impulsively or in response to a severe and sudden stressor, without pondering it extensively beforehand; these in...
- Talking about death is considered taboo by many and can trigger feelings of discomfort, and it’s natural to feel worried if a loved one brings it u...
- It’s terrifying when a partner or other loved one threatens to harm themselves, especially in the middle of an already tense situation. Though it c...
- Yes. Some people are reckless by nature, and risky behavior on their part may not indicate that they are thinking of hurting themselves. However, u...
- Countless people, at some time in their life, have had passing thoughts of suicide, and most people feel hopeless or worthless at least occasionall...
- Persistent thoughts of suicide or dying (even passive thoughts such as “I wish I’d never been born,” or “I wish I could fall asleep and never wake...
- Many people who are thinking about suicide hesitate to tell their therapist, out of fear that they might be committed to an in-patient program of s...
- Not necessarily. Self-harm does precede suicide in some cases, and it may be a cry for help from someone who has suicidal intentions. However, many...
- Overview
- 1. Suicide is more complex than a ‘decision’
- 2. We’re often very, very conflicted
- 3. We didn’t want to hurt you
- 4. We knew we were loved
- 5. It’s not your fault
How we see the world shapes who we choose to be — and sharing compelling experiences can frame the way we treat each other, for the better. This is a powerful perspective.
It was a late January afternoon in 2018, just two days after I had major surgery. Drifting in and out of a painkiller haze, I leaned over to check my phone. There on the screen, I saw a text message from my best friend’s mom: “Call 911.”
That marked the beginning of my endless free fall through grief. That night, my gorgeous friend, whose laughter could light up the darkest room, died in a hospital bed after attempting to take their own life.
A shock wave went through our entire community. And as loved ones struggled to understand what had happened, everyone around me kept asking the question: How could something like this happen?
That was a question I didn’t need to ask, though. Because nearly a decade ago, I, too, had attempted suicide.
It didn’t make the grief any less painful, of course. I still had countless moments of self-blame, confusion, and despair. But it wasn’t as incomprehensible as it was to everyone else, because it was a struggle I knew too well.
People who attempt suicide aren’t always convinced it’s the only option. It’s more often that they have exhausted their emotional reserves to continue pursuing those options. It is, in many ways, the ultimate state of burnout.
That state of burnout doesn’t happen overnight, either.
In order to attempt suicide, a person has to be in the neurological state where they can override their own survival instincts. At that point, it’s an acute state — not totally unlike a heart attack or other medical crisis.
A person has to have reached a point when they feel their capacity for emotional pain has outweighed the amount of time they’re able to wait for relief, at the same moment when they have access to the means to end their life.
The thing I often tell loss survivors is that a suicide attempt isn’t unlike a “freak accident” — because a lot of little things have to align (in a really terrible way, yes) for suicide to happen.
The very fact that someone can progress that far is a much stronger reflection of the state of mental health in our country.
A lot of loss survivors look at their loved one’s suicide and ask me, “What if they didn’t want this?”
But it’s rarely that simple. It’s much more likely that they were conflicted, which is why being suicidal is such a confusing state to be in.
Imagine a scale being tipped back and forth until one side is finally outweighed by the other — a trigger, a moment of impulsivity, a window of opportunity that disrupts the precarious balance that allowed us to survive.
That back-and-forth is exhausting, and it muddles our judgment.
This quote helps capture this inner conflict: “We are not our thoughts — we’re the people listening to them.” Suicidal thoughts, once they snowball, can become an avalanche that drowns out the part of us that would otherwise choose differently.
It’s not that we aren’t conflicted, so much as the suicidal thoughts are so incredibly loud.
Personal disclosure: When I attempted suicide, there absolutely were moments when all I could think about were the people I loved.
When my then-boyfriend dropped me off at home that night, I stood motionless in the driveway and tried to memorize every single detail of his face. I really believed in that moment that it would be the last time I saw him. I watched his car until it was completely out of sight. That’s the last memory I have of that night that’s clear and distinct.
I even staged my attempt to look like an accident, because I didn’t want the people I loved to believe I had done it on purpose. I didn’t want them to blame themselves, and by staging it, I did what little I could — in my mind — to lessen their suffering.
I did know, on some level, that my death would be painful for the people I loved. I can’t articulate how heavily that weighed on my heart.
But after a certain point, when you feel like you’re burning alive, all you can think of is how to put the fire out as quickly as possible.
When I did finally attempt, I was so dissociated and had such severe tunnel vision that much of that evening is entirely blacked out in my mind. Suicide attempts are often as much an emotional event as they are a neurological one.
A suicide attempt doesn’t necessarily mean someone didn’t believe they were loved.
It doesn’t mean your loved one didn’t know you cared or believed they wouldn’t get the unconditional acceptance and care that you (without a doubt) had to offer.
I wish that love alone could be enough to keep someone here with us.
When my friend died, we had to have two memorials because of the sheer number of lives they touched. They packed an entire lecture hall at the local university, and it was so at capacity that there was barely standing room. There was also a drag show in their honor, and I’m pretty sure that bar was so packed, we must have violated every fire safety code in the city of Oakland.
And that was just on the West Coast. It says nothing of what happened in New York, where they’re originally from.
If love were enough, we would see much fewer deaths by suicide. And I know — believe me, I do — how painful it is to accept that we can love someone to the moon and back (hell, to Pluto and back), and that’s still not enough to make them stay. If only, if only.
I’m not going to pretend I haven’t blamed myself for my friend’s suicide. I’m also not going to pretend I didn’t do that as recently as yesterday.
It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of rumination, wondering what we could’ve done differently. It’s gut-wrenching but also, in some ways, comforting, because it deludes us into thinking that we had some kind of control over the outcome.
Wouldn’t the world feel so much safer if it were possible to save everyone we loved? To spare them from their suffering with the right words, the right decisions? That, through sheer force of will, we could save everyone. Or at the very least, the people we can’t imagine our lives without.
I believed that for a long time. I really did. I’ve written publicly about mental health and suicide for the last five years, and I truly believed that, if someone I loved was in trouble, they would know — without question — they could call me.
My sense of safety was shattered when I lost one of my best friends. Even as someone who works in mental health, I missed the signs.
It’s still an ongoing process for me to fully surrender to the fact that no one — no matter how smart, how loving, how determined they might be — can keep someone alive.
Aug 8, 2021 · How do we prevent a young life from extinguishing? How do we identify suicidal behavior among successful people and help those around? The present chapter covers the possible reasons why successful people commit suicide. Role of media in preventing suicide and measures for preventing suicide by successful people has been discussed.
- Nishi Misra, Shobhna Srivastava
- 2021
- They're depressed. This is, without question, the most common reason people die by suicide. Severe depression is almost always accompanied by a pervasive sense of suffering as well as the belief that escape from it is hopeless.
- They're psychotic. Malevolent inner voices often command self-destruction for unintelligible reasons. Psychosis is much harder to mask than depression, and is arguably even more tragic.
- They're impulsive. Often related to drugs and alcohol, some people become maudlin and impulsively attempt to end their own lives. Once sobered and calmed, these people usually feel emphatically ashamed.
- They're crying out for help, and don't know how else to get it. These people don't usually want to die but do want to alert those around them that something is seriously wrong.
If you feel unable to keep yourself safe, it's a mental health emergency. Get emergency advice. You might be feeling so upset, angry and in pain that you believe these feelings will never end. But it's important to remember that they cannot and will not last. Like all feelings, these ones will pass.
Nov 24, 2020 · Depression and feelings of deep inadequacy, yes. But suicide? Not that they knew of, not until the final weeks of his life.
