Aspie-specific suicide helplines - any links you know of?

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I wouldn't know. About 4 years ago I thought about calling one because I really needed support but I was worried they'd put me in a padded cell so I didn't call them.

It may or may not have helped. Looking at what happened to Fifasy, it is clear that the marginalisation and trivialisation of his concerns left him more suicidal and isolated than before he rang. Fortunately he was able to ask for and receive some support here.

Admittedly, the "helper" who invalidated him on the helpline did not know he was AS, I don't think though that the outcome would have been much different if he had disclosed this - to an NT helper in an NT service with an NT view of things.

I know of person with AS who rang a similar helpline, desperate isolated, and was told to "join a tennis club or something, go out more". The helper was no doubt sincere. How dangerous the ignorance is though.

Well that lends more support to the idea that an aspie-specific suicide helpline line is needed. I've never actually heard of such a thing.

But even if one existed I'd still be concerned about them coming with the straight jackets. I knew a girl who got committed after a suicide attempt and I think the confinement actually made her depression worse.

If such a service allowed for email access, then people could use a proxy server for additional privacy. Anonymity is both achievable and important as part of these services. It comes back to the willingness of services to plan service delivery that negates these kind of worries for users.

A long time ago, when I was young, I was very interested in the writings of Ivan Illich, who very acutely identified how institutions supposed to be serving the common good very commonly put their own convenience and interests first. That seems to be as true now as it was when I first read it. He was wise about this long before any other commentator and writer.

Providing safety for users of suicide services isn't rocket science. If they had a will to do it, they too would find a way.

As someone who used to work in the mental health field, I have concerns about how a crisis operation would run. Specifically, I think there needs to be supervision and peer support for the helpers in such an operation. It can easily become overwhelming trying to help people when your hands are really tied by constraints of location, privacy laws, financial support to patients, etc., not to mention that some patients will ultimately succeed in committing suicide or will get worse, regardless of the quality of the intervention.

And then you have two victims, the person in crisis and the helper who becomes traumatized by the interaction.

For this reason, I will not be volunteering to help in this regard. I know my limits, and this is one of them.

I think ideally, a crisis phone line or phone/text operation would have people in face-to-face contact with supervisors, team leaders, and peers, who can train and support the emotional needs of helpers. I seriously don't see how that can be done on a forum basis. It also would require a large population center to make it possible to have enough people to run the operation. Maybe group and individual support and training would be possible through skype, online meetings, facetime, etc., but I have not seen how that would work.

Yes, as I noted previously in this thread, training and supervision is very important in the provision of adequate service delivery. It is not that difficult to organise and supply. I have been a professional supervisor. NT suicide services are supposed to provide this, and most of them seem to do it. No reason that this can't be done in terms as AS-specific services too.

Adequate resourcing is important in service delivery for sure.

None of us have seen how an AS specific service could and would work because it has never been done. That doesn't mean that because it hasn't been done, it can't be done.

I don't think a forum is an appropriate place nor way to provide such a service either. It needs to give users total privacy. I have in the past set up a support service from scratch to provide services to a different population. The New Zealand government funded it and approved the implementation plan, which was worked out by myself and another person experienced in service delivery and policy issues in public service provision. It was a brand new field and was remarkably successful for users. It still is, 32 years later. I know what can be achieved, and it could be achieved for AS people too.