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Brief overview of suicide
Important suicide prevention links
How you can help them
Dangerous Suicide Warning Signs
Myths about suicide
What drives people to contemplate suicide
Feelings of the suicidal person
Unhelpful judgemental words
Brief overview of suicide
The consideration to end one's life happens when the pain exceeds the person's ability at that point to cope.
A person commits suicide when he finds his life in this world has become intolerable, difficult and meaningless and he wants to escape from the situation." - B.H.Chia (author of Too Young To Die)
Stigma of suicide comes when people have a negative view of people who attempts or thinks about commiting suicide. Common misperceptions include viewing them as weak-willed or weak-minded, attention-seeking, selfish and/or are cowards to resort to an easy way out of life, leaving behind many people who cares about them and not caring about those people's feelings.
Because we do not see nor feel the depth of emotional and mental pain it is to the person, we do not understand how overwhelming and painful it is to them.
We might ask, how is it they cannot see how many people cares about them, that it isn't the end of the world, things can get better etc? Those in pain could just as well ask us, "how is it that we cannot see or understand the pain and hopelessness they feel?"
It again boils down to "Feelings are facts to the person experiencing them." Do we acknowledge how they feel or do we invalidate them?
We must never invalidate or make little of the pain that they feel that drove them to this end. We need to understand, much as we may too feel anger, disappointment, sadness, confusion or grief ourselves.
Suicidal people needs our help. Many of them are on an emotional see-saw, an ambivalence feeling on whether or not to do it. They are struggling to survive and your help to them, your willingness to give them that listening ear (that gift of listening), and your being non-judgemental, sincerity and warmth may just save their life.
In being human, we must ask ourselves, what is it like to reach a point of our lives and say, death is better than living. Are we able to empathize with what it means to face our own fears and realise what it means to feel hopeless? Are we then able to listen?
Important suicide prevention links
If you're thinking about suicide, read this first
Keeping yourself alive. Postponing a suicide attempt
How Can You Help People who want to commit suicide
Misc. Difficulties of Helping & Being Helped
Listen to them, hear them out, make them feel understood. A genuine unjudgemental listening ear can go a long way in calming them down and saving them.
Always remember that most suicidal people do not really wish to die, they just can't cope with the pain that they are going through.
Dangerous Suicide Warning Signs
The below table is taken from http://www.helpguide.org/mental/suicide_prevention.htm
Dangerous Suicide Warning Signs
| Suicide Warning Signs | |
Talking about suicide |
Any talk about suicide, dying, or self-harm. Includes statements such as “I wish I hadn't been born,” “If I see you again...,” “I want out,” and “I'd be better off dead.” |
Preoccupation with death |
Unusual focus on death, dying, or violence. Writing poems or stories about death |
Rehearsing suicide |
Hoarding pills. Hiding or seeking out weapons. Discussing specific suicide methods. |
No hope for the future |
Bleak view of the future. Feeling helpless and hopeless. Feeling trapped (“There's no way out”). Belief that things will never get better or change. |
Self–loathing, self-hatred |
Expressing feelings of worthlessness, guilt, shame, and self-hatred. Feeling like a burden (“Everyone would be better off without me”). |
Getting affairs in order |
Making out a will. Giving away prized possessions. Making arrangements for family members. |
Saying goodbye |
Unusual or unexpected visits or calls to family and friends. Saying goodbye to people as if they won't be seen again. |
Withdrawing from others |
Withdrawing from friends and family. Increasing social isolation. Desire to be left alone. |
Dangerous or self-destructive behavior |
Increased alcohol or drug use, reckless driving, unsafe sex. Taking unnecessary risks as if they have a “death wish”. |
Dramatic mood swings |
Sudden outbursts. Rapidly changing mood from emotional highs to lows |
Change in appearance |
Loss of interest in personal appearance (doesn't get dressed, neglects basic grooming). Sudden change in style of dress |
Changes in routine |
Changes in eating or sleeping habits. Change in activity level (decreasing participation in school, work, and leisure activities). |
Personality changes |
Sudden changes in personality, such as going from outgoing to withdrawn, polite to rude, or well-behaved or rebellious. |
Sudden sense of calm |
A sudden sense of calm and happiness after being extremely depressed can mean that the individual has made a decision and plan to commit suicide. |
Back to TopMyths about suicide
Taken from What can I do to help someone who is suicidal
Myth: “The people who talk about it don't do it.”
Studies have found that more than 75% of all completed suicides did things in the few weeks or months prior to their deaths to indicate to others that they were in deep despair. Anyone expressing suicidal feelings needs immediate attention.
Myth: “Anyone who tries to kill himself has got to be crazy.”
Perhaps 10% of all suicidal people are psychotic or have delusional beliefs about reality. Most suicidal people suffer from the recognized mental illness of depression; but many depressed people adequately manage their daily affairs. The absence of “craziness” does not mean the absence of suicide risk.
“Those problems weren't enough to commit suicide over,” is often said by people who knew a completed suicide. You cannot assume that because you feel something is not worth being suicidal about, that the person you are with feels the same way. It is not how bad the problem is, but how badly it's hurting the person who has it.
# Remember: suicidal behavior is a cry for help.
Myth: “If a someone is going to kill himself, nothing can stop him.”
The fact that a person is still alive is sufficient proof that part of him wants to remain alive. The suicidal person is ambivalent - part of him wants to live and part of him wants not so much death as he wants the pain to end. It is the part that wants to live that tells another “I feel suicidal.” If a suicidal person turns to you it is likely that he believes that you are more caring, more informed about coping with misfortune, and more willing to protect his confidentiality. No matter how negative the manner and content of his talk, he is doing a positive thing and has a positive view of you.
What drives people to contemplate suicide
What drives people to contemplate suicide? There can be many reasons, some listed below
- Loss. Loss of their job? Loss of a loved one,
- Fear. Fear of losing something they hold dear and are possibly on the verge of losing it
- Failure. A sense of feeling that one has failed can be very overwhelming and despairing for a person that it may make them feel all hope is lost.
- Illness. Severe physical illness or mental illness or even the loss of limbs can wear down a person
Back to Top
Feelings of the suicidal person
I invite anyone to share with me what you felt when you were feeling suicidal, meanwhile, I would do what I can to express what we feel when we feel on the verge of ending our lives.
A person who contemplates ending their life perceives no way out in life, that hope is gone and lost. There's just no hope, no purpose, no meaning and no reason in life to carry on.
The feelings of hopelessness, no way out, no solutions. Nothing anyone can do can help me or change things around feelings. The feelings of guilt, remorse, pain, fear. The questions of whether do I really dare to do it, to end my own life. The weight, the burden, the sheer intensity of feeling helpless and hopeless and emotional pain. Life is just plain miserable or more accurately, very painful and discouraging.
They may feel they are dying. They just want to end their life so that the pain they are feeling can finally cease and they need not go through with the pain for another day. "I just don't want to live anymore""I don't wish to bear this pain anymore"
By voicing out their thoughts of ending their life, it is actually also a plea, a cry for help. They do not wish to die but they just do not know how to cope or handle the pain or loss they feel. Yet they may also feel nobody can help them, that there's no way out. "Nobody can help me." "Nothing's gonna get better." They wish someone can take their pain away for them, but nobody can, can we?
It is a depressing feeling of hopelessness. Some may feel that their carrying on in life would just be a burden to others around them. They cannot stand the pain of the thought of that. That does not make them weak as what some judgemental people perceives.
Society maintains a stigma towards suicide. Those who attempt or commited suicide are often still seen as weak individuals, cowards or a disgrace to the family. It is a very narrow-minded and unkind view that people adopt. It is a view without any form of compassion.
Society believes that it is selfish of such individuals to not care or think about what their love ones has to face and bear when they end their lives. Faced with such, it is even easier for a suicidal person to really think and feel worthless, compiled by society's stigma.
There tends to be a lack of patience with those who are perceived as wallowing in self-pity, people who are actually literally pleading for help and acceptance, on the verge of life and death yet find themselves being judged by others.
"There are others worse off than you."
"Pull yourself together."
"God helps those who helps themselves."
"Do it then. Why keep talking about ending your life."
"Get over it"
"You are selfish. What's going to happen to your family/parents/friends if you die?"
"Stop feeling sorry/self-pity for yourself."
If your heart goes out to them, and truly loves them, cares for them, then be careful with such words you use.
This page is last updated on: 29th September 2007
