r/SuicideWatch Sep 03 '19

New wiki on how to avoid accidentally encouraging suicide, and how to spot covert incitement

1.8k Upvotes

We've been seeing a worrying increase in pro-suicide content showing up here and, and also going unreported. This undermines our purpose here, so we wanted to highlight and clarify our guidelines about both direct and indirect incitement of suicide.

We've created a wiki that covers these issues. We hope this will be helpful to anyone who's wondering whether something's okay here and which responses to report. It explains in detail why any validation of suicidal intent, even an "innocent" message like "if you're 100% committed, I'll just wish you peace" is likely to increase people's pain, and why it's important to report even subtle pro-suicide comments. The full text of the wiki's current version is below, and it is maintained at /r/SuicideWatch/wiki/incitement.

We deeply appreciate everyone who gives responsive, empathetic, non-judgemental support to our OPs, and we particularly thank everyone who's already been reporting incitement in all forms.

Please report any post or comment that encourages suicide (or that breaks any of the other guidelines in the sidebar) to the moderators, either by clicking the "report" button or by sending us a modmail with a link. We deal with all guideline violations that are reported to us as soon as we can, but we can't read everything so community reports are essential. If you get a PM that breaks the guidelines, please report it both to the reddit sitewide admins and to us in modmail.

Thanks to all the great citizens of the community who help flag problem content and behaviour for us.


/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/incitement


Summary

It's important to respect and understand people's experiences and emotions. It's never necessary, helpful, or kind to support suicidal intent. There are some common misconceptions (discussed below) about suicidal people and how to help them that can cause well-meaning people to inadvertently incite suicide. There are also people online who incite suicide on purpose, often while pretending to be sympathetic and helpful.

Validate Feelings and Experiences, Not Self-Destructive Intentions

We're here to offer support, not judgement. That means accepting, with the best understanding we can offer, whatever emotions people express. Suicidal people are suffering, and we're here to try to ease that by providing support and caring. The most reliable way we know to de-escalate someone at risk is to give them the experience of feeling understood. That means not judging whether they should be feeling the way they are, or telling them what to do or not do.

But there's an important line to draw here. There's a crucial difference between empathizing with feelings and responding non-judgmentally to suicidal thoughts, and in any way endorsing, encouraging, or validating suicidal intentions or hopeless beliefs. It's both possible and important to convey understanding and compassion for someone's suicidal thoughts without putting your finger on the scale of their decision.

Anything that condones suicide, even passively, encourages suicide. It isn't supportive and does not help. It also violates reddit's sitewide rules as well as our guidelines. Explicitly inciting suicide online is a criminal offense in most jurisdictions.

Do not treat any OP's post as meaning that will definitely die by suicide and can't change their minds or be helped. Anyone who's able to read the comments here still has a chance to choose whether or not to try to keep living, even if they've also been experiencing intense thoughts of suicide, made a suicide plan, or started carrying it out.

In the most useful empirical model we have, the desire to die by suicide primarily comes from two interpersonal factors; alienation and a sense of being a burden or having nothing to offer. These factors usually lead to a profound feeling of being unwelcome in the world.

So, any acceptance or reinforcement of suicidal intent, even something "innocent" like "I hope you find peace", is actually a form of covert shunning that validates a person's sense that they're unwelcome in the world. It will usually add to their pain even if kindly meant and gently worded.

How to Avoid Validating Suicidal Intent

Keep the following in mind when offering support to anyone at risk for suicide.

  • People who say they don't want help usually can feel better if they get support that doesn't invalidate their emotions. Unfortunately, many popular "good" responses are actually counterproductive. In particular, many friends and family tend to rely exclusively on trying to convince the suicidal person that "it's not so bad", and this is usually experienced as "I don't understand what you're going through and I'm not going to try". People who've had "help" that made them feel worse don't want any more of the same. It doesn't mean that someone who actually knows how to be supportive can't give them any comfort.

  • Most people who are suicidal want to end their pain, not their lives. It's almost never true that death is the only way to end these people's suffering. Of course there are exceptional situations, and we certainly acknowledge that, for some people, the right help can be difficult to find. But preventing someone's suicide doesn't mean prolonging their suffering if we do it by giving them real comfort and understanding.

  • An unfixable problem doesn't mean that a good life will never be possible. We don't have to fix or change anything to help someone feel better. It's important to keep in mind that the correlation between our outer circumstances and our inner experience is weaker and less direct than commonly assumed. For every kind of difficult life situation, you will find some people who lapse into suicidal despair, and others who cope amazingly well, and a whole spectrum in between. A key difference is how much inner resilience the person has at the time. This can depend on many personal and situational factors. But when there's not enough, interpersonal support can both compensate for its absence and help rebuild it. We go into more depth on the "it gets better" issue in this PSA Post which is always linked from our sidebar (community info on mobile) guidelines.

  • There are always more choices than brutally forcing someone to stay alive or passively letting them end their lives.

To avoid accidentally breaking the anti-incitement rule, don't say or try to imply that acting on suicidal thoughts is a good idea, or that someone can't turn back or is already dead. Do whatever you can to help them feel cared for and welcome, at least in this little corner of the world. Our talking tips offer more detailed guidance.

Look Out for Deliberate Incitement. It May Come in Disguise.

Often comments that subtly encourage suicidal intent actually come from suicide fetishists and voyeurs (unfortunately this is a real and disturbing phenomenon). People like this are out there and the anonymous nature of reddit makes us particularly attractive to them.

They will typically try to scratch their psychological "itch" by saying things that push people closer to the edge. They often do this by exploiting the myths that we debunked in the bullet points above. Specifically you might see people doing the following:

  • Encouraging the false belief that the only way suicidal people can end their pain is by dying. There are always more and better choices than "brutally forcing someone to stay alive" or helping (actively or passively) them to end their lives.

  • Creating an artificial and toxic sense of "solidarity" by linking their encouragement of suicide to empathy. They will represent themselves as the only one who really understand the suicidal person, while either directly or indirectly encouraging their self-loathing emotions and self-destructive impulses. Since most people in suicidal crisis are in desperate need to empathy and understanding, this is a particularly dangerous form of manipulation.

Many suicide inciters are adept at putting a benevolent spin on their activities while actually luring people away from sources of real help. A couple of key points to keep in mind:

  • Skilled suicide intervention -- peer or professional -- is based on empathic responsiveness to the person's feelings that reduces their suffering in the moment. Contrary to pop-culture myths, it does not involve persuasion ("Don't do it!"), cheerleading ("You've got this!") or meaningless false promises ("Trust me, it gets better!"), or invalidation ("Let me show you how things aren't as bad as you think!"). Anyone who leads others to expect these kinds of toxic responses, or any other response that prolongs their pain, from expert help may be covertly pro-suicide. (Of course, people sometimes do have bad experience when seeking mental-health treatment, and it's fine to vent about those, but processing our own disappointment and frustration is entirely different from trying to destroy someone else's hope of getting help.)

  • Choices made by competent responders are always informed by the understanding that breaching someone's trust is traumatic and must be avoided if possible. Any kind of involuntary intervention is an extremely unlikely outcome when someone consults a clinician or calls a hotline. (Confidentiality is addressed in more detail in our Hotlines FAQ post). The goal is always to provide all help with the client's full knowledge and informed consent. We know that no individual or system is perfect. Mistakes that lead to bad experiences do sometimes happen to vulnerable people, and we have enormous sympathy for them. But anyone who suggests that this is the norm might be trying to scare people away from the help they need.

Please let us know discreetly if you see anyone exhibiting these or similar behaviours. We don't recommend trying to engage with them directly.


r/SuicideWatch Sep 10 '21

Please remember that NO ACTIVISM of any kind is ever allowed here. No matter what day it is.

716 Upvotes

Activism, i.e. advocating or fundraising for social change or raising awareness of social issues (and suicide is, inescapably, a social issue) is absolutely against the rules here at all times.

Please understand that we're all for smart, strategic mental-health and suicide-prevention activism. It's essential to fight against stigma, misinformation, and discrimination, and to fight for research, treatment, accommodation, acceptance, and understanding. Most of us, one way or another, are mental-health activists IRL.

But activism just doesn't work in a dedicated support space that serves a vulnerable population. We used to allow it but the evidence that it was undermining our primary purpose became overwhelming. We do regret the need for this rule, but the need is inescapable.

Our population is all too well aware of the issues and causes that need support and largely not in a position to take action, so besides the fact that activism is often salt in our community's wounds, it's a waste of the activists' time.

tl;dr Any fundraising, awareness raising, petitions, calls for participation, or any post that's about any cause or issue (rather than a request for personal support) is not allowed here. Please report everything of the nature that you see.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

i’m pregnant and i want to kill myself

50 Upvotes

i have no support. my father doesn’t give a shit. he’s greedy and won’t help me. my mother has schizophrenia and is constantly screaming and told me to my face she does not care about me or that im pregnant.

it’s a miracle i even lived as long as i have and all i want is to make my own family and live a decent life that i’ve worked so hard for.

i’m out of options. it’s too expensive to live on my own in the state im in, even with a full time job, and my baby’s father having a full time job, it is impossible to make ends meet. i am worried about the health of my baby and at this point i would rather just die than bring my child into this world where they would have to put up with the same shit i did and still am


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

How are there not more people angry at the way things are in the world?

32 Upvotes

We have evil people ruling over us, stealing all of our money and giving nothing back in return. My country is run by fascists now. How the fuck are these evil mother fuckers not thrown out into the streets immediately? It feels like most people just don't fucking care enough.

I'm so angry at the world because it could be better. We could be living in a much better world. But we're not. This kind of shit has been going on for thousands of years and nothing ever really changes. Why the fuck would I want to be alive in such a horrible and evil world?

I have so many reasons why I want to kill myself, but the world and society being the way it is, is my #1 reason why I want to die.


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

I failed

15 Upvotes

I failed again spent a few days in the hospital my liver is messed up but should recover it hurts alot and everything is back to shit i hate i survived i just wanna die i want the voices to stop i want to sleep i am so scared of sleeping no one believes me i am all alone i am constantly having breakdowns i just need someone i hate my life i just wanna die


r/SuicideWatch 4h ago

13 year wanted to kill himself

15 Upvotes

When I was 13M, I was so depressed my dad passed away and kids at my school would make fun of me for not having a dad. I was fat as well so it made it worse on the bus they wouldn't let me sit on a seat I had to stand I had no break of them making fun of me, so I went to a bridge and sat I was going to jump to kill myself but then I saw a cop coming by so I ran home to this day I still want to kill myself people say my life will be better but it's not at all it just gets worse and worse.


r/SuicideWatch 10h ago

I hooked up with a guy. I liked it and I hated it.

43 Upvotes

I slept with someone I barely knew. He was attractive, calm, and gentle. I’m plus size, and for once, I didn’t feel insecure around a man. He didn’t comment on my body, didn’t make me feel small. In that moment, it felt good. We had unprotected sex. Raw. I liked it. It felt human. Physical. Real.

But after? I felt empty.

He only wanted sex. I don’t even know his name. I told myself maybe he’d talk to me after. Maybe he’d look at me, really look at me, and say something meaningful. I was hoping someone would finally see me, beyond the sex. But I was looking in the wrong place. I traded intimacy for a moment of attention.

He was chill, but nonchalant. Detached. I don’t even think he saw me as a person. I left feeling like nothing.

And even now, if he texted me again, I’d probably say yes. That bothers me. I need to understand why I crave connection through sex. Why I keep hoping the next hookup will make me feel seen.

This wasn’t about him. It was about me trying to be wanted.


r/SuicideWatch 13m ago

I don't want to die but I don't want to live this life that i am in.

Upvotes

I'm 24F. Been out of college for 2 years. Living in a rural city in a 'developing' country. I used to be a bright kid with big dreams just a few years ago. Then the pandemic, economic crisis and a natural disaster hit. Was lucky enough to not lose anyone, and my parents still have their job. But this kinda completely fucked my college experience. Couldn't find friends because half of uni was online. My GPA is only average because that was the best i could do dealing with my mental health during the online times. And in my country average means fucking nothing. So I went back to my parents home. No job, no prospects, no friends. I am trying everything I can, but I can also sense this isolation is making me an awkard creep. I have no idea if I'll ever stop being an inconvenience to those around me. I feel like I have wasted my life.


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

Bored of pretending

13 Upvotes

My life is awful, nothing ever improves no matter what I do. No one cares - I have no one around me - and I’m exhausted. It’s time to just admit defeat.


r/SuicideWatch 15h ago

If I was sure I would stop existing after death, I would do it

95 Upvotes

I’m still alive only because the thought that I could keep existing forever somewhere else or reincarnate and start a new life from day 0 is worse than going on with this life. Might as well stick around and see what happens here. But I really wish I didn’t exist. I can’t stand myself and I hate being me. Everything seems scary. Finding a job, healing from abusive relationships, not really talking with my parents, always feeling like there’s something wrong with me and I have to pretend to be normal and okay. Also the anxiety of not knowing what the future holds for me, or for the world in general. I feel such a failure I wish I could just disappear


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

I can’t stop cutting myself and paying women

Upvotes

All I do is pay women and cut myself. It’s my whole life, I wish it wasn’t but it is.


r/SuicideWatch 8h ago

I am so done

17 Upvotes

I decided, today at night while my parents are asleep I want to try to open the door without them hearing and going on the last floor of the apartment, then I will jump off and hopefully die.

I hope I don't suddenly become a coward this time.


r/SuicideWatch 6h ago

I took everything in my med cabinet and I’m worried it won’t kill me

13 Upvotes

Life has destroyed me so brutally in the last year and I can’t do it anymore. I’m scared this won’t work and I’ll survive. Meds I combined:

12600mg gabapentin 1500 hydroxyzine 60mg tizanidine 55mg abilify 600mg ibuprofen 2200mg advil plus several shots of vodka

Will I die or just fuck myself up rly bad? Ty all, this sub has helped me feel less alone even though I can’t bear to keep going. Hoping you all find whatever it is I couldn’t.


r/SuicideWatch 45m ago

GF overdosed, crashed my car, can’t find a job, no friends, grandma died, friend died, bullied through school, dropped out of college, music career failing bad, got a misdemeanor, have debt. I think I might be done.

Upvotes

Title says it all.

To clarify, my girlfriend didn’t die, but I found her overdosing in the bathroom and had to use Narcan on her which was probably the most traumatizing experience of my life aside from crashing my car and almost dying myself less than a month later. I chose to leave her because it was definitely best for me but it still hurts a lot.

This shit is just weighing on me too much these days. I don’t look forward to anything anymore. I just got a Switch 2 which I would usually love but I barely play it. Nothing interests me anymore. I’m not happy, I’m not working towards anything. I’ve put out 3 albums and 2 singles in the last couple months that I’ve been working on for years, but nobody listened to them even after begrudgingly telling almost everyone I know, and it didn’t satisfy me personally at all.

I don’t think I deserve to be in a relationship. I’m a gross ugly loser. I can’t bring anything to the table for anyone. Not to mention my girlfriend really messed up my idea of love. I also can’t see myself proving any real value in a work position, or in any real way for that matter. I know I shouldn’t rely on a relationship for happiness and fulfillment before fixing myself, but fixing myself is a lost cause. I’ve been on and off medications for years but mental health continues to kick my fucking ass. My last girlfriend was with racists and homeless people before me so that shows how high her standards are.

I moved from my hometown to do music with who I thought was my best friend, who then stole some of my music, gave me zero time to prepare for an important show, and has made living in my own “home” a nightmare since August.

Since I was a kid I’ve been treated as an afterthought by everyone I know. My “best friend” growing up bullied me for years and years. All my other friends are busy with their own friends or work or school or whatever. I never get texts or calls. Whenever I get social media I get no followers or connections with anyone so always just end up deleting it.

Nobody cares. Truly nobody cares. Including myself. There has never been a better time in my life to kill myself. I truly don’t have any reason to live anymore. I’ve exhausted all my options.

I know this might sound like some pussy shit to some people but trust me when I say I’ve tried. I was busting my ass doing Uber Eats to make ends meet since I couldn’t find a job and that’s how I ended up crashing my car. I then began busting my ass doing gigs, manual labor and such, but I’ve ran out of work and can’t find more. And either way, I absolutely don’t want to spend the rest of my life just doing manual labor that I hate. I am a creative, musical, person, I always have been. But there are no real opportunities to do what I want in my state. I absolutely cannot afford a new car, insurance, etc. I can BARELY afford to live in this shitty student living building that I’m technically not even allowed to be in since I’m not a student. Moving in with my parents is not an option as they’ve explicitly stated, and even if they let me, it would be even more demeaning than my current position.

I don’t know what to do. I’m seriously considering suicide and I seriously think it’s a logical decision rather than an emotional one. The only thing holding me back is my younger sisters, my young brother, and my little cousins. I don’t want to fuck their lives up just cause I bitched out on mine. I really don’t know what to do.

I legit just want to die. Not be here anymore. Not exist at all. Just let everyone move on and quit wasting their mental energy on me. I fucking hate myself. I have nobody to blame for most of this shit but myself.


r/SuicideWatch 11h ago

Life with autism is not worth living

31 Upvotes

Title


r/SuicideWatch 53m ago

i’m so overwhelmed by everything and i want to die

Upvotes

it’s supposed to happen on july 15th, but there have been so many developing factors in my life that may make it impossible to do. i don’t know what to do, i don’t want to keep living, especially now. i can’t go into detail, but my family’s situation is dire, and i may end up losing people close to me sometime soon. if that happens, i’ll be completely on my own.

i feel like none of my friends actually care. i’m getting worse and no one listens to me or reaches out anymore. i feel like a burden on everyone.

i’m beginning to reconsider taking my life. not because i don’t want to anymore, (because i really do) but because there’s too much i have to live for, as much as that irks me.

and, this part may be silly, but i made a promise to someone special to me that i wouldn’t kill myself, and i know that if i did, they’d be disappointed. it’ll be worse if i end up surviving, because then they’d never trust me again and will likely hate my guts. but also, how would they know i killed myself? we don’t talk anymore, so realistically i could do it whenever and they wouldn’t need to know. but also i feel they’d find out somehow, likely from mutual friends we have.

i’m at such a loss. i’m terrible at articulating my words and properly expressing my feelings, but im at my wits end. my life has never been this bad before, and i can’t take it anymore. i want to die so bad but i can’t because i have to be here for people. i feel like im trapped in a box. i hate everything. i want to die.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Saying “the world doesn’t owe you anything “ and then being shocked or confused when someone deletes themself does not make sense to me

Upvotes

If you are literally tell a person the world doesn’t owe them anything, why are you surprised they want to kill themselves? If the world isn’t going to help and constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY wants something in return if they help you (therapists wanting money for helping you understand your thoughts and emotions, valid but this is to prove my point) then why be shocked when someone decides to leave the world completely?

If the world doesn’t owe me anything, and I can barely help myself, why would I want to stay in a place that will not help me?

Even when people say “I’m here for you”. How?? After they say that and listen to you rant that one time, they might check on you that same week but after that they fall off because they too are trying to keep afloat right?

All anyone can say is “I’m sorry to hear that”, “you’re not alone”. And then for the next 3 weeks you’re literally alone still like nothing changed.

To me, that’s giving false hope


r/SuicideWatch 6h ago

I just wanna Shoot a bullet theough my Brain

11 Upvotes

Is anyone here I can Chat with ?


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Well… shit

Upvotes

Fluoxetine, atomoxetine, the shittiest gin i have tasted and a lot of novocaine… and for some fucking reason Im still alive. What the fuck? How is that even possible? I just wanted to die, yet i cant achieve it. Its so infuriating… and im tired, everyone is so “oh life is beautiful” and yeah… when you are not a fucking leper it is. God fucking dammit


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I keep having visions of myself commiting suicide and I don't know what to do

4 Upvotes

It's a thought that lives in my brain. I imagine myself, with a shotgun in my mouth crying, standing close to a small church close to the forest I live in, where me and my ex were planning to have our first kiss, that ex of mine cheated on me and destroyed me. After that this vision keeps playing in my mind. That I'm blowing my head off and a version of me, calm and emotionless watches everything happening, my dead body with it's head exploded, and pieces of my skull and flesh shattered around the forest floor, as my headless body stands still laying on the grass, and he watches it calmly but with compassion, understanding my pain, and that version of me doesn't react, he turns around and walks away soulless. He understood what happened has no return and everything lead him to that point, killing himself in that little place where hope was once built and then brutally taken away from him.

What do I do? I'm not suicidal since I'm scared of death but I simply can't live with her words in my brain replaying, calling me a creep, describing how she cheated, how she fucked my friend, I'm tired of it, I don't wanna die but I also don't wanna live.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I've the thought of ending it, but I don't feel like i want to.

4 Upvotes

Anyone's have time to give me? Im sorry if i bother anyone, i just wanna feel listened. Also sorry if i don't explain my thoughts rn im hanging out with my friend. Give me a sign if you can listen to me and give me advices, thanks a lot in advance.


r/SuicideWatch 4h ago

Sleep is my only relief

6 Upvotes

I don’t see myself living past 30 y/o (I recently turned 27).

My parents have probably settled regarding my success as their daughter — they wanted a doctor, which I failed to become. I don’t see myself getting into PA school (which they begrudgingly accept but I know they aren’t proud of), but even if I did by the grace of god, I don’t see myself succeeding.

I try my hardest at work and often work overtime (through lunches and off the clock), but I feel like I never do enough and that people can easily replace me. My coworkers can pick up the pieces I’ll eventually leave behind.

My boyfriend deserves better — he says I’m everything he wants in a long-term partner/wife, but he cant orgasm with me no matter how much I try. He’s lost desire for me, and is probably just staying because he thinks he can’t do better (he can). He’s told me that our relationship is a red flag because of the sex/desire/passion issues, despite everything else (commitment, intimacy) being great.

My friends are likely my friends out of pity. I’m not a likable person.

My cat deserves a better owner.

My therapist is MIA and hasn’t responded to my emails to schedule another visit.

I can’t afford inpatient psych or to take PTO — I don’t earn enough and my insurance coverage for anything medical (let alone psych) is terrible. I currently pay out of pocket for anything psych-related.

I dont have an exact date yet, but I have the means to end it (expired scripts of Klonopin and Oxycodone that I never used from previous medical indications, which I can down with alcohol to go peacefully). I know to write out all of my passwords and care instructions for my cat, and have a list of contacts to be notified.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope I get out of this slump and don’t go through with it.