Many places make it illegal to allow police to intercede. In most places, the police can intervene if they believe a crime is about to be committed.
There is a huge line between someone who is terminally ill, and wants to die on their own terms, and someone having a mental health crisis. The first should be legal, but still needs support and checking, the 2nd need immediate help.
And what happens when your mental health crisis has lasted for several years, decades even? It is possible to not be terminally ill or old and still rationally decide you want to die due to chronic illness or other issues, even if your issue is purely mental illness. You should be able to die with dignity, peacefully - not after forking over a pretty sum over sketchy websites hoping to get the right peaceful pill that every government has banned or a poison + medication combo so that you’ll die puking your guts out but hopefully you won’t puke the poison out and successfully die.
There is no help for so many people wanting to die, they’ve exhausted their options. Some are so desperate they buy what they think is a peaceful pill but is instead rat poison. Mental hospitals do not help these type of people, if these places help at all.
I know, first hand, how strong the illusion is, that depression causes. It’s like having a mountain poised to avalanche down on you. You just want to escape, even if it’s via extreme means.
The key is that it is still an illusion. It’s a paper tiger, once you get a handle to fight it, it dissolves like mist. Most people who attempt suicide, due to mental health, are not dealing with a steady chronic condition. They are at a crisis point. If they receive appropriate help, clawing their way back is perfectly possible for most.
There are exceptions, but they are quite rare. I would bundle them with terminal illness, though proving that is a lot harder. It’s also a balancing act between being OK with dying, and being of sound mind to make that decision.
There is no help for so many people wanting to die, they’ve exhausted their options
They feel like there is no help, no options, no possibilities. They feel like they’ve exhausted their options.
To state absolutely there is no help to be had in any possible situation is just plain wrong. It does feel like that, yes, and that’s the horrible bit. Because the brain absolutely can’t not come up with anything and every option you have agency over you feel like you’ve exhausted. But also, it is a slight exaggeration to say with absolute certainty there is no help.
And I am speaking from experience.
But no, it’s not discounted that assisted suicide for mental illness should be completely off the table. However because of the nature of mental illness, there should definitely be checks and balances for it, otherwise half the population would kill themselves over their first heartbreak.
I’ve read their stories and have my own, there is no help. Therapy, medication, mental ward visits, physical therapy, etc. don’t help. Some issues are definitely caused by society, but it is not realistically possible to change society radically enough and soon enough to help. They feel there is no help because there is indeed no help, I also hold this view for myself.
I am not talking about someone going through a breakup reacting on impulse, I mean people who have been mentally ill for years. People with chronic conditions. People who are in pain.
I am not talking about someone going through a breakup reacting on impulse, I mean people who have been mentally ill for years. People with chronic conditions. People who are in pain.
And very politely assumed I’m not one of those people, not presumptuous at all.
I’ve been tossed out of an ER after I told the psychiatrist I was afraid I might hurt myself or others. Literally, verbatim (albeit in Finnish.) He said, “don’t try to make that my responsibility”. Like, fuck, that’s literally in his job description. He got a guard to escort me out. I rang a crisis holine. They hang up on me, saying I didn’t have a crisis. All this after I had waited in an empty room without food for 7 hours, waiting for that pick of a psychiatrist on call to laze back to work. And they didn’t even tell me “he won’t be in for hours”, when they knew perfectly well.
Then another time I was denied my prescription medication while in police custody. I was kept in a cell for three days without them telling me what’s going on, how long, why, and even fucking cutting off my water at one point. A literal crime against humanity. Ate my finger open and wrote >300 words in my own blood on the walls. I got a picture of the cell somewhere. They accused me of vandalising the cell. I tried getting the video material from my time in the cell to prove their gross negligence. They “lost it”.
My family doesn’t even contact me. Haven’t worked in several years. Had to move from school to school as a kid because of my mom, never had time to form long term relationships even though I make friends rather easily.
A few years ago, I would’ve definitely agreed with you. I’m a stubborn person, and it FELT like I had exhausted all my options and no-one was willing to help. That’s an exaggeration of course, as is your absolute. And true, the doctors didn’t help shit, family and friends nonexistent, the one friend who I had who could’ve helped lost a daughter, so can’t really blame him for not being able to help others.
I was genuinely considering suicide everyday, and had there been an easy way to do it, I probably would’ve. If not for nothing else, then to make every single fuck of those “not my problem” fucks feel at least a little guilty for not doing more. Like my mom. I would’ve loved to see her face when she heard I killed myself. Might sound uncaring, because you don’t understand how uncaring my mother is, and that lack of care is what I’ve been talking to her about and she just represses and outright ignores it. So having screamed about suicidal ideation to her probably would’ve made her feel at least a little bit guilty for not simply calling me to prevent me from killing myself.
But I don’t feel like that now. Because I’m a stubborn as fuck person and didn’t kill myself out of spite, because I wouldn’t get to see what happens. So after years of being convinced my illness has a physical basis, I found one. A rather small thing, non-celiac gluten sensitivity.
But it’s not well understood, and has weird connections to behaviour.
All I know is while I used to laugh at all the “gluten free is a fad” jokes, I now don’t find them funny after understanding just how much influence a simple fucking protein in my diet can have on the functioning of my nervous system. That being the system that houses this consciousness that’s writing to you and not wishing that badly to kill themselves amymore.
Like did I get help from the systems and people who were supposed to care and help? No. Did they actively act against my best interests by ignoring my pleas for help? Yes they did. Did that make me want to kill myself even more? Yes, it did.
But did it mean there was no help to be had, anywhere, as an absolute? Seeing how I now feel less like killing myself, seems it doesn’t follow that no help was available. I just had to find it myself, on accident, after literally several decades of complaining about that issue.
I also chose a therapist who’s not Finnish on purpose, so they understand how the entire culture is affecting me, and I feel validated by them. So while it hasn’t been a huge help, it’s definitely a help going there weekly.
But perhaps I still don’t belong to those “people in pain” who you speak about who FEEL like there is no help.
Presumptuous? I’m not sure how you got that from my message but I don’t blame you because apparently I am r* when it comes to communicating online, many people accuse me of things I did not mean or say and then I get downvoted because no one cares what I have to say.
I am sorry what you went through. You said you knew from experience what it was like so I assumed you also had some sort of mental illness and some sort of suicidal component but that you got better. That was my assumption. I just don’t believe everyone can get better.
I’m not sure how much to reveal about myself without potentially doxxing myself. But I am from the US. I have been suicidal since a child since before I could identify the suicidal feeling as being suicidal because of a combo of a very abusive home and an abusive school environment. My abusive upbringing gave me PTSD, anxiety, and depression. It did not get better once I became an adult and I developed chronic pain in middle school. I had abusive relationships one after the other (my therapist said since I’ve never seen a healthy relationship modeled before this is why it kept happening), but one ex in particular really abused me badly and added on to the PTSD. I had tried killing myself growing up a few times, eventually it led to me taking a more drastic measure as an adult that landed me in the mental ward. I didn’t do it for revenge or attention, I did it because my life is full of too much suffering. The mental ward was extremely horrible for me and added on to my PTSD, it felt like a prison and like I was in constant danger. I’ve lost friends who can’t handle my suicidal attempts, I no longer talk about it to anyone except my therapist now. My therapist encouraged me to go to the mental ward a few times, I tried it but my PTSD and anxiety would heighten during the wait from the ER to the mental ward that I usually just left (after all they would leave me in a bed in the hallway with no visitors for six hours to tell me 99% of the time there is no room in the mental ward for me and 1% of the time they could transfer me many hours away to a different hospital one-way so I’m on my own to get back). I went so often they told me I couldn’t keep going back every time I had a bad day. Thing is, I feel in crisis every day. So I gave up on the ER and the mental ward. I’ve even been kicked out of the ER before during a pretty bad day, the staff just don’t know how to deal with people like me who aren’t violent but just can’t follow directions during an episode because I completely shut down. I also tried crisis lines but found they were very short and rude with me. I have promised myself I will wait for my dogs to pass on of natural causes before catching the bus. I can’t trust anyone to take good care of them if I am gone. That is the only reason I am still alive. When I am suicidal I lookup the methods for exiting, visit the forums, and it calms me down enough to stick to my resolve for my dogs.
I am glad you were able to find relief. I don’t want people to die if they can be helped, I really don’t, but not everyone can be helped. It is not going to be the same for me. I have debilitating chronic pain that forces me to mostly stay in bed all day and my health insurance cannot pay for what I need, assuming it would even help my pain. I am on SSI but it is not enough money to cover for these extra medical expenses. There are hardly any doctors in my area who accept my insurance, I’ve flown to other nearby areas before but it is still the same with many doctors not wanting to accept my insurance. I find my therapist is the one person I can really talk to, but I’ve been warned I can’t say how suicidal I really am or I will be forced into the mental ward so I dance around the subject. Friends? No, not really. I do have an SO but they are not enough of a reason to stay, sometimes they are the reason I want to leave.
I know someone with lupus that has similar pain to me and I have watched them decay: being able to walk about, then needing a cane, and now needing a wheelchair and their legs have atrophied. They are in so much pain and also spend their days in bed and I can’t help but feel that this is where I am headed and I do not want to go there. I already can’t sit or stand for very long let alone walk about very far. I have a service dog to help me walk longer distances but he can’t go everywhere with me, for instance places like the mental ward. My doctor said I just need exercise and sent me to physical therapy, but when I didn’t improve enough my insurance cut me off. My pain is still the same. Over the years my doctors have been very unhelpful dealing with my pain. One doctor even said it was because of my weight, but my pain started when I was very skinny and I got overweight because it became too hard to move around. I have to stick to a diet of 1050 calories to lose weight since I am very short, my doctors don’t recommend this and instead want me to somehow exercise more but I’ve lost 30 lbs this way without having to exercise. My pain did not get better weighing less. It is also obviously very hard to stick to a diet this strict for very long. There is also something very wrong with my uterus. I have had horrible periods since they first started that put me in so much pain I would miss days at school every month and then work every month and now I have been told it may be endometriosis but the only way to confirm is through surgery which my doctor doesn’t approve of. Intercourse is so goddamn painful. I need constant birth control (skip placebo) to help ease my periods, but they do not help with the mood swings and intense suicidal ideation during them.
There is a society component to my issues. I don’t deny that. But when you spend your days trapped in a body that feels near constant pain where you have days you can’t use your arms or legs very much and a mind that still has PTSD flashbacks and have to act neurotic around certain things because of anxiety and skip eating meals and showers because of depression and did I mention I reached the age where schizophrenia is rearing its head and making me feel even more crazy like I hear voices and see hallucinations and I can’t even trust my memory anymore so it is far too easy to gaslight me and I have IBS which no diet I’ve tried has been able to ease (including gluten-free) … I mean my life is pain. To me. I want out. And I don’t even think my story is that bad compared to what I’ve read on the forums. A lot of people on the forums didn’t respond well to therapy or medication at all. At least I have a therapist I can talk to since no one else wants to talk to me.
I acknowledge you have pain and you were able to work through it, able to manage it. But I am not going to be able to work through mine. Maybe I’m too weak. I just hate being alive. You probably hate me judging by your tone and I don’t know if you will read this but there is no help for me.
Many places make it illegal to allow police to intercede. In most places, the police can intervene if they believe a crime is about to be committed.
There is a huge line between someone who is terminally ill, and wants to die on their own terms, and someone having a mental health crisis. The first should be legal, but still needs support and checking, the 2nd need immediate help.
And what happens when your mental health crisis has lasted for several years, decades even? It is possible to not be terminally ill or old and still rationally decide you want to die due to chronic illness or other issues, even if your issue is purely mental illness. You should be able to die with dignity, peacefully - not after forking over a pretty sum over sketchy websites hoping to get the right peaceful pill that every government has banned or a poison + medication combo so that you’ll die puking your guts out but hopefully you won’t puke the poison out and successfully die.
There is no help for so many people wanting to die, they’ve exhausted their options. Some are so desperate they buy what they think is a peaceful pill but is instead rat poison. Mental hospitals do not help these type of people, if these places help at all.
I know, first hand, how strong the illusion is, that depression causes. It’s like having a mountain poised to avalanche down on you. You just want to escape, even if it’s via extreme means.
The key is that it is still an illusion. It’s a paper tiger, once you get a handle to fight it, it dissolves like mist. Most people who attempt suicide, due to mental health, are not dealing with a steady chronic condition. They are at a crisis point. If they receive appropriate help, clawing their way back is perfectly possible for most.
There are exceptions, but they are quite rare. I would bundle them with terminal illness, though proving that is a lot harder. It’s also a balancing act between being OK with dying, and being of sound mind to make that decision.
They feel like there is no help, no options, no possibilities. They feel like they’ve exhausted their options.
To state absolutely there is no help to be had in any possible situation is just plain wrong. It does feel like that, yes, and that’s the horrible bit. Because the brain absolutely can’t not come up with anything and every option you have agency over you feel like you’ve exhausted. But also, it is a slight exaggeration to say with absolute certainty there is no help.
And I am speaking from experience.
But no, it’s not discounted that assisted suicide for mental illness should be completely off the table. However because of the nature of mental illness, there should definitely be checks and balances for it, otherwise half the population would kill themselves over their first heartbreak.
I’ve read their stories and have my own, there is no help. Therapy, medication, mental ward visits, physical therapy, etc. don’t help. Some issues are definitely caused by society, but it is not realistically possible to change society radically enough and soon enough to help. They feel there is no help because there is indeed no help, I also hold this view for myself.
I am not talking about someone going through a breakup reacting on impulse, I mean people who have been mentally ill for years. People with chronic conditions. People who are in pain.
And very politely assumed I’m not one of those people, not presumptuous at all.
I’ve been tossed out of an ER after I told the psychiatrist I was afraid I might hurt myself or others. Literally, verbatim (albeit in Finnish.) He said, “don’t try to make that my responsibility”. Like, fuck, that’s literally in his job description. He got a guard to escort me out. I rang a crisis holine. They hang up on me, saying I didn’t have a crisis. All this after I had waited in an empty room without food for 7 hours, waiting for that pick of a psychiatrist on call to laze back to work. And they didn’t even tell me “he won’t be in for hours”, when they knew perfectly well.
Then another time I was denied my prescription medication while in police custody. I was kept in a cell for three days without them telling me what’s going on, how long, why, and even fucking cutting off my water at one point. A literal crime against humanity. Ate my finger open and wrote >300 words in my own blood on the walls. I got a picture of the cell somewhere. They accused me of vandalising the cell. I tried getting the video material from my time in the cell to prove their gross negligence. They “lost it”.
My family doesn’t even contact me. Haven’t worked in several years. Had to move from school to school as a kid because of my mom, never had time to form long term relationships even though I make friends rather easily.
A few years ago, I would’ve definitely agreed with you. I’m a stubborn person, and it FELT like I had exhausted all my options and no-one was willing to help. That’s an exaggeration of course, as is your absolute. And true, the doctors didn’t help shit, family and friends nonexistent, the one friend who I had who could’ve helped lost a daughter, so can’t really blame him for not being able to help others.
I was genuinely considering suicide everyday, and had there been an easy way to do it, I probably would’ve. If not for nothing else, then to make every single fuck of those “not my problem” fucks feel at least a little guilty for not doing more. Like my mom. I would’ve loved to see her face when she heard I killed myself. Might sound uncaring, because you don’t understand how uncaring my mother is, and that lack of care is what I’ve been talking to her about and she just represses and outright ignores it. So having screamed about suicidal ideation to her probably would’ve made her feel at least a little bit guilty for not simply calling me to prevent me from killing myself.
But I don’t feel like that now. Because I’m a stubborn as fuck person and didn’t kill myself out of spite, because I wouldn’t get to see what happens. So after years of being convinced my illness has a physical basis, I found one. A rather small thing, non-celiac gluten sensitivity.
But it’s not well understood, and has weird connections to behaviour.
All I know is while I used to laugh at all the “gluten free is a fad” jokes, I now don’t find them funny after understanding just how much influence a simple fucking protein in my diet can have on the functioning of my nervous system. That being the system that houses this consciousness that’s writing to you and not wishing that badly to kill themselves amymore.
Like did I get help from the systems and people who were supposed to care and help? No. Did they actively act against my best interests by ignoring my pleas for help? Yes they did. Did that make me want to kill myself even more? Yes, it did.
But did it mean there was no help to be had, anywhere, as an absolute? Seeing how I now feel less like killing myself, seems it doesn’t follow that no help was available. I just had to find it myself, on accident, after literally several decades of complaining about that issue.
I also chose a therapist who’s not Finnish on purpose, so they understand how the entire culture is affecting me, and I feel validated by them. So while it hasn’t been a huge help, it’s definitely a help going there weekly.
But perhaps I still don’t belong to those “people in pain” who you speak about who FEEL like there is no help.
Presumptuous? I’m not sure how you got that from my message but I don’t blame you because apparently I am r* when it comes to communicating online, many people accuse me of things I did not mean or say and then I get downvoted because no one cares what I have to say.
I am sorry what you went through. You said you knew from experience what it was like so I assumed you also had some sort of mental illness and some sort of suicidal component but that you got better. That was my assumption. I just don’t believe everyone can get better.
I’m not sure how much to reveal about myself without potentially doxxing myself. But I am from the US. I have been suicidal since a child since before I could identify the suicidal feeling as being suicidal because of a combo of a very abusive home and an abusive school environment. My abusive upbringing gave me PTSD, anxiety, and depression. It did not get better once I became an adult and I developed chronic pain in middle school. I had abusive relationships one after the other (my therapist said since I’ve never seen a healthy relationship modeled before this is why it kept happening), but one ex in particular really abused me badly and added on to the PTSD. I had tried killing myself growing up a few times, eventually it led to me taking a more drastic measure as an adult that landed me in the mental ward. I didn’t do it for revenge or attention, I did it because my life is full of too much suffering. The mental ward was extremely horrible for me and added on to my PTSD, it felt like a prison and like I was in constant danger. I’ve lost friends who can’t handle my suicidal attempts, I no longer talk about it to anyone except my therapist now. My therapist encouraged me to go to the mental ward a few times, I tried it but my PTSD and anxiety would heighten during the wait from the ER to the mental ward that I usually just left (after all they would leave me in a bed in the hallway with no visitors for six hours to tell me 99% of the time there is no room in the mental ward for me and 1% of the time they could transfer me many hours away to a different hospital one-way so I’m on my own to get back). I went so often they told me I couldn’t keep going back every time I had a bad day. Thing is, I feel in crisis every day. So I gave up on the ER and the mental ward. I’ve even been kicked out of the ER before during a pretty bad day, the staff just don’t know how to deal with people like me who aren’t violent but just can’t follow directions during an episode because I completely shut down. I also tried crisis lines but found they were very short and rude with me. I have promised myself I will wait for my dogs to pass on of natural causes before catching the bus. I can’t trust anyone to take good care of them if I am gone. That is the only reason I am still alive. When I am suicidal I lookup the methods for exiting, visit the forums, and it calms me down enough to stick to my resolve for my dogs.
I am glad you were able to find relief. I don’t want people to die if they can be helped, I really don’t, but not everyone can be helped. It is not going to be the same for me. I have debilitating chronic pain that forces me to mostly stay in bed all day and my health insurance cannot pay for what I need, assuming it would even help my pain. I am on SSI but it is not enough money to cover for these extra medical expenses. There are hardly any doctors in my area who accept my insurance, I’ve flown to other nearby areas before but it is still the same with many doctors not wanting to accept my insurance. I find my therapist is the one person I can really talk to, but I’ve been warned I can’t say how suicidal I really am or I will be forced into the mental ward so I dance around the subject. Friends? No, not really. I do have an SO but they are not enough of a reason to stay, sometimes they are the reason I want to leave.
I know someone with lupus that has similar pain to me and I have watched them decay: being able to walk about, then needing a cane, and now needing a wheelchair and their legs have atrophied. They are in so much pain and also spend their days in bed and I can’t help but feel that this is where I am headed and I do not want to go there. I already can’t sit or stand for very long let alone walk about very far. I have a service dog to help me walk longer distances but he can’t go everywhere with me, for instance places like the mental ward. My doctor said I just need exercise and sent me to physical therapy, but when I didn’t improve enough my insurance cut me off. My pain is still the same. Over the years my doctors have been very unhelpful dealing with my pain. One doctor even said it was because of my weight, but my pain started when I was very skinny and I got overweight because it became too hard to move around. I have to stick to a diet of 1050 calories to lose weight since I am very short, my doctors don’t recommend this and instead want me to somehow exercise more but I’ve lost 30 lbs this way without having to exercise. My pain did not get better weighing less. It is also obviously very hard to stick to a diet this strict for very long. There is also something very wrong with my uterus. I have had horrible periods since they first started that put me in so much pain I would miss days at school every month and then work every month and now I have been told it may be endometriosis but the only way to confirm is through surgery which my doctor doesn’t approve of. Intercourse is so goddamn painful. I need constant birth control (skip placebo) to help ease my periods, but they do not help with the mood swings and intense suicidal ideation during them.
There is a society component to my issues. I don’t deny that. But when you spend your days trapped in a body that feels near constant pain where you have days you can’t use your arms or legs very much and a mind that still has PTSD flashbacks and have to act neurotic around certain things because of anxiety and skip eating meals and showers because of depression and did I mention I reached the age where schizophrenia is rearing its head and making me feel even more crazy like I hear voices and see hallucinations and I can’t even trust my memory anymore so it is far too easy to gaslight me and I have IBS which no diet I’ve tried has been able to ease (including gluten-free) … I mean my life is pain. To me. I want out. And I don’t even think my story is that bad compared to what I’ve read on the forums. A lot of people on the forums didn’t respond well to therapy or medication at all. At least I have a therapist I can talk to since no one else wants to talk to me.
I acknowledge you have pain and you were able to work through it, able to manage it. But I am not going to be able to work through mine. Maybe I’m too weak. I just hate being alive. You probably hate me judging by your tone and I don’t know if you will read this but there is no help for me.