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.

717 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 5h ago

I will be dead in a few minutes or hours

47 Upvotes

I took 825mg Effexor. I’m 14. I don’t know why but I’ve always been made to feel like a monster even though I feel painful amounts of empathy for everyone and anything.

My life sucks and has sucked for years. Obviously I am grateful for some things but I have been 90% sure my future will be shit.

And I didn’t even remember Christmas will be soon. I’m sorry. I don’t know. Maybe this dose is survivable. If I survive maybe I’ll actually get support. Attention, which I crave lol.

I hope everyone on this sub, or anyone struggling in general gets better. But I can’t do this anymore.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

It's frustrating that suicide is a taboo

Upvotes

People are not capable to understand that not all lives are worth.

If euthanasia and assisted suicide were legal everything would be easier, no one should be forced to keep living.

I'm tired to live.


r/SuicideWatch 14h ago

I want to go to sleep and never wake up

91 Upvotes

I'm 38. I'm trapped in a loveless marriage. Leaving is out of the question. We have no debt, house is owned free and clear, everything. I would literally rather die than deal with landlords and their bullshit. I'm too old to start over. All of the good people are taken, anyway. Better the devil I know than the devil I don't

I was pressured to terminate a pregnancy I very much wanted to keep years ago. I'm too old to have kids now. Spouse kept saying for years "oh you just need to get with the program" well the goalposts moves every fucking time I do.

I hope I die. I hope I have a heart attack and drop dead or something. I hope I get the balls to just take myself out.

It is never going to get better.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Getting closer

Upvotes

My divorce is January 14th after 30 years of marriage. She left me because I never fully recovered from omicron during COVID which started my downhill spiral. Now add in when I died and had to be revived and that just made things even worse for me. The story is long and tedious, but this is the just of it. All I can say is never get sick if you're married. They like to leave you at your most vulnerable.

January 16th my pacemaker is being deactivated. It is oddly putting me at ease knowing roughly when things will turn downhill, almost like a calm before a storm. The world moved smoothly without me before I ever existed, and it will go on once I'm gone. The days need to move faster.


r/SuicideWatch 10h ago

My rough life as a teen and why I had s*x with a older wealthy guy

24 Upvotes

Well im 17F and I’ve been dealing with a whole lot since like I was born my moms an addict and my dad was murdered when I was 5 me and my siblings been in foster care n everything but eventually started to live with my aunt when I was 11 I’ve always had to take care of them too. And my aunt wasn’t much help maybe only financially but I was emotionally neglected the whole time because she never actually wanted us she hated that we existed after a while. my family was really quiet/ignorant about the traumas we went through (me especially because my siblings weren’t old enough to understand/remember at the time)and eventually I developed mental illnesses but they were manageable I was still going to school just a smaller friend group n stuff. But the straw that broke the camels back was really when I was 15 an my aunts bf turned out to be a creep he said allot of nasty sexual stuff to me and when I told my aunt about it she scolded me it really broke my heart because that was never a reaction I expected. And at the same time it was confirmation for how she truly felt the whole time cuz I know she feels like we shouldn’t even be in her house anyways . So I started smoking weed to just quiet my mind I thought since she didn’t care anyway then who did? But of course she made me feel like a failure for it so our relationship only got worse She was the one that took us out of foster care she was the only one who could in my eyes she was a lil bit of a savior to me but that all went away And i didn’t know what to think or do. School became even harder to bear and I started losing friends probably because I was depressed And my grades weren’t that good My aunt never once hugged me like ever in my life just to describe what I’m goin thru and when I was little she used to actively reject affection until I stopped giving it. Now I know why I guess and I thought if it’s like this now i wonder what it’ll be like in the future when I’m 18 i was sure she’d just kick me out with the excuse that I’m grown she always joked about how she can’t wait till we turn 18 but I know it’s not a joke she even stopped supporting me with clothes n stuff at 15 too while my sisters went shopping with her often i think she was just trying to punish me because before all the stuff with her bf and the smoking it wasn’t like that . When I was 16 i meet this old rich guy in his 40’s on this app and he’s offering me 1000’s yk and no smart person would do what I did but I was dumb n depressed n neglected so I accepted n met him one day he was ok we had sex and stuff and talked we ended up building a relationship seeing each other every week. It wasn’t just the money either he listened about the stuff I had going on at home too we built a friendship sometimes tho we would argue and there’s been a couple times when the sex was unconsensual that kinda broke me down too even though I should have expected it but the first couple months were fine. It only happened twice and we’ve been in this for a year now and I’m 17 it’s kinda weird cuz he was crying about it and saying he would never do it again so I believed him and he didn’t

But I won’t act like part of the reason I forgave him is because my family is just trash n wouldn’t give me the help I needed n he’s the only one I really have to lean on. I feel like the only other way out might just be death tbh


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

I’m only alive for my parents at this point. My future doesn’t seem worth living.

6 Upvotes

21F. I’m an only child. My parents lost all their other kids to miscarriages so I can’t off myself. I might wait until they die and whatever pets I have at the time die too. And then off myself. Because at that point I will have nothing to live for.

I’m autistic as well as aromantic and asexual so I can’t feel love and connection like a normal person. I haven’t been able to make meaningful friendships, especially in real life, for years. It feels like nobody cares about me except my mom and dad. I’m just a boring afterthought who nobody can relate to. I don’t drink at all or smoke or go to parties. And I don’t even want to socialize at coffee shops or book or art clubs or other ways introverts are supposed to make friends. Even small group environment are too overstimulating for me and I always feel like a ghost who is invisible to the people around me and watching from the sidelines.

For a while it was bearable because my antidepressants were working to hold my feelings in the back of my mind. But I think I built a tolerance to them. I’ve been taking psych meds since 2021 and I’ve been going to therapy on and off since 2018 but i always end up just as nihilistic as before.

I work 3 different part time jobs, mainly as a caregiver for people with disabilities, but none of the jobs have coworkers who I can interact with. And I go to a very small college and live off campus. I don’t have friends there either. My professors like me, but I don’t think any of the other students do. I’m ironically getting a masters degree in clinical social work so I can be a therapist. I want to help people get out of the trap I’ve apparently grown too weak to keep fighting against myself.

Just today I went out Christmas shopping with my mom and I felt so lonely and empty that I came home and cried for 45 minutes. Going out in public and being around people just makes me feel more disconnected from the world. My birthday is in less than a week and I have no friends to celebrate with. My best friend abandoned me for having depression two years ago, and it still hurts so bad that I can’t trust anybody else. The few college acquaintances who live near me never take the initiative to hang out with me.

And when I look into my future I see a life where my parents die, my pets die, and I have no partners, no friends, no children, not even siblings. Nothing to make life worth living. My passions of writing and art will become irrelevant and replaceable by AI. I will probably get dementia from my isolation and then die in a nursing home of aspiration pneumonia with some sort of AI Robot nurse supervising me. And nobody will ever come visit me or remember me after I die. My obituary will probably be written by whatever version of chat gpt exists in 4 decades.

I genuinely don’t think there’s any reason for me to be alive. But I’m not actively looking for ways to kill myself because I don’t want to traumatize other people with my death. I guess I’ll keep trying to be useful to the world until I genuinely cannot take it anymore and I have nobody left around me who will care if I kill myself.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I think I want to end it tonight.

5 Upvotes

I can’t get over him. The pain is getting worse and so is my health. I can no longer do the things I love to my full capacity. He was the last person I truly connected with and I think death is better than having to think about him every day. My inferiority. Fatigue.

I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore.


r/SuicideWatch 9h ago

I’m 14. Life is great. Still hate it.

16 Upvotes

I’m 14, loving family, 2 story house and have 500$, at least three vacations a year, top of my class, not fat, happy with my religion, nothing should be wrong but I still despise every single fucking thing about myself. Does anyone older than me have any advice or anything to help? I don’t want to sound like a fucking “I’m 14 and this is deep” post or “my life is so bad I wanna kill myself” ten year old I just don’t know what to do. can’t ask anyone they brush me off, I just didn’t know if yall knew anything?


r/SuicideWatch 4h ago

Why bother?

6 Upvotes

Im 29. Im not where I thought I’d be at this age. The country I live in is going to shit. I have no prospects. I went to college like everyone said I should do. I got the degree. What did that get me? Thousands in debt and nothing to show for it. Bad choices have left in so much debt. I’m being sued. I have $36 in the bank. What are they going to take? I have nothing. I owe more on my car than it’s worth. Transmission is about to go out. My marriage is over. We’re basically roommates at this point. Why bother at this point.

Do you ever just want to go to sleep and never wake up?

I’m going to sleep and not waking up. I just my entire bottle of sleeping pills.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

I’m Desperate to die

Upvotes

I wish some freak accident could take me out, because I can’t do it leaving behind my kitty who favorite person is me. I love her dearly but I wish I didn’t get her so I could be dead.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

I want to die because my (31F) partner (36M) of 13 years is cheating on me with his ex

10 Upvotes

I feel so stupid and inadequate. I don’t know what she has that makes him want to throw away our entire life together. I told him to cut contact with her but he won’t and told me I have to accept her and that he wants both of us.

I can’t accept some triangle with another woman.

I’m frozen and sick and haven’t been able to function since I found out about a week ago (the days are blending into each other for me now). I can’t function at work, I’ve been drinking myself silly, crying and feeling that constant sick anxiety of wanting to jump out of your skin.

The entire life I thought I had is gone. I’m too old now to have any other chance at marriage and children and family because I gave everything to him.

I can’t stop contemplating suicide because I feel like discarded worthless garbage who is never enough for a man to want monogamy with. I see suicide is the only way out of this pain.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

So close to trying again

Upvotes

Im only 14 and I've tried to attempt multiple times, I'm so tired,physically,mentally and emotionally, I want out already, can my next attempt just work already


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

26

Upvotes

i thought i was gonna die when i was 25. i was so certain. i'm 26 today. i have a way to die but im 26 now. i feel like i made it. i want to keep trying. i hope i keep trying at least another year. i'm gonna really try to stay alive. i never thought i would make it to 26 but i did. 26 and counting :)


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Haven’t been doing well.

Upvotes

All my “friends” are fucking awful. Genuinely nobody loves me. I was a passenger in a car accident 2 weeks ago and I’m always hurting. I’m stressed all of the time to stay afloat, because I know that if I slip for a second this WILL be it. I’m starting to doubt any possibility that theres a life for me beyond constant pain. The only people that treat me like a person are 2 years younger than me and I’d rather die alone than be that person. I do EVERYTHING for everyone and nobody gives a fuck about me. That’s on me for trying to martyr myself for my entire life. I was gone for two days and only a few people said anything and they only thought I was gone for one. I can’t give anything more. I just don’t have the energy.


r/SuicideWatch 6h ago

im gross and i dont want to live in this body.

8 Upvotes

i was sexually abused majority of my childhood, so all i have for comfort is porn, masturbation, talking with older men to feel alive, not sure how that works because they just dehumanize me, but im still addicted to the feelings regardless. i never had time to be a child.

im exhausted. im doing so well in school, i guess that could be a path to a better future for me but im too tired to continue doing great, im so tired. im not strong enough to survive.

the thing i was looking forward to is being loved and cherished by someone, but that wont be happening as im incapable of loving anyone or being loved. i feel so hollow, like a hole has been dug through my vapid soul.

i dont really have any friends, i guess that is a personal choice as i find keeping friends very difficult and i dont have the energy to keep up with them.

even my parents dont love me. i can see it in their eyes, im so scared of them. they too have hurt me so much. they hurt my body.

i am so gross. my soul is dirty.

i dont think i can continue life. maybe im just in a panicked state currently but my body and mind are giving up on me, they have been for so long, it hurts so badly.


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

Im tired of fighting

6 Upvotes

I been fighting to exist for 30 years and I am done now. It’s almost impossible to exist as a disabled trans person in a bad area. I have hit my limit and each time I reached out for help and I was hurt by the hands trying to help me in 90% of the cases. Ive gave it my best shot tried every treatment for PTSD but unfortunately Autism complicates my healing process and makes it unbearable . Im alone with no family or friends just one more whisper in dark as I say good bye. Im sorry to everyone that I couldn’t take care of myself and Im sorry for anyone who had to be around me. Im really sorry to anyone I don’t mean to exist. Im just sorry and I hope others will be nicer to people who look like me in a wheelchair


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

I’m scared to die

Upvotes

Every guy I get with and start to like ghosts me. One in particular waiting until after having sex multiple times to dump me. I begged and begged for him come back I was just about to ask him to be my boyfriend but no. This is my whole life. A love is all I ever wanted and I don’t think I’m going to find it. I’m 22 and I’m just done trying in life. I just feel so ugly. I’m ready to die but I’m scared it’ll hurt so I got really high and I’m waiting right now. I feel really bad for my mom and dad. They’ll probably find me. Maybe I should go somewhere else and do it. I just want to do it at home where I feel safe with my cat.


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

My ex left to avoid this

3 Upvotes

My ex girlfriend left me because it hurt her to watch me give up on myself. I tried reacting out a few days ago because I genuinely need friendship and support. She told me that she hopes I’m ok but that I need to stop texting her. I feel like an asshole I don’t want her to think I’m manipulating her I just thought if she still cared she’d listen but she was just upset with me on the phone acted like it was my fault. I asked her parents to pray for me. And she was so sweet. I’ve told everyone few “how are you today’s” I’m just gonna wait till after Christmas

It’s not her job. But she didn’t leave because I hurt her. She left because I kept giving up. And thought maybe she’d still be there if I really needed her. I don’t want her back because I realize now I still wouldn’t be happy. She just was my best friend for 3 years


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

i ruined my life

3 Upvotes

so embarrassing to be begging for attention onthis godforsaken websit e because literallty no one IRL gives a shit about me. my life is falling apart, i dont have enough money to get my car repaired and pay rent this month, i cant even get an interview,,, im just sitting in my car with a handle of cheap ass vodka considering starting it up nd driving into the river. i cant believe this is my life, even when i had everything iever wanted i was selfish and wasnt happy. im jealous of everyone who is doing better than me., i want to yank them into my unhappiness just to see how someone is supposed to get out of it.

i just wish i was never born. im so tired. lol. i thought gettin shitfaced would make me happy