It’s useless. I made an attempt, and was delirious in intensive care for 5 days. During those 5 days I was dragged out of my bed, delirious and sent to therapy sessions, twice. I was so confused I didn’t know where I was or what was happening, had to lie down and after the last session the therapist didn’t help me find my way back to my bed but put me out the door to find my own way back. I got so lost and confused I just sat down in the corridor and eventually when I didn’t return the ward staff came looking for me. Then as soon as I was medically stable I was discharged with no further help.

Over the years I felt $u1c1d@1 again and whenever I asked for help, it was trash. One time I felt on the verge of doing it but was scared of messing it up again so I asked for urgent help. I was given a session with an NHS therapist. She told me to buy the New Age book “The Secret,” about the law of attraction and use the law of attraction to attract whatever I want into my life, then I will be cured. She then ended the session.

Then after being on the waiting list for years I had several courses of therapy. One involved the therapist trying to make me feel sorry for people who had harmed me. For example I spoke of a time I was grabbed off the street by 4 random men and SA’d, and she told me to think about it from their point of view, maybe they were going through a hard time in their lives and just needed an outlet. I spoke about how my father had been extremely violent before abandoning me, and again she tried to make me feel sorry for him. He must have had problems in his own life and I shouldn’t judge him so harshly. I spoke about how I’d been medically neglected, left with untreated, undiagnosed cancer for 4 years because no-one would help me and she tried to make me feel sorry for all the people who’d been involved in that.

After another 5 years on the waiting list I was given 8 sessions of another therapy that simply involved being told to write lists of all the reasons I shouldn’t feel bad. “Write a list of all the reasons you shouldn’t feel depressed and look at it whenever you feel depressed then you won’t be depressed any more!” “Write a list of all the reasons you shouldn’t feel anxious/suicidal and look at it whenever you feel anxious/suicidal, then you won’t feel bad any more!” Infuriating rubbish.

By this time I’d given up on hoping therapy could help, but I still had one more course, simply to satisfy my benefit claim requirements. This was “art therapy,” it involved me a drawing a picture of how I felt that day and explaining it to the therapist, then she’d fill in the rest of the time with a guided meditation. Complete waste of time. To make matters worse, the building was full of perfume and gave me such bad migraines that I wanted to quit but the therapist didn’t care. She refused to change to another room or let me quit. She said if I quit she would inform the DWP. I said that would make sure I didn’t win my appeal and I’d be left homeless and destitute. She just said “If you end up homeless I’ll give you the number of a homeless shelter.” All she cared about was making me do the full course so she could get paid for every session. No concern for my welfare at all.

What you say is right, none of this crap could ever address or cure the underlying issues, which are that I’m severely disabled and in poverty. If I wasn’t in chronic pain with no hope of cure, deteriorating health and always stressed about money, I wouldn’t feel like this. But therapy is just toxic positivity, imagine you feel better and you will! If you don’t, you’re just not trying hard enough.

Hotline number posts always rubbed me the wrong way because they’re treated both like some kind of mythical cure all for people actually going through something, and also simultaneously a punchline in many contexts. On Reddit especially that shit would drive me up the wall because it’s impossible to call out without getting dogpiled. Cool, you just posted a list of 50 numbers where (in the US at least) if you call them while actually having an episode they’ll sick the cops on you for a “wellness check”, possibly take you to an involuntary stay mental health center that instantly puts you out $10k. The whole while everyone in this chain is patting themselves on the back for a job well done, absolving themselves of any perpetuation of harm because they were following the script.

It’s the only script. There is no way to respond to someone about to take their own life than to send armed goons to bust down their door, strip them of their dignity entirely, and put them into debt for the privilege. Bonus points if the cops just straight up kill them anyways. Good job boys, pack it up!

their suicide “prevention” is gaslighting someone into accepting more torture

Suicidal people would see a the notes about a suicide hotline next to the railway and think, ok but thats for real people, not for me.

CW: suicide, because it’s a reply to this thread. You are right that depression/suicidality typically comes from a contradiction that the afflicted person cannot resolve themselves. I would argue a large amount of ‘mental health’ problems which don’t have strong physiological roots are also at their base caused by capital and its surrounding societal issues.

Capitalism is a system which is actively hostile to human life and perpetuates in/out group dynamics as a core way to survive. This leads to interpersonal problems constantly and at scale for everyone. Think racism, misogyny, sectarianism, transphobia etc.

What is to be done under this system is a difficult question. Community organisations, union and political groups can all function as social safety nets for people with a common cause, but they aren’t really appropriate places to discuss suicide. In my city I do actually know of an LGBT+ hotline which is staffed by people in that community and provides counselling. It seems like a fairly smart way to run one, and it probably does help people more than a ‘normal’ hotline. Most people are uncomfortable about death, and if you are not/have never been suicidal then it can be really difficult to speak to someone who is. Ultimately the societal approach to it needs to focus on improving the life of the person who is suffering, but a lot of people are ideologically opposed to recognising that.

Societal views on suicide is just fucked. Why is a 20 year old who wants to commit suicide or otherwise live recklessly treated with contempt but an 80 year old who chooses hospice care instead of undergoing painful treatment treated with (relative) dignity? I’ve seen the opposite where the 80 year old who chooses to undergo painful treatment gets treated with mild contempt as someone who’s afraid of dying. It’s the same insult against suicidal people: they are a coward. To put these two observations together, there’s a societal approved age (~80 years) when you’re supposed to die and any steps you take to either die before or after that societal approved age is cowardice somehow.

In general, it seems like taking any conscious steps to either ruin or improve your health is treated with scorn. People who drink too much are treated with contempt, but so are people putting on N95 masks because they don’t want to get Covid. People who don’t exercise are treated as slobs but people who exercise too much are treated as some health nut.

My conclusion (that I thought of just now while writing this post lol) is that the people who label others cowards are the real cowards. Unlike the suicidal and health obsessed, normal^TM people haven’t reckoned with their mortality. They haven’t truly faced with the idea that they will die one day just like the other people they feel scorn about. People who have attempted suicide have reckoned with their mortality, which they feel thankful that they have so they can even attempt to commit suicide. People who wear N95 also have reckoned with their mortality because they understand that worst case Covid means an excruciating painful death and wearing the masks is an active step towards mitigating that risk. It’s the people who feel self-righteous about suicidal people while they go to some Covid trap called movie theaters that haven’t reckoned with their mortality.

One of the results of reckoning with your mortality means controlling how you’re going to go out. Dying is inevitable, but the manner in which one dies is not. Suicidal people got it right in terms of how they want to die even if when they want to die is in dispute. They often do research on various means of suicide, weighing the pros and cons between them. There is care towards dying in such a way that other people would be less traumatized. And when it comes down to it, ODing on sleeping pills is better than dying from Covid or from organ failure. Dying from carbon monoxide poisoning because they left the car on in their garage is better than dying from getting run over by a drunk driver.

I am in a similar situation. I don’t believe in suicide, so to speak, as a resolution for my depression due to the way that I felt and the way that I was treated by others following an unsuccessful attempt several years ago.

However, I do experience suicidal ideation that I typically describe to professionals as being like intrusive thoughts. They’re there all the time, they pop up daily, and I can’t get them to stop coming up, but I’m not going to act on them. I’m not a danger to myself or others.

I’ve been like this my entire life and I’ve tried over a dozen different medication combinations to no avail. My depression would cycle up and down with the seasons, but it was always very severe. A med change might help stabilize things for a few weeks, but no major resolution and it would all come tumbling down once winter arrived.

3 weeks ago, I started esketamine therapy. I’ll keep the site posted on how I fare, but I feel like this is very different from previous interventions so I’m cautiously optimistic.

Engels noticed something related to this.

Since the bourgeoisie vouchsafes them only so much of life as is absolutely necessary, we need not wonder that it bestows upon them only so much education as lies in the interest of the bourgeoisie; and that, in truth, is not much.

As it is, the State Church manages its national schools and the various sects their sectarian schools for the sole purpose of keeping the children of the brethren of the faith within the congregation, and of winning away a poor childish soul here and there from some other sect. The consequence is that religion, and precisely the most unprofitable side of religion, polemical discussion, is made the principal subject of instruction, and the memory of the children overburdened with incomprehensible dogmas and theological distinctions; that sectarian hatred and bigotry are awakened as early as possible, and all rational mental and moral training shamefully neglected.

The workman is far more humane in ordinary life than the bourgeois. I have already mentioned the fact that the beggars are accustomed to turn almost exclusively to the workers, and that, in general, more is done by the workers than by the bourgeoisie for the maintenance of the poor. This fact, which any one may prove for himself any day, is confirmed, among others, by Dr. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester, who says:

“The poor give more to each other than the rich give to the poor. I am confirmed in this assertion by the testimony of one of our oldest, most learned, and most observant physicians Dr. Bardsley, whose humanity is as conspicuous as his learning and talent, and who has often publicly declared that the aggregate sum given in each year by the poor to each other exceeds that contributed by the rich in the same period.”

From : Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845

There’s got to be someone who’s written a modern day equivalent, right? An analysis of the suicide prevention hotline’s performance ought to be included in the report.

Yeah, I have these thoughts all the time. I also have what is probably a delusion that it’s my curse and that I will die that way sooner or later. So far I’ve been choosing later. I don’t know if my contradiction can be solved, though. My mental illness’s symptoms are so intense that I just want a way out. I get treatment, both meds and therapy, but it never really makes them go away. Even if it does, it’s only temporary. I think maybe for some people a dignified, painless, and cheap/free way to go out would be a valid option. I hate saying this because I’ve railed all my life against suicide and even still don’t allow it to be an option in my mind, but I’ve been convinced that, at least in some cases, it can really be the most humane option.

Don’t take this as criticism of your post; it’s more of an addition. I totally believe that in a different system, under different circumstances, a lot (maybe even most) cases would be alleviated. Capitalism is hostile to life itself, and should be destroyed.

I also ideate frequently, so I sympathize with and largely agree with the post (especially the bits about never discussing it with mandatory reporters), so I’m mainly here to see the march of pearl-clutchers who tend to have Big Thoughts on this topic. 🍿