Marked as NSFW due to the content.
Suicide is complicated. I do not count myself as suicidal nor do I have any plans but I have had daily suicidal thoughts for the past year and some change. Over and over in the back of my head I think about it. To someone who never had frequent thoughts this would be a red flag but I disagree. I haven’t told a therapist(again) because it’s useless, and I dont want to go back on antidepressants because it’ll just make me good for working, which is the point I want to make.
Suicide prevention is so meaningless without a systematic solution. A hotline can be useful in some temporary cases but it will not help somebody with permanent problems nor does it help in anything material.
hotline: " I want to end it all" “No don’t do it you have a lot to live for” “Oh okay”
Talking to friends who don’t get suicidal thoughts might as well be the same as talking to a stranger who hands you the hotline.
Saying the wrong words to a therapist will get you put on a hold, which will not help you as you’re cutoff from being an autonomous person, plus you get thrown right back into whatever BS that got you in there in the first place.
So, what is to be done?
There needs to be something better for preventing suicide for people who are tired of hotlines. Being told there’s so much left to live for is tone deaf. I think suicidal thoughts are unmet contradiction, some underlying issue that cannot be solved under capitalism: child under abusive parental control, extreme loneliness or alienation, unfulfillng career in a declining job market, unmet mental health needs due to inaccessible Healthcare (and useless hotlines), etc.
We need to do better for the disabled and those facing mental health crises. Pop psychology gave us all the terminology with none of the follow through because all signs point back to capitalism and we have to dance around the truth to pretend it’s something else. I hope we can see some improvement in my lifetime
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.