You forget that if its a old friend you have been dealing with it for YEARS and YEARS. And if you do get scared and take it seriously and contact their family or the authorities it is very likely they will lie and claim you are crazy and making shit up :smack: Eventually you have no choice but to ignore it or get arrested for filing false police reports.
Good answer. I wish I had written it.
I have never seen anyone mock the suicidal in real life.
If you are just talking about Internet bullshit you might see, that’s different. What you see there is people who have been around the block and seen numerous examples of attention whores who try to use the mention of suicide as their shield and trump card. I have see plenty of people around here especially who are having problems and need advice get it. But someone who falls into a pattern that has been seen before tends to not get the same reaction. I don’t like to join in because there is no way to be 100% certain that they are pulling a Wally. I have no idea why certain people make up stories to get sympathy. But there have been some pretty well known examples on many big sites. That has made the Internet savvy to be jaded to such claims.
Grude has a point. I have been dealing with a suicidal friend for fifteen years. He is a good person, but does not stay on meds, and then obsesses, broods, sulks and gets suicidal. When he is like that, he can drain you of all the empathy, compassion, cash, attention, ANYTHING you have to offer, and it’s like throwing cotton candy into a black hole. It can chafe, then you feel like a bad person for not allowing him to have the 24 hour attention and catering he craves. Maybe some people mock due to the cognitive dissonance of trying to deal with this.
I’m very sorry to hear this is your opinion, because it has no basis in fact.
The vast majority of people who attempt suicide are clinically depressed. Depression is a physical illness - just like diabetes, heart disease, or kidney failure. It’s not well understood, but there are both verifiable symptoms and signs which correlate to what those with depression say they experience. And depression does not have a fix. There are treatments, certainly. There are times of remission and respite. There is no cure.
So, no, it’s not about giving up “when fixing the shit that led you to suicide is even harder to deal with”. It’s not about cowardice.
Speaking from personal experience - as someone who suffers from increasingly severe bouts of depression since the age of eleven and has had to cope with suicidal ideation for the last three years - one of two things are happening:
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intrusive thoughts of death and suicide. “I should just be dead.” “I should kill myself.” Over and over and over again. Different words, different flavors, but the same content. These thoughts are unconnected to both the external world and internal thoughts, but when they start happening, they can overwhelm the mind. You can’t argue yourself out of these thoughts, because they’re not based in logic. It’s like having someone drive you towards a cliff at the point of a bayonet. At some point, you reach the edge of the cliff, and either you go over, or you get run through.
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chronic, unrelenting emotional and physical pain. I hate pulling the “if you’ve never had depression, you can’t understand” card, but it’s very difficult to explain to those who haven’t had a bout of depression. Depression hurts. Literally. Your bones ache. Your chest aches. Your head aches. Your heart aches. The emotional pain is even worse. A logical person would point out that there’s no cause for the pain and insist that you stop feeling the pain, just “get over it”. You can’t, any more than a person suffering from gangrene can get over that. At some point, when coping mechanisms have run out, when there’s no medication that works, when holistic, alternative, traditional, and spiritual attempts to find relief all fail, death actually becomes a valid alternative.
In the last three years, I’ve had two bouts of severe depression - each lasting months at a time. There are times when I’ve been consumed by the idea of killing myself. I have a plan worked out. It would take a couple of weeks to get everything put together, but I could do it. I’m all too aware that I could - and would - take my own life if it got that bad.
There’s one thing thing that prevents me: my mom. I know that my death, especially by suicide, would destroy her. So, I won’t.
. . . .
As for the OP, the best reasoning I can work out is that the people who mock those expressing suicidal ideation is this:
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they think the person is lying and trying to get attention, hold that person in contempt, and want to punish them with scorn and derision.
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they hold onto a version of the “just world” fallacy, where bad things only happen to bad people. Therefore, if a person is depressed to the point of suicide, they must be an extremely bad person, probably deserve to die, and pushing them to kill themselves is a righteous act.
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they never got past the “pulling wings off flies” stage, and no one has been able to convince them that their behavior is unacceptable.
Your mileage will vary.
Thus proving that while clinical depression is extraordinarily difficult and something I acknowledge I can’t fully grasp, it is possible to deal with it and understand that suicide isn’t the best answer.
I suppose you could say these are values I hold for myself. I personally resolve that no matter how bad things may get, barring terminal illness, suicide is never the answer. I can’t expect to hold others to that same standard, but I do find it difficult to mourn them when it happens.
I’m sorry, but no one who has not been at the edge of the cliff, emotionally, knows whether he or she would try suicide. Resolutions mean nothing when the mind is sick. People with healthy minds don’t try to kill themselves, short of ending an illness Final Exit style.
I love my mother, and I know my death by my own hand would destroy her, but that didn’t stop me from trying several years ago. My bipolar meds weren’t working and I cracked. Mom didn’t matter, friends didn’t matter. If I hadn’t emailed my boss to say I wasn’t sure if I’d be in again, I’d be dead. I don’t know if that email was a good idea or a bad one, even now.
But don’t think suicides lack strength. It takes a lot of strength to decide the world is better without you in it.
Yep. I’ve done a bit of counseling, and I think I’m pretty good at empathizing with people experiencing mental illness, but depressed people are really hard to deal with and can really try my patience. I find them very hard to be around socially. Part of the reason is that they remind me of me when I’m depressed, and GOD am I an obnoxious, self-centered ass at those times!
No problem…
Your analysis is overly simplistic. Since “a lot” is a weasel-term, I can’t technically accuse you of overestimation. However, I really don’t think there are all that many kids who would actually like it if the targets of their bullying committed suicide. Sociopaths are pretty much the only ones who I’d expect to feel gloaty, and that’s <5% of the population. I believe the issue is more that young bullies haven’t experienced the impact of death or suicide yet in their lives, and don’t grok the consequences if a target follows through. I believe that the vast, vast majority of kids who bully someone into actually committing suicide would feel horrible survivor’s guilt.
Refraining from killing myself does not equal “dealing with depression”. Refraining from killing myself does not equal “understanding that suicide isn’t the best answer”.
Today, I’m not doing so bad, even though there are a lot of stressors around me. I credit that to a change in medication, support from friends, and a natural ebb to the cycle of depression that I endure. So, today, I can say that suicide holds no value for me.
Tomorrow? Next week? Six months from now? Ten years?
I make no promises. Knowing what my death would do to my mother held me tethered to this life even while all I wanted to do was stop hurting, and death appeared to be the only way to manage that. I was able to endure until I had a break from the pain.
Next time, if the pain is worse or lasts longer, I might not be able to endure - even though I love my mom more than any other human on this planet.
I can pretty much guarantee you that if there aren’t some major advancements in treating depression or a miraculous change in my own brain chemistry, that once my mom is dead, I won’t be here much longer either.
Do people with healthy minds think about suicide?
I’ve had suicidal thoughts since I was a teenager - they were few and far between then. The frequency of the thoughts have escalated to a worrisome level in the last few years. I don’t think I want to commit suicide but the thought crosses my mind with disturbing regularity.
Sure. A healthy mind thinks of a vast array of things; suicide being among them. Thinking about something is not akin to doing it or even contemplating it. I’ve thought about raping someone before, I’ve thought about killing someone and I’ve thought about all sorts of horrid things; but I’ve never actually considered doing these things myself. I’ve just explored the actions in my mind, in an attempt to understand the experience.
And this is why you don’t pick on the ones who are down.
Yes, it would be sensible for those risking capture and torture to prepare a way out beforehand.
Cyanide pills aren’t just from fiction
I haven’t read the rest of this thread yet. In fact, I’d been avoiding it since it started because it hits so close to home. But reading this is like hearing my own internal dialogue. I don’t care for this kind of Reply but this is the first time I’ve wanted to say: This.
I think some people mock those who are suicidal for the same reason that, when spotting a “jumper,” they shout “Jump!” Some people mock because they get so tired of hearing it it’s like Well, then just go ahead and do it already. Some mock because it threatens their own resolve and they respond with a kind of anger.
Suicidal ideation is a weird kind of animal. You can’t control having it but you do try to control how you respond. Sometimes you’re better at it than others; sometimes it takes awhile to cope.
I’m going to read the rest of the thread now but thank you phouka for putting it so well.
I agree to some extent and have said the same thing myself, but if someone hates being alive that much it could equally be said that it’s selfish for the people who care about said person to want them to remain alive. It’s not generally considered unreasonably selfish to make other decisions that ignore the wishes of those that care about you, so why this one? It could also be said that it’s the “easy way out” for those that care about a suicidal person to carry on pretending there is nothing wrong instead of accepting that their loved one really doesn’t enjoy their life. Lastly, what’s wrong with the easy way out anyway?
That said, the idea of someone I care about killing themselves is one of my biggest fears, especially if it’s someone living far away who I’m powerless to help. I suppose that’s based on the assumption that somehow they’ll snap out of it in a day or so though, for the attention-seekers who aren’t actually chronically suicidal.
In answer to OP: yes it’s caused by chemical problems and I agree depressed or suicidal people shouldn’t be mocked, but in the end everyone has to draw the line somewhere. Realistically a nasty person is only nasty because that’s how their brain is. It’s very rare to find a person understanding enough to take that attitude.