Honest to God suicide threats

TheMightyAnonym

Because apparently, the fake ones are currently the one's worth complaining about...

And as a somewhat related statement to the above, how would one even *know* if a suicide threat is fake or not? And if it were real, how would you speak to them? Sympathy? Tough love?

And should we just assume that *all* the threats are fake or real?

snowbull

Not that I'm an expert in this, but wouldn't someone who actually intended to actually kill themselves not tell people so they don't try and stop them?

Vorpy

It depends on the person. I knew a few people who went through with the suicide plans they made because they hated life enough to do it. They didn't tell anyone, they didn't beg for help or wait for somebody to stop them. They just took a shotgun and blew their brains out all over their bedroom and left a small cryptic note. That, or they were coiled up in the bathroom dead, scribbling on the paper in the bathroom in a paranoid sense thinking somebody was going to kill them.

TheMightyAnonym

I suppose that makes sense.

So the louder they are, the less likely it is. Hm.

snowbull

The leaving forever principle seems to be more widely applicable than I thought.

TheMightyAnonym

I've never heard of that; care to elaborate?

snowbull

If you care enough to tell people you're leaving forever, you won't. If you care enough to tell your parents that you're running away forever, you won't. If you care enough to tell people you want to die, you probably don't. The first one would've just stopped posting, the second would already be living in foster care/the street, and the third would be dead.

Vorpy

I think

" I would rather be dead forever and feel nothing than risk having this pain and anguish go on longer than I can fathom"

^ Nevermind.

TheMightyAnonym

^^Ah, I was about to mention something like that, but retracted it (best to avoid inferring things that nobody said).

Interesting, in any case.

Stormtroper

Umm, that's partially a myth. People who do try to kill themselves do sometimes make threats about it (interestingly, as their brains aren't working right they don't seem to act as if they were going to die, such as worrying about mundane things such as laundry).

All in all, it's true that the person is likely lying, but you probably should assume it's true anyway, being a life and death thing if it is.

snowbull

Considering I don't think I've ever met a suicidal person, I'd honestly be surprised if my conjecture was even mostly correct.

I should read up on this stuff.

Bastion

snowbull: That's not really true. As you may know, suicidal thoughts go hand-in-hand with depression. Depression means the person doesn't have a lot of energy for anything, including carrying out their suicide plans. So they may be totally sincere about it, but they don't have the motivation to do so at the time. 

(This is why anti-depressants have the otherwise counterintuitive side effect of increased risk of suicide: it can give them the increased energy they need to function, but absent therapy the negative recurring thoughts will still be there, only now they might have the energy to act on them.)

BaronGrackle

(Went through a point when I seriously contemplated suicide. Wrote things that many people would consider "wangsty", but written on notebook paper instead of the internet and hidden out of intense fear that someone would find them before I "crossed the Rubicon". Because if people knew I was thinking about killing myself, they might have put me in therapy, and that therapy might have changed the way I thought, and the idea of me changing my perspective creeped me out beyond reason. And perhaps... a part inside me knew that I'd get over it, and I didn't want my friends and loved ones always remembering that I was once suicidal, years and years from then when I no longer was. And here I am now. You all care and had to hear that! :-D )

LouieW

Honestly, I am not really sure how one is supposed to distinguish between real suicide threats and baseless ones. Regardless, I think they both tend to indicate that one is in a pretty sorry state though, so I cannot say I am a fan of using "tough love" in either situation (I think I might just be repeating what Stormtroper said). Even if someone who threatens to end his or her life is not actually suicidal, I tend to think that person probably has other issues that he or she wants help from other people on and may just have trouble understanding or communicating them.

Protega,
That's not really true. As you may know, suicidal thoughts go
hand-in-hand with depression. Depression means the person doesn't have a
lot of energy for anything, including carrying out their suicide plans.
So they may be totally sincere about it, but they don't have the
motivation to do so at the time.

I think that is probably true. My impression was that threatening to commit suicide is generally a cry for help and that it is obviously better to be able to know someone is thinking about doing something as awful as that even if he or she may never actually do it.

Of course, if someone is actually suffering from clinical depression, I doubt that simply saying "cheer up" will really help him or her out. I wish I knew how to deal with that kind of thing better myself, honestly.

BaronGrackle,
Because if people knew I was thinking about killing myself, they might
have put me in therapy, and that therapy might have changed the way I
thought, and the idea of me changing my perspective creeped me out
beyond reason.

I think that the latter point you make is a very good one. I feel like a lot of people do not want to tell other people about internal problems they have for similar reasons. In the case of suicide, I do not feel like that is really healthy, but on other issues it seems to me that sometimes there really is a valid argument to be had that one can lose one's self in order to become more "normal." I think that kind of thing happens when people discourage their children from being introverted for example.

I guess another issue is that even when people know they have a problem, there is some part of them that does not want to admit it to other people. Either way, I feel like the best response to people who threaten to harm themselves is to treat them kindly and take them seriously. I suppose that is the "better be safe than sorry" approach or something.

Who knows, I might just be oversensitive to this kind of thing. I dislike jokes about suicide and the like to a great degree.