suicide prevention, basic first aid

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We recently had about an eight-page interchange in which a father purported to be worried about his son. Yeah, wow, it was serious. You may remember this, as it occurred this previous weekend. Fortunately, it looks like the person was making it up and no one actually committed suicide. Immediate reaction, one of relief, as well as being pissed off . . . well, we're practicing skills and may help someone else . . . but pissed off that we're spinning our wheels and in fact not available to help someone else. . .

I want us to both to continue to respond from the heart and to continue to add to our skills.

If someone has thoughts of suicide and a specific plan, that is a medical emergency. And the following seems like pretty good advice:

The only thing I would change is the Military Crisis Line #. The chances of a warrior from the military expressing suicidal intent on WP is slim. It'll come from the general public. That number should, therefore, be the national suicide crisis # - 1-800-273-8255 or 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433).

Thank you.

I especially agree with the "Escort."

I worked in the mental health field for many years and one of the things that was always most difficult for me was to hear was that someone (one of the patients I knew, usually) had told someone they were suicidal, no one acted, and they killed themselves.

Often, when people are suicidal, their thoughts seem completely logical and coherent to them (know from experience) when in reality they are so clouded by neurochemical imbalance/stress/depression, etc, that their thoughts are actually almost not even their own anymore. They are more reflective of the current state of the person than of the person themselves.

They need help.

I also think that people who openly talk about suicide actually want help. I do not think they are attention seeking, but I think that something inside of them--the "true" them--is struggling against the depression and thoughts of self-harm and is trying to be heard. I think we should listen.

I think it is better to have them mad at you for getting help than never being mad at you again because they are dead.

I like what it says about staying calm and staying with the person and listening in a nonjudgmental way. I have been "rescued" from these kinds of thoughts and the person who was able to do that did those exact things. The person never panicked and never made me feel like they were upset. They just had a very quiet conversation with me that made me feel loved and accepted and that is what worked for me. I actually called the suicide hotline. They infuriated me more than anything and would have driven me over the edge had the other person not come. The hotline people made me feel like they were just reading a script and that they did not care about me at all.

I really like the part about talking to the person first and being non-judgmental. The vast majority of people who talk about suicide don't go through with it and many autistics have been traumatized by law enforcement personnel. For example, for me, police action is a trigger due to my experiences with stop and frisk harassment. It is the same for many other people.

BTW - Sectioning someone or calling the psych wards immediately is often extremely counter-productive if someone is having a meltdown, and they have a mention of suicide during a meltdown. A meltdown or autistic shut down, or autistic 'erratic' behavior is not a medical emergency. Sometimes talking about death or suicide is a stim or special interest for an autistic.

I've experienced people going apesh1t when I had a meltdown before and being sexually attacked by other patients in psych wards, as well as being billed thousands of dollars - just because they were 'afraid I would hurt someone' because of meltdowns. Not suicide though but meltdown and autistic behavior.

The moral of the story is talk and listen first and be non-judgmental, especially if you don't know them that well. As for the convo about the son, I think we established that this is a teen autistic kid phase and that he should be given autism empowerment information instead of folks panicking... Just my $.02.

I believe in the "Escort" principle, too.

In an autobiography, someone talked about being gay at the United States Air Force Academy, one person was talking about committing suicide and I think two people stayed up all night talking with him. And he seemed okay in the morning. They left him alone. And then he tried to commit suicide with the carbon monoxide on his car. He ended up brain damaged but surviving.

So please, if someone gets really bad, don't leave them alone.

PS The book is Here's What We'll Say: Growing Up, Coming Out, and the U.S. Air Force
Reichen Lehmkuhl (Author)

I have had people say very cruel and insensitive to me when I was in crisis and I think that some people have no idea how that can affect someone. People who have never had suicidal thoughts have no clue how deep and scary it can be. Personally I think one of the very worst things you can do is to tell someone how selfish you think they are for wanting to to the unthinkable and reminding them how much you think they are hurting everyone else who loves them. I think the people who say that are selfish. They are thinking more about themselves than the person how is hurting.

EsotericResearch, I am sorry you have been sexually attacked by other patients on psych wards. Hospitals should be a safe place, and it is a failure of medicine and what the profession should be all about when they are not.

And I very much agree that a meltdown or shutdown or what someone else might label as autistic 'erratic' behavior does not constitute a medical emergency.

Okay... where do I start?

How about at the end. The statement that settled me down after I killed myself was: "It just doesn't matter".

Yeah, I know. "After I killed myself" sounds totally ridiculous. But, I HAD done all the right things to accomplish what I, in cool, calculated fashion, had set out to do.

I was 52 years old at the time, and had finally landed a job I thought would be a perfect fit for my particular strengths and skill set. Unfortunately, (as I was told by the person who sacked me after a mere three weeks of diligently doing my very best) "I didn't fit in". Evidently, I had somehow upset the status quo. As I walked out the door, I felt demoralized, helpless (I was not given so much as a warning, much less an opportunity to redeem myself), and utterly worthless. As I walked across the parking lot, I decided I'd had enough of the constant battle to try and conform to an NT world's relentless, two-faced demands. I walked home calmly and purposefully. Since I live 12 miles from where I was working and my wife had the car that day (we don't have cellphones so calling and asking to be picked up was out of the question), I had plenty of time to reflect on and/or reconsider my decision.

I walked in the front door two hours after leaving the humiliation that lead to my decision, wrote a brief apology to my wife telling her how wonderful a woman she is, and promptly located an old bottle of Oxycontin pills that were left over from a surgery I'd had done a few years prior. There were 23 pills in the bottle, enough to put an elephant down. I crushed them all up into a fine powder for quick absorption, ate the powder with a teaspoon, and then, washed it down with a single chug-a-lug of an entire 26'er of straight rye whiskey (I had to stop and take a breath about 3/4 of the way through). All I felt was a brief shudder down my spine immediately upon finishing the bottle (what a waste, it was really fine whiskey).

I had reasoned that if alcohol poisoning didn't do the trick, then certainly the severe drug overdose would. In any case, the combination had to be lethal. I then sat down and waited.

About seven hours later, I came to in the Intensive Care unit of our regional hospital. I was EXTREMELY pissed off! My wife was sitting beside my bed, noticeably shaken, but relieved to see me awaken.

So yeah, I carried through my well considered intention to it's conclusion... but was foiled. I most definitely did not want to emerge from my 'sleep' back into this existence, but here I was.

Anyways, long story short, I was seen by a psychiatrist within a couple of hours of coming to, a discussion ensued, he informed me "it just doesn't matter" when I expressed my angst about the way the world turns so evilly, and I was given the all clear to return home the next day. I fully expected they'd have me committed, but the shrink determined I'd be best off going home to settle down where my 'safe zone' is (isolated away from NT's and their world, I live in the mountains in a peaceful, natural setting).

After my follow-up visit to the shrink a weeks later, he diagnosed Asperger's Syndrome complicated with Severe Depression. That's when the healing began... when I discovered why I am the way I am.

I then began to read everything I could get my hands on about AS. About nine books later and many hours filtering through the B.S. the internet is chock full of, I started to feel a profound sense of relief... about my troubled past in interpersonal matters, about my identity and my sense of self worth, and about my validity as a member of a very special (albeit misunderstood and rejected) group of unusually 'gifted' humans.

I am proudly comfortable in my skin knowing I'm an Aspie, and I no longer aspire to some elusive and idiotic goal of being 'normal' (NT). I continue to struggle with depression because it is antagonized by the state of the world and what stupid humans are doing to the planet and to each other. I continue to wrestle with occasional thoughts of self destruction, but find I lack sufficient motive to act accordingly. My reasons for this are two fold and occurred to me in the hours immediately following my re-awakening from (what, at the time, I truly hoped would be) my death.

First; When I die is not a decision I get to make.
And second; I have a purpose for being here, it simply hasn't been revealed to me quite yet.

But, most powerfully by far, was the reassurance given me in those vulnerable, highly conflicted moments shortly after I came to, namely; "It just doesn't matter".

Nothing really matters! Certainly, nothing matters enough to kill yourself about!!

I do apologize for the length of this post, but hope it helps anyone wishing to offer comfort to a possibly suicidal soul... or to anyone possibly reading these words who may be contemplating their own departure from this mortal coil by their own hand.