Should I threaten my social worker with suicide?
I should just say that I've sent a ton... and I do mean a lot, of emails emphasizing time and again how unhappy I am - so this certainly isn't out of the blue or my initial tactic. At best I'm left frustrated with their reply, at worst they simply ignore my emails - I can never fully confirm that they understood, at any rate. I always try to not express a meltdown in my emails, that resorts to personal attacks or such, but I've been thinking a threat could be the only way something could be done.
My situation is that with their help I was able to get a flat of my own - although they did supposedly ask what circumstances I'd like the flat to be in (if this was actually taken into account at all) and I said that I'd like quietness. Apparently that translates to being on a main street, one of the busiest in the town. This was some years ago and I'm now riddled with anxiety, can never go out due to constant traffic (even though just a road adjacent to mine has 75% less traffic, though of course I can never go out of my flat without bumping into my hellish street first). As a side effect due to the location (being slightly out of the centre, though by no means does that imply any less traffic) I'm isolated, since most things aren't of walking distance (in the flats I was in before most were, and it also happens that the streets were almost always quieter too - I just annoyingly had to share the flats, which is another nightmare in itself).
Now they could relocate me somewhere else... one tiny 'option' I have out of this labyrinth I was trapped in... but the location in this place, similarly, is on one of the busiest streets. That is apparently the best location for people on the spectrum!
I got, from the looks of it, absolutely no other options besides attempting private renting again, although that's identical to playing a lottery with potential nightmares (unless it's something detached and un-shared, which is in all likelihood unavailable to me).
To make my frustrations worse, though it's just a hobby of mine to try to relive my frustrations as much as possible (hey, denial is swell, but reality is reality) I'm aware that this social worker actually lives in the countryside and is only 'visiting' when doing her job here. I seriously feel like I'm trying to communicate from another world...
So... as you could see I am really desperate, and although there's nothing that's *actively* torturing me for suicide to be completely justified (parental abuse e.g.) this is still a form of torture, it seems to me, as I can never fully utilize my mind with all this traffic around me.
Oh, actually, IS life in a mental hospital worse? Have you ever been to one? I think that's just a prejudice - I seriously doubt much more than this is worse. I'm even starting to believe maximum security units are better (in terms of noise, possibly). It's just that what most people consider bad I usually don't - all I want is quietness; most people seem to want to be busy, on the other hand.
Last edited by Mootoo on 14 Sep 2012, 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Sweetleaf
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Well unless you're actually feeling like acting on it I wouldn't...but if you really are feeling suicidal then you could mention that. But yeah if they think you are at risk of attempting suicide they can intervene, or if they think you'll hurt others.
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Sweetleaf
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I think it depends on the mental hospital, it seems a lot of people have had good experiences and a lot have had bad experiences, so I don't really know which is more likely.
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Yes, I have. It is in fact worse. In a mental hospital people will yell and stuff a lot. That and more than likely, you'll be forced to go to stupid groups with random (mentally ill) people you do not know and do counseling and be forced to socialize and it'll all totally suck. You probably won't go to a hospital forever by threatening suicide, what they'll do is put you under 72 hour observation in the ER, and then they must decide whether to transfer you to a mental hospital. It's different than checking into a mental hospital after checking it out and requesting treatment, once you say "I wanna kill myself" or something, then you have no control over your treatment process. Also, most people after threatening suicide only stay in the hospital for maybe a month or two max, or sometimes even just 1-2 weeks. Then you're back exactly where you are again. YAY.
So I vote telling them "I wanna kill myself" as dumbest idea in the entire world.
Anyway, for urban noise, my solution is just always have music going all the time. Yep.
Alfonso12345
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When I first read this, the first thing that came to mind was "Threaten with homicide instead. " but that would probably be just as bad as threatening suicide.
Maybe what would be a good idea would be to threaten with a lawsuit. If this person was sincerely concerned with helping you, none of your requests would be ignored and you would have been given the best possible place to live. Maybe a threat of a lawsuit will get them to do what they are supposed to be doing, instead of ignoring you.
cathylynn, I was faced with no options, really... if I didn't accept it I wouldn't have got another chance at a flat of my own and where I was back then started to have noisy neighbours. It's so, so frustrating as it always goes like "quiet street? Noisy neighbours", "neighbours happen to be quiet? Noisy street". It's like I have a curse that turned my life into an unsolvable Rubik's cube. Although... of course, noise by itself isn't the only problem I have, and it's really an accumulation of everything else that makes hearing a siren pass by unbearable.
.
So you're basically saying you are not really suicidal but want to pretend you are in order to get somebody to do what you want?
That's not called threatening somebody; it's called blackmailing them. I have full sympathy for your situation but people who are genuinely suicidal will just quietly go ahead and kill themselves. They will not flounce around blackmailing and manipulating people. They will just go ahead and do it. Therefore, if you threaten to kill yourself your social worker will probably know you are not really serious, and are only saying it to try and get what you want.
Nonetheless s/he will have to report your threat because all social workers and GPs have an obligation to break confidentiality when somebody says they are suicidal. You might be taken away somewhere "for your own safety." Like other posters have said, being in a mental hospital will probably be an awful lot worse than being safely alone in your own house. However noisy the streets might be outside your house, at least when you are indoors you are all on your own and there are no real lunatics there keeping you company. (The problem you would have if you were taken away to a mental hospital is that some of the people there might not be mere blackmailers; they might be people who are deadly serious about taking their own lives, and are severely mentally disturbed. If you find your current situation distressing, your new one would be ten times worse).
A better solution would be to try to explain to somebody that you desperately need a different kind of housing in a different place, and explain why. If you don't get the house you want, well, sometimes that's just the way it works in life. Life is hard. We have to put up with some horrible things sometimes. Sorry to sound like I am preaching at you but I'm really not. I am homeless and have been placed in accommodation that is far from ideal and so I identify with your post, but to keep myself from going under I just try to be positive and list all the good things about it: "hey, at least I have somewhere to live. At least I have food to eat. At least I have a bed to sleep in," etc. When you think of the amount of very poor people living in the Third World who would love to live in the houses you and I find ourselves in, and would think they were mansions, it helps to keep things in perspective. That's my coping mechanism, anyway; try to focus on the positive. It doesn't always work, I know - but it helps to try.
Hope this helps
Plodder xx
Plodder, I understand, but it's actually not a mansion that I care about - I have no interest in size. It's just the way society operates that bothers me... noise is, by definition, unwanted, and in an ideal society where everyone fulfils the social contract and justice is equivalent to fairness, noise should be no longer. Currently it's not even illegal - apparently I can have someone put up an unlimited amount of bass noise from the flat below and it's perfectly fine! (As long as it's not after ten... who decides on the arbitrary times, anyway? Night shifts exist.)
Being contented with what you have is nice... but the thing is that I can't even enjoy what I have (primarily, my mind... how I wish I could indulge in art so passionately like I once did). All I desire is that society is truly just, and that in the long term if the only solution to block a neighbour's noise is to increase one's own volume, society should realize that that is the source of conflict as it can only be ever-escalating.
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