The Disconnect

I think one of the primary problems with suicide prevention is that the people trying to do the professional side of the preventing don't really grasp the issue. Psychologists, therapists, doctors, and the like are all, by the very nature of being in their profession, successful people capable of changing their circumstances. Even if they have some mental or emotional issues going on, even if they've personally suffered from addiction, they have, at least enough to achieve their degree, managed their obstacles.

But for a lot of suicidal people, that isn't the case. We tend to treat the suicidal like they're having a moment of emotional crisis. If you look at the majority of suicide prevention websites, they will emphasize that the want to kill yourself is only temporary. And yes, the crisis level of wanting it may be temporary, but the desire to end your life is very rarely just about emotions.

Because the people who try to prevent suicide are successful, they don't grasp the fundamental hell of being a failure. They don't understand the constant gnawing tension of poverty. They don't feel the day to day dread of wondering when the next thing will go wrong.

One of the most unhelpful pieces of suicide prevention advice I ever read was 'think about things to look forward to.' A lot of people who want to kill themselves do not 'look forward' to anything in a positive way. They just exist from moment to moment, praying nothing will screw up or break. Even when they have to go to an event where most people would 'look forward to it,' they are too consumed with worry to enjoy themselves. And while sometimes this may just be paranoia, other times it's PTSD after bad stuff has happened to them at events like this.

When you are successful and you try to get people who are not successful to be positive, you don't grasp their darkness. I used to wonder why people past 40 were still screwing up in the same ways they did when they were younger. In some cases, yeah, it's patterns. In other cases, hell, maybe they just feel like they've failed for too many years to justify the supreme effort it would take to make their lives better when it will only be better for maybe a decade at the most before old age starts ripping it all away again?

Oh and it's so much worse if you've consistently failed in life and you're also smart. Now you not only have the dread of when something goes wrong and the sense of failure, but you're also ashamed. You probably had the tools to fix things, but you didn't. Now everything sucks and you're old and in pain and have nothing to look forward to and it's embarrassing.  And no, that isn't a temporary feeling that will go away. That is the circumstances of your life.

Okay, my point being, I think people who are trying to keep the suicidal from becoming the dead need to reevaluate their tactics. If you really want them to live, you need to look beyond the temporary chemical issues and tackle the real hell they face.