Tell him the trailers for Gone Girl look pretty good. He should at least hang around until it’s released.
I don’t know if those are the type of reasons Frank is looking for but goddamn, that was a beautiful post. Next time I’m feeling really low I am going to reread this.
Can I just say how tiresome this claptrap is to someone who has battled depression for 30 years? You really shouldn’t post about things you know nothing about.
yea, and then he’ll kill himself afterwards. 
Man, I hated that book. Maybe they’ll fix the ending (or give it one). What it needs is
that she dies, like the Entertainment Weekly cover implied.
I’m really sorry to hear that, but I do want you to know that each time I read about someone who lost a parent it gives me a little more resolve to not add to my children’s future issues. That’s stopped me a could of times.
Frank, I didn’t see an answer to your original question: how do you talk to a doctor about your suicidal ideation without being committed.
When I have discussed my own issues with my doctor and mention my depression and times when I’ve had suicidal ideation, I make sure to stress that it just isn’t going to happen because my mom needs me. Whatever lies my depression may tell me, I know she needs me and that my death would just about destroy her. So, no death for me.
Hearing that has caused my doctors to unclench and let go of the idea that it’s time to sock me away in a padded room. They need to know that whatever ideation is occurring, there’s something to prevent your friend from actually taking action.
Serious answer: If he wants to talk without the possibility of being locked up, why not an anonymous message board?
Why does Frank want to kill himself? Are they things that can be fixed (job loss, debt, etc.)? Or or things that cannot (ALS, etc.)?
In speaking with a professional, he has to be careful to not detail a plan of how he would kill himself, especially if the question is couched as a hypothetical “Well if you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?”. That will get him placed on an involuntary hold. I can understand him not wanting to be held against his will when he is already feeling trapped and up against the wall.
Does he have anything to live for? Telling him that he will make a mess for other people to clean up will make him feel shittier than he already does. What or who does he have in his life? What or who could he have in his life? Maybe he doesn’t have a clue on how to get started in on turning things around internally for himself. That’s where a therapist comes in.
I think your best bet is finding a therapist that can work with him. A hotline can work as a band-aid for now, but people don’t get over suicide ideations so quickly. If they are so full of despair right now, they will still be full of despair three weeks from now. Maybe not in immediate crisis, but still desperately unhappy. He really doesn’t need to live like that.
Or maybe he is clinically depressed, which requires no negative life event to justify it. People who are not depressed seem to think there just has to be a reason someone wants to kill themselves, something besides just feeling worthless and hopeless. Until you understand depression that is not caused by life events, you really have no hope of helping someone who suffers that way.
Well, maybe I was giving Frank too much credit. I was thinking he would be able to say “I’m depressed” if that would sum it up, but someone had to come along and sing the nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen because I’m special and no one else could possibly understand even though I don’t know anything about them song, right?
Would, “Because I fucking hate myself more than you could ever begin to imagine” be an acceptable answer to you? Do you want him to say something like that? Are you looking for him to spill his inner most demons out to the strangers here?
Frank, you’re reading along, right? How is everything going? What’s the thinking lately?
Thank you so much, lorene.
I hope you never say this to a suicidal person. It’s terribly clueless and unhelpful.
The national suicide prevention hotline phone number -
1-800-273-8255
You can call it yourself, too, Frank. They might help you know what to say when to your friend.
I am reading along. The crisis is passed; the issue remains.
I’m really glad to hear that we aren’t in immediate crisis.
What do you think would be most useful to work on, in the remaining issue? Specifically how to get help without triggering some draconian authority response? Or are there specific content issues to work on that are causing pain? Is getting connected likely the best thing to focus on? What do you think?
I’m glad to hear. The pain can be so intense at times. I remember cutting myself just before I walked into a therapist, because he just wasn’t getting me. Not the most rational thing to do, but it was “Look! I really do hurt! This cut feels so much less.”
Are there particular messages which resonate with you and your friend?
We care.
Most of what needs to be said I think has, but this is something I think needs to be touched on, especially since it was in the first response. But this is one of those sorts of things that I think, with no malice intended, can make matters worse. While I’ve never seriously contemplated suicide, I’ve been in some pretty damned dark places where it certainly felt insurmountable and endless. One of the things that helped me out of those situations is knowing at some level that I’m not alone, others are or have been where I was. And some of what made it that much more difficult were things people said that made it clear that just didn’t get it, or even straight up expressing that they don’t see what the big deal is.
Seriously, it’s a good thing that you don’t understand, I mean that sincerely. And at the same time you express that you understand why someone might for terminal illness or pain. And I’ve been in a few situations where I’ve had unbearable physical pain for extended periods, but even in those moments, the idea of suicide didn’t cross my mind. Frankly, I can’t imagine an amount of physical pain that would make me consider that, but that’s probably just because, even as intense as those times were, there’s something far worse if it would drive someone to consider it.
Either way, I think my point is that emotional pain is every bit as real. And just as those moments of intense physical pain are such that one’s whole existence can just become experiencing that pain. Even if one can have a few other thoughts, they’re fleeting before the thought of that pain returns. And even if the pain only lasts a few days or weeks, the experience seems subjectively so much longer. But now imagine that sort of crushing depression, where all one can really seem to do is be stuck just experiencing that. And even if it only lasts in that intensity for days or weeks, it’s difficult to see beyond in. And even still if one can intellectually know that it will get easier again, one also knows that it’s a virtual certainty that it will come back, possibly even worse.
Others don’t need to understand; hell, most probably can’t. But I think it’s important to be careful about how one expresses that, because I could see seeing that sort of response while in that sort of state as invalidating or dismissive and that may only make things worse.
It isn’t necessarily the intensity, but the fact that it never goes away. I have club feet, lots of surgery, and I have severe nerve damage in both of my feet as a result. It hurts all the time. Anything that puts pressure on it makes it hurt more. Every single step hurts. It doesn’t always hurt a lot, but it hurts always, from the second I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. Painkillers can only do so much before the incapacitate me.
Knowing that getting up and going to the bathroom is going to mean pain, that just getting out of bed in the morning is going to hurt, it grinds you down. It’s never going to go away, there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s going to hurt today, and tomorrow, and for the rest of your life. When I look to the future it doesn’t matter what else I see there, I also see a lot of pain. It’s the helplessness, the inevitability, the unfairness that gets you. Some days it’s really hard to get out of bed.