Why suicide prevention fails.

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This all sounds brutally unfair. You should have been able to confide in a friend without it leading to all these consequences which did less to alleviate the original problem (indeed more to exaccerbate it) than if your friend had just listened and been there. A mental hospital surely was not the most appropriate measure in your circumstances. Depression is a perfectly normal (though utterly beastly to live with) reaction to some of the horrible things that life throws at us; it should not automatically be assumed to be such a degree of insanity that physical restraint is necessary. Could not the counsellor have done a better job? Calling for a mental hospital does not seem proportionate; it is difficult to see how it would help with depression in the short term. I am not saying that medication is not often necessary, but in this context, particularly given the fact that you were not informed of the consequences of voluntary committal, people really seemed to have messed things up.

And for you to lose friends over this seems so sorrowful. I hope people learn to understand you better, and that you may be able to overcome your depression.

Too much is never enough. Feared I might have missed somethig uselful.

Thank you AlexandertheSolitary.

It's the fear of being treated like this that makes me feel like suicide is the only option.

It's y I have my own measures now to prevent my own suicide. I don't rely on the mental health system. I have one friend on campus who has saved my life in the past when I nearly attempted suicide for the second time by talking me out of it and staying with me and comforting me and reading scripture and praying with me for as long as it took for me to come out my dark hole (I couldn't even feel anything that day, until I felt that what he was reading to me was truth and I burst into tears, I had never felt the Holy Spirit like I did that day, never known such truth even though I had been a Chistain for many years). This frind is always here when I need to talk to him, he is like a brother to me. I also have my boyfriend, even though he is 2000 miles away, he talks me through when he can. And I have recently become closer to my mom, she doesn't know details but she can talk me through rough times in my life.

It took me a year to get to this point. In fact, my attempt was March 23 of 2006, and I know I have come a long way since then, by my own effort, and the support of the 3 people that really care. March 23, 2007 is going to be a hard day though...

Ahayes, I don't know what to tell you to do to save your own life if it ever comes to that point, but I know it's possible. I know that you've at least got the support of everyone on WP, and any of us would surely talk you through a hard time, many of us have been there before. But I am pretty much against hospitalization and therapists, in my experience they are useless and only make things worse by overreacting. The reason that whole experience was so hard and awful for me was I hate change and being in new places, and that's where I was, new and scary, with no one there that even cared. They only cared about saving my life bc of legal reasons. I am more than legal issue, I am more than a potential lawsuit if they don't do something to keep me alive. I am a person and I deserve to be treated with respect and I deserve to be helped, not just kept alive and hanging onto a thread.

Would only be useful in showing everyone what a F up I was and still am at times, heh, and maybe offering solace to anyone else who has had the same issues or is having them.

I have family to talk to.

I scored about 120% suicidical when I met my doctor this summer. Thank god she knows I'm not even reflecting the thought of suicide. I have up's and down's, nothing more than that, but I also have three kids that are my result of a belowed friend no longer being a life partner. Separation. We no longer could endure all problems.

Living with three AS kids with severe allergies takes a toll on human capital. And life threatening allergies. I've been on hospital emergency units more times with the kids that most people will ever be in a timespan of 6 years. I've even frightened ambulance personell with the drill and knowledge me and my ex has on emergencies.

My strategies to endure are simple. When I'm a bit "down" I imagine myself as "gone fishing". I'm driving my social services crazy because they can't simply put me in a box, I manage my economy just because I run myself as a company, I have no debts and still manages to keep a life.

Sometimes when I think of taking my life it's just as easy as "why take your life when you can't hear the words after" sometimes it's a bit harder so you have to use heavier cognitive control. Sometimes when you end up with a 15 kilo bag of sunflowerseeds one child had poured out in the sofa, because "it felt nice on my feet", you just want to call pest control to terminate your kids. But this is something you have to live with also.

That's a good story and points out a huge problem. Certain parties in the U.S. have been busy making it so that the U.S. is no longer a progressive nation. When you have problems and seek help, they have made it into a trap and invalidated any sort of possible therapeutic benefit that treatment might have had. It's easy for some people to see the sense of the idea that if you seek help for a problem you should not be robbed of your liberties on top of thousands of dollars for vaguely defined "services."

Too bad. I rather liked the U.S. at one time.

When I got really bad a couple of years ago, they let me talk to this woman that said if the thoughts in my head were telling me I should kill myself, it was probably that the thoughts where just trying to help me get the respect I deserve and just was not being very communicative to me on how to GET that respect. i.e have to get out of the situation = removing me from my body.

Of course, she only had 5 minutes to talk to me cause I didn't have insurance (which told me more than they knew about how important I was to them.) She had me sign a 'contract' that stated I would call them if I was going to actually kill myself. I signed it and left my copy on her desk. She didn't notice I left it there.

I have a 14 inch scar on my right cheek from when I threw myself off a bicycle and down into a ravine in 1980 (same day Mt St. Helens erupted). The fall fractured my back in several places and now, 26 years later I have osteoarthritis in every minute to large fracture.
Somedays it is too much trouble to chew through the leather straps, is right!

I have always thought of suicide, when I was in 8th grade I kept a packet of straight razor blades on the windowsill so they would be there if I got the sudden courage to do it, and I wouldn't have to waste time digging through the medicine chest in the bathroom.

Merle

The first time I considered it I was 9. When I told my father he told me that there was a special place in hell for anyone who commits suicide, and that its far more brutal then anything I could imagine. For many years I tried to find ways around that (ways to die without it necessarily being my fault). Eventually I gave up on it, I tried to get myself admitted into a hospital two or three times but never got in.


I was always afraid of places like that until I joined the army, now being at work and around the people I work with is such a painful thing that often times I'd rather be in a padded room then be at work. Unfortunately every time I went they told me they didn't have any free rooms or whatever and that they couldn't admit me... On another occasion they told me that unless I've made the decision to kill myself and that I will actively seek out death or a way to kill myself almost immidietely I wasn't getting in.


Being rejected from a mental clinic because they didn't have rooms or didn't take me seriously actually made me want to commit suicide more... My post (Fort Lewis) has the highest rates of suicide in all of the Army.


The only reason I don't attack someone or do something crazy to get into the hospital is because the army can charge me money/give me jail time. Cut myself, thats destruction of government property were going to take half your pay check. Punch a Non Comissioned officer, well thats worth some good jail time. Basically theres nothing I could do that would make my situation better. I'm imprisoned in a special place made just for me. I don't know if hell exists, but on the off chance that it does I don't think I'll kill myself.

Last edited by Iruka on 17 Mar 2007, 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There is a special place in Hell for people who commit suicide, and it's a small town in Kansas. I committed suicide in Florida and a few days later woke up in my old home town.

oh, goodness, now I know why I reincarnated in Wichita!

Merle

Close enough. I'm not going to say which town, but it's close enough that they can smell each other.

ahayes, your ideas of what psych hospitals and counseling is like seems to be a little off...

I spent much of my teens in and out of hospitals, and have been in therapy for about 7 years now. At first I quite resisted the idea, now I actually *look forward* to my therapy sessions.

And in my time in hospitals, I was *never once* put into a padded room, my room was much like a regular hospital room...only larger and with no medical equipment and the walls were painted in colour. A had a roommate, and a desk which I could do with what I want. I was allowed to have my laptop, on which I was allowed to play my computer games so long as I did so on my on time and not during therapy sessions. I was allowed to have visiotrs, and my mother (And other adult relatives) were allowed to take me out on the weekends...to do things like go shopping, go to restaurants or the movies or anything else like that. There were phones there, which were free to use and I could use them for as long as I wanted to call who I wanted so long as no one else was waiting (If someone was waiting to use a phone, 10 minute limit) we had a game room with cable television, movies and a DVD player...one of my favourite parts was "Art therapy"...which was basically just plain art.

We wore are normal clothes, no straight jackets. I never even saw one. We were allowed to have own own blankets and pillows on our bed, an bring stuff from home to decorate the rooms with. Men and women were kept on the same ward, and we weren't "Locked in"...we were taken down to the cafeteria, and on nice days the psych-techs (Kinda like a psyciatric CNA) would take us out for walks, and down to a little store down the street. There was also a part and a garden. People were allowed to have their MP3 players or CD players...in fact, *most* people had them.

Yes, the "padded room" exists...I only heard of it being used once, and it is only used for people who are especially violent and are deemed a threat to those around them...then they are put in isolation. No one would be put in there just for being suicidal. I was a self-injurer (Could have been deemed a threat to myself easily) and I was never locked up in any padded room. I did quite will in these hospitals, and later in a long-term residential treatment facility (Which gives you a bit more freedoms than the short-term hospital)

At my worst, I survived several suicide attempts...I am not like that any more and have been recovered from self injury and depression for nearly 4 years now. It is not nearly what you think, though it took me years to break out of the "Afraid" stage too...

I had been thinking about suicide since elementary school...but then when I was 16, on the very day I was planning to take my own life...my school was devastated by finding out that one of my classmates had taken his. This was the first time I had seen anyone react to a suicide, and it shocked me...it shocked me that not only his friends, but people who I thought didn't like him very much, or never even seemed to notice him were in anguish. My best friend and he had been horrid enemies in middle school, and she was crying. She revealed to me later that it was because he had asked to sign her yearbook at the end of last year, and wrote a long apology for the way he treated her...and she never even acknowledged it....I had convinced myself that my own life was a burden and that no one would mourn for my death because it would cause *relief* to the people I loved...but after seeing the reactions to a real suicide (And of a person *far* less socially popular than I) I could not deny that this was not true any longer and went to the guidance office to get help. No one even suspected I was depressed.

Anyhow, I'm shutting up about that...

If you ever want to talk to someone who has been through the ropes, I am on MSN nearly always.

~Kat

Glad that works for you

For me, moving out of home *away* from my family helped much more