A few disclaimers. I am not a mental health professional, as is probably more than apparent. I have some experience dealing with both ostensibly and explicitly suicidal friends. My personal history also includes periods of depression and bouts of suicidal intentions of varying degrees of intensity. In addition, have an intellectual interest in the subject. If anyone with better experience, knowledge or training in this area wants to correct me, I implore you to do so. Dealing with a suicidal friend or loved one is one situation where you definitely do not want wrong information in your head.
With that out of the way...
It is my belief that if someone has a genuine, premeditated and well-thought-out intention to end their life, you won’t find out about it until they’ve already done it. It will be planned in such a way that they won’t be disturbed, and won’t fail on the basis of conviction. They’ll do it ‘properly’. As a result, this advice applies to the more melodramatic ‘cry for help’ expression of suicidal intent.
People don’t just suddenly decide that it’s a good idea to kill themselves. It usually isn’t a very good idea. It’s usually the result of a sequence of events which points to threatening suicide as an appropriate outcome of the situation. The old saw of not being able to reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into is quite true in this case. Don’t try and engage in rational argument about why they shouldn’t kill themselves.
Your goal is to try and steer their mood to a point where they think “gee, wasn’t I silly for thinking about killing myself?” I find the most straightforward way of doing this is focussing their attention on near-future events. People they want to see, places they want to go, upcoming social engagements, even something as mundane movies or books they expressed an interest in. Planning for the future and contemplating suicide are fundamentally at odds with each other. In Robin Hanson jargon, suicide is Far, and becomes appealing through a lack of Near consequences for carrying it out. Even something as trivial as missing the next Batman movie can be enough of a Near consequence for someone to feel silly about the whole wanting-to-kill-themselves thing.
Another important element is to try and keep the tone and content of the conversation as normal as possible. There’s a fairly well-established cultural narrative for how these sorts of exchanges are supposed to go, and steering away from that narrative will make their actions seem more and more silly in context.
I endorse most of this, though I’ll note that in cases of profound depression my emotional response to being invited to consider near-future events may well be to assert that no, actually, there’s nothing I actually want to do.
Also…
if someone has a genuine, premeditated and well-thought-out intention to end their life, you won’t find out about it until they’ve already done it.
When I started writing this, I found I had a lot more that I wanted to say than could have been squeezed into a moderate length comment, which is why it ends kind of abruptly. There are so many possible caveats and special cases to make it difficult to assemble all-purpose advice on the subject.
I… don’t see how making someone feel silly is going to help in the long run? If it really is a problem for them, then wouldn’t they have a harder time bouncing back from thinking they’ve said something silly/stupid, not to mention feel alienated and alone, possibly discouraging them from talking about it again instead of doing the deed? It seems to me that an expression of suicidal intent as a cry for help doesn’t necessarily make it insincere. It doesn’t sound unlikely to me that someone could say they’ve the intent to do it, because their view of how things are makes it seem like life’s not worth it, but that they’d of course want to think otherwise, and so would still like to hear serious advice on the matter, or at least hear that someone cares. Honestly, it sounds very callous.
I’m not suggesting that it’s beneficial to make suicidal people feel silly. I’m proposing that the sensation of retreating from a position of suicidal intent is often feeling silly about having done it.
I’m starting to regret posting this now. There’s way too much room for misinterpretation.
A few disclaimers. I am not a mental health professional, as is probably more than apparent. I have some experience dealing with both ostensibly and explicitly suicidal friends. My personal history also includes periods of depression and bouts of suicidal intentions of varying degrees of intensity. In addition, have an intellectual interest in the subject. If anyone with better experience, knowledge or training in this area wants to correct me, I implore you to do so. Dealing with a suicidal friend or loved one is one situation where you definitely do not want wrong information in your head.
With that out of the way...
It is my belief that if someone has a genuine, premeditated and well-thought-out intention to end their life, you won’t find out about it until they’ve already done it. It will be planned in such a way that they won’t be disturbed, and won’t fail on the basis of conviction. They’ll do it ‘properly’. As a result, this advice applies to the more melodramatic ‘cry for help’ expression of suicidal intent.
People don’t just suddenly decide that it’s a good idea to kill themselves. It usually isn’t a very good idea. It’s usually the result of a sequence of events which points to threatening suicide as an appropriate outcome of the situation. The old saw of not being able to reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into is quite true in this case. Don’t try and engage in rational argument about why they shouldn’t kill themselves.
Your goal is to try and steer their mood to a point where they think “gee, wasn’t I silly for thinking about killing myself?” I find the most straightforward way of doing this is focussing their attention on near-future events. People they want to see, places they want to go, upcoming social engagements, even something as mundane movies or books they expressed an interest in. Planning for the future and contemplating suicide are fundamentally at odds with each other. In Robin Hanson jargon, suicide is Far, and becomes appealing through a lack of Near consequences for carrying it out. Even something as trivial as missing the next Batman movie can be enough of a Near consequence for someone to feel silly about the whole wanting-to-kill-themselves thing.
Another important element is to try and keep the tone and content of the conversation as normal as possible. There’s a fairly well-established cultural narrative for how these sorts of exchanges are supposed to go, and steering away from that narrative will make their actions seem more and more silly in context.
I endorse most of this, though I’ll note that in cases of profound depression my emotional response to being invited to consider near-future events may well be to assert that no, actually, there’s nothing I actually want to do.
Also…
Often, not even then.
When I started writing this, I found I had a lot more that I wanted to say than could have been squeezed into a moderate length comment, which is why it ends kind of abruptly. There are so many possible caveats and special cases to make it difficult to assemble all-purpose advice on the subject.
I… don’t see how making someone feel silly is going to help in the long run? If it really is a problem for them, then wouldn’t they have a harder time bouncing back from thinking they’ve said something silly/stupid, not to mention feel alienated and alone, possibly discouraging them from talking about it again instead of doing the deed? It seems to me that an expression of suicidal intent as a cry for help doesn’t necessarily make it insincere. It doesn’t sound unlikely to me that someone could say they’ve the intent to do it, because their view of how things are makes it seem like life’s not worth it, but that they’d of course want to think otherwise, and so would still like to hear serious advice on the matter, or at least hear that someone cares. Honestly, it sounds very callous.
I’m not suggesting that it’s beneficial to make suicidal people feel silly. I’m proposing that the sensation of retreating from a position of suicidal intent is often feeling silly about having done it.
I’m starting to regret posting this now. There’s way too much room for misinterpretation.