I've said that I wanted to kill myself just to get attention

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Yeah, it´s pathetic! My favourite quote:


So we´ve got "not sure if I have it" in your profile and then this stupid thread. Epic fail! What about:"Get a life!" or even better: "See a doctor or get the f*** outta here..."? It´s a serious topic, so stop acting like an idiot!

I'm appalled but not surprised. It's close to how they treated us in nuthouses all the time. Like we were pieces of moldy vomit or something (that's the only term I have that captures their level of utter disgust with us) that they just happened to be burdened with having to be around.

I do think it's a horrible thing to say such a thing to get attention, because there's already a false stereotype of that nature, and doing anything to confirm such a stereotype means that people who really are suicidal won't be believed.

However, the person who works in the mental institution has their facts somewhat wrong, or at least isn't telling the whole story.

Most people who do commit suicide, give warning first, in the form of actually saying they might do it, or in the form of attempts that don't (or can't fully) succeed, or that have a high survival rate while still being potentially deadly.

Also, it is true that the most severely depressed people are rarely able to commit suicide -- that might even mean that the physical sluggishness is the body's way of protecting a person from committing suicide. But this is misleading to simply say that, as if suicide is then not a result of depression. The reality is that one of the most dangerous points in a person's depression, is when they are severely depressed, and then begin coming out of it. Because the sluggishness can lift before the suicidal thoughts lift, and the person can then become able to carry through on them, and then they can and often do end their lives.

It is bad to say you're suicidal for attention. However I think it's worse to imply that people who say they're suicidal in general are not depressed or will not carry it out, because if you look at who commits suicide, they generally talk about it a great deal beforehand.

One of the reasons for that is that ambivalence about suicide lasts until the moment the person kills themselves. They simultaneously want to die, and want not to die but just for their pain to go away. And they have a survival instinct working against their attempts to kill themselves. The survival instinct can be very strong and lead to the attempts to make sure people know and stop them. They've looked at the path of wounds to the head from shooting oneself in the head, and often the person's hand has tried to jerk away the moment they are pulling the trigger.

So it's really important, when dealing with real suicidal people (i.e. not Mw99, apparently), to take suicidal gestures and behavior and talk, very seriously, as a message from their survival instinct which is attempting to head off a very horrible act, and attempting to help them survive. Demeaning them or acting like it's just to get attention if they don't make a "serious" enough attempt, is cruel and may eventually drive them to it. If making suicidal gestures and talk leads to a person managing not to kill themselves, it should be celebrated as a massive victory over depression, not degraded as a pathetic bid for attention.

I know, because I've been there, I've made serious attempts, and I've talked seriously about it. I got help. That's one reason I'm still around. However, my help did not come from the psychiatric system because, like the person you're replying to, they treated us like we were somewhere beneath the lowest life form on earth. Well, not all of them. There were some people who tried to do well in an environment that dehumanized everyone who entered it. And my main psychiatrist had made a suicide attempt in his own life, and was saved when he fell onto a tree instead of the ground. So he knew to take us seriously. But my main help was from friends who had either been there or cared enough to help me through the roughest parts without judging me or treating me badly. And it was people like the person you're replying to who drove me away from viewing the psychiatric system as a potential source of help at all. I have known others who would rather die than be around staff of her ilk again, and who therefore have had few to no real places to turn for help.

So I think actions like Mw99's are, truly, bad, not sure if "wicked" is the word, but incredibly destructive, to people who are genuinely suicidal. Because frankly "they just want attention" is one of the top myths of suicide and people have died because nobody took them seriously. However, when a psychiatric professional encourages and enforces those myths? That's far more powerful than the actions of people like Mw99, and if that stereotype were not so constantly reinforced, then Mw99's actions would be barely a blip on the radar of most people, and they would not stereotype suicidal people that way. Therefore I think the professional's actions are far more destructive to suicidal people (and other people in severe emotional distress or dealing with terrifying things like hallucinations and delusions) than any one person like Mw99 could ever be.

And professionals who view their patients like that should either immediately figure out a way not to be like that, or choose another line of work, period, full stop, they're obviously either not cut out for that work in general, or they have been so affected by the environment that, like the people who were guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment, they are in way over their heads and have been changed by their jobs in ways they don't even realize. In either case, they need to wake up and either make serious changes to their behavior or get out of there fast before someone gets hurt. And if they only say things like this while not on the job -- that may be true, but the attitude is visible to their patients, and if they think it's not they're fooling themselves.

I think this is why people have questioned in the past whether Mw99 is here for genuine reasons, frankly.

Certainly, after being told "you do this for attention" long enough, someone can eventually begin to repeat it or wonder if they are... but you can strain the limits of credibility only so far.

What you are doing is definitely considered trolling. Going around saying you want to commit suicide just to see what attention you would get.


Saying on the internet you want to kill yourself isn't a very smart thing because there might be some concerned people out there and they could report you to the police thinking you are in trouble and what are you going to say when you see the police on your doorstep making sure you are alright? Not something I would do. I do not know if it would be something that would force me to be committed to a hospital because they think I am suicidal.

Oh, come on. Seriously.

"Rare" doesn't mean "under 50%". It means seriously uncommon. Something that affects 1% of the population is still often not considered rare.

It hurts other people because sadly in the world we live in, when people have formed a stereotype about something (like "suicidal people don't really mean it"), then seeing even one instance where the stereotype is obviously true, can make them believe the stereotype. It's not logical but it's human nature.

Imagine if you were suicidal and you got the reaction people give to you. Then you might just decide to go and do it. That might be what tips them over the edge. That they are giving you that reaction IS THE PROBLEM, it harms everyone who either is suicidal or knows someone or will know someone who is. And given how common depression is, that is pretty near everyone around you, yes.

I know a severely depressed girl who did commit suicide. I think it is ridiculous to say otherwise. I remember that she was in such a state that night that she wrote a suicide message before she did it- she was in a really bad state, and had been having bad depressive spells for weeks. She was on antidepressants but they werent helping.

There are other people who have depression, and they hide it so well that noone actually knows they are feeling that way. Not all people with bad depression are immobile. Some take substances to mask the depression.

Also, those anti-depressants sometimes actually keep the person from becoming immobile, but don't affect mood. That is why they're sometimes associated with an increased suicide risk.

State law here requires that any person claiming to want to kill themselves be incarcerated in a mental institution (Nut House) for 3 days for psychiatric evaluation under what is known as the Baker Act. When the 3 days are up, they go home. They ARE NOT separated from the other involuntary patients who really are mentally ill.

So basically, unless you want to end up there, you shouldn't go around telling everyone that you plan to kill yourself just to get attention. In this state, you will get plenty of attention. Just not the kind you wanted.

Isn't this a symptom of histrionic disorder?

Can we stop having the word Nut House here? The only nut houses that exist are the many peanut, cashew, pecan, brazil, macadamia, walnut, hazelnut and other nut-processing factories that are around. Nuts are not people, they are food.

Yes, can we please stop? I can't really say that Mw99's post surprised, nor really stirred up any emotion, but n4mwd's posts are insulting. Having been in those "places" I can say that I've experienced that kind of discrimination first hand from many of the staff. If you can't view the patients as real live human beings that have just as much value as the ones you encounter on the outside of your workplace, than you need to find a new job. It's as if when you enter a place like that it becomes some kind of parallel universe where the natural social, human laws don't apply. Things that would be considered wrong, and unethical suddenly seem okay in there. It shouldn't be that way.

Well, if we are going to argue semantics, then once again I'll have to favor the claim that "people who are severely depressed rarely commit suicide." It's true; people who are severely depressed rarely commit suicide. There are those who are severely depressed and don't commit suicide, meaning that they never commit suicide; and then there are those who actually commit suicide, and still do it extremely rarely: only once in their lifetime.

Depression is said to be a leading cause of suicide. Other mental illnesses can cause it too.

But what if I explain that I was just being facetiously defiant?

Frankly, if I joked about committing suicide, and as a result of that joking got Backer Acted, the emotional trauma of being held against my will in a mental institution, and the anguish caused by my knowing of the emotionally painful ruminations that will haunt me for years to come, might very well actually cause me to want to commit suicide. In that case, Backer Acting would cause precisely what they are trying to avoid; the effect would be paradoxical.

Surely they, the folks over at the mental hospital, would understand if I carefully explain the motivations behind my joking, right?

One thing I do know is that attention seeking behaviour is not a symptom of Generalised Anxiety. I used to hang out online with a huge amount of people with Panic Disorder, Agorophobia and Generalized Anxiety and I dont remember one of them displaying attention-seeking behaviour, ever. It is not what they do.