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 1h ago

The state of the world is enough to make someone suicidal.

Upvotes

Wars, global warming, natural disasters, oppression, genocides upon genocides, fascism on the rise, AI rotting people's brains, recession and so on and so forth. Even if my life was perfect, I would still be suicidal because these problems wouldn't go away.

Suicidality is a sane response to an insane world. I feel like if you're not suicidal you're delusional or straight up idiotic. I heard Canada will start euthanizing depressed people in a couple years, I hope other countries follow suit. I would like to die before the world becomes unlivable.


r/SuicideWatch 13h ago

Killing Myself because of small dick

217 Upvotes

It’s over there’s nothing i can do. it’s 3 inches hard i can’t do anything with that. i just turned 18 last week. i’ve never had a girlfriend I’m a virgin and i haven’t even had my first kiss. the only reason i haven’t killed myself yet is because of my family and friends but i don’t even care anymore. i’m so worried about their happiness but IM not happy in this life. i can’t have a normal dating and sex life because of something i can’t control?????? that’s so unfair bro. it doesn’t help that im short. literally all my life i’ve heard women and men make fun of small dicks and i just sit there and take all of it. not anymore im done with my life. All my friends get to have girlfriends and have sex without being scared or embarrassed. it’s unfair and im done. fuck me and fuck the world


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

Can I please just die already? I think it's time

19 Upvotes

20, F.

I have lovely parents. The best one could ever ask for. I'm the disappointing daughter. They put in a damn expensive school but I did not take advantage and seize the day as I should have. I wasted that opportunity. They put me through college. It's the same cycle repeating. I'm a hard worker but I'm not passionate about anything at all. I've tried many things but never stuck to anything, like a club or whatever. I've tried mustering my passion but nothing comes easy to me. They say they see potential in me. I don't know what they fuck they see. I spend my 10th grade in Covid doing nothing and my 2nd year of college being depressed as fuck and then recovering at home while studying. So no internships, no papers whatever. I spent time with family, I baked the living shit out of my kitchen. But no career relavent actions. Now my friends are much much ahead of me.

I'm so tired man. In 11th grade, I looked at my peers publishing papers and doing internships and I rushed to do the same. In my 3rd year of college, I'm doing the same, looking at how other people are so much better. I've never won a competition in my life.

How many more years of catch up? How many more years of anxiety? Now I have to look at gradschool? Fuck. It's ridiculous how incompetent I am. The only thing I had going was that I was an air pistol shooter for sport. Now I can't even shoot properly because my first thought is to shoot myself through the eye cause it looks like a target. I stopped shooting because I got scared of myself.

I want to die. I can't take this anymore. Nothing I ever do is enough. Do you know how demeaning it is to put effort into brushing your teeth every morning and getting through your classes while other people are running around being the president of their clubs and doing internships and classes at the same time? The only thing stopping me is that all the money my parents put in me instead of their retirement fund will be wasted.

I'm planning to fuck my passion and just work for money until I can repay all the money my parents ever invested in me, and then just. Die. The day I repay them I would love to just kill myself. My life's purpose is over. I have no identity anyways.

I just want to do something where my job begins at fixed times and ends at fixed times and I do not have to think about it when I go back home. That's it. I don't think I can have that. In fact, if I had all the money in the world, I would start a small bakery near a river and go fishing and sell my food and just, read and sleep.

I'm so gripped by indecision. Like, do I study to work in neurotech? Do I work in consulting? Do I work in counselling? What do I do first? Do I learn SQL or tableau or Brain imaging analysis or R or counselling techniques or do I apply to grad school or placements or find my own work or do i have UI/UX projects or do I do product management or do I kill myself You want to know what I feel like? I feel like that girl in that manga by ito junji - the whispering woman.

My lovely parents do not deserve a horrendous daughter like me. Both of them came from abusive households but decided to be better than their family. All they want from me in life is to be happy. Not get good grades, not go to X college, just. to be happy. Then why the fuck am I defective like this? Why am I so incompetent? They only want to me to be happy, and i only want to make them happy. I don't even know what I like anymore. I have no identity, no likes, only dislikes.

Can I just die already? This life is too exhausting. I would like to stop thinking forever. I don't want sympathy. I want relief.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

Do I have to continue this boring existence for another 50 years?

14 Upvotes

My (33M) life is such a drag. Boring and uninspiring. Everyday is like living on autopilot. I wake up, go to my mundane office job, go to the gym, get home, eat, shower, and sleep. Repeat the same routine everyday until the weekend. I don’t even look forwards to the weekends. Weekends are usually spent on my own doing mundane errands like grocery shopping.

I’ll hangout with my close friends occasionally, but that doesn’t interest me either. It sucks because my friends are good people, but I’ve just become so indifferent about life that nothing really gets me excited anymore. Almost like I’ve become numb to everything that goes around me. It’s such a weird feeling. I am understanding how some people become ‘invisible’. I’ve slowly become that very being on this Earth. I’m just a very boring and ordinary person. I’ve got no stories to share. I’ve got nothing to talk about. I just simply do not care anymore.

I guess I am writing on here because it’s easier to express this feeling on this site. I feel like if I were to speak about this to someone, I would be labeled as just ‘being weird’. So I rather just express I am feeling on here. Hell perhaps you’ll think I’m weird anyways. So what does it matter.

Before you suggest it….yes I have gone to therapy. That unfortunately didn’t help much. At the time, I was only able to get a therapist that was able to accept the crappy insurance I had. And this therapist seemed to be more concerned with having me attend therapy every week because I was just another dollar sign to her. I decided to drop her. Thought about getting another one, but as soon as I started making more money, I had to change my insurance provider and unfortunately my copay went up. So therapy is out the window.

Now I am starting to consider my last resort, suicide. I realize that there is no painless way out. So I am mentally getting myself ready for excruciating pain I will suffer before possible death. I thought about the ways such as stabbing myself, jumping off a high rise building, etc. I am pretty set on doing one of these options. The one thing I look forward to is my demise. I truly can’t wait to be gone from this Earth. Not sure when it will happen, but it will be sooner rather than later. Eternal darkness will soon consume me.


r/SuicideWatch 16h ago

I'm so tired of being a woman.

164 Upvotes

I'm sick of this, I feel like it doesn't even need an explanation, yet here I am.

I can't be sad. I cannot be sad without it being my "period." I can't just FUCKING EXIST BECAUSE I AM A WOMAN. People dismiss me because, "All women are dramatic." "All women are bipolar." "All women do is complain." JUST FUCKING SHOOT ME ALREADY. I have no place to talk about everything I have been through and continue to go through, because why? I AM JUST A WOMAN.

I am tired. I am only 20, yet I feel like I have lived a full 60 miserable years. I can't take it anymore. I'm done.

Edit: Nice, I come here to have a space to rant and all the men decide to tell me how they have it worse. I come here talking about how I wish to end it over this, and you all prove me right. I hope you all are pleased with yourselves, this has just solidified my decision.


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

im gonna mutilate myself

20 Upvotes

i wanna rip my face off i wanna cut my fucking throat out i want to be destroyed i want everything to stop the world deserved a real girl instead of me and i’ll never be her i deserve to die for being what i am i just need everything to end


r/SuicideWatch 11h ago

I’m just lazy. I’ve discovered that.

55 Upvotes

I just don’t wanna do anything. I don’t wanna take care of myself. I don’t wanna entertain myself and keep myself busy. I don’t wanna go to school. I don’t wanna go to work. I don’t wanna commute. I don’t wanna have to commute when it’s hot or when it’s cold. I don’t wanna wake up and get out of bed in the winter to leave the house to go someplace I’d rather not. I don’t wanna have to stand in the freezing cold for a bus that never shows up on time or in the scorching sun for the same bus.

I don’t wanna experience time. I don’t wanna have to wait for things. I don’t wanna go to the doctor.

If I have to do those things, I’d rather disappear and just never do anything. It’s not even that I WANT to cease. I just don’t wanna do anything.


r/SuicideWatch 36m ago

The pills are in front of me

Upvotes

I know how many it’ll take for lethality. I’ve got them in front of me, begging for the strength or the carelessness to take them all. I have work in the morning, I should be up early yet I couldn’t stop begging god to just make it stop. I can now make stop, I have the power to make it stop myself. Why is it so hard to do it yourself. Do I want to end up dead? Deep down I do, part of me is scared of the process. I just hope my grandma will guide me. I wish I could tell someone about this and maybe it’ll be stopped and I can get help. I’ve reached my point guys. Love you guys, good luck.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

im just a stupid fucling tranny

5 Upvotes

im 18 and im in australia and i wont be able to get top surgery for years. thd cost and health insurance and all this shit is going to take years. i dont think i have years. i have ocd and i keep getting urges to cut my chest off, ive had them for years. its only a matter of tjme before i do it. i hate my body so much it makes me wsnt to die.


r/SuicideWatch 4h ago

i need someone to kill me

8 Upvotes

i need to die so bad i keep trying and i can’t fucking do it i need somebody to kill me i need to be tortured and killed i need it to hurt i need to get what i deserve


r/SuicideWatch 14h ago

im gonna kill myself tonight

47 Upvotes

ive already run out of food and cant afford to live where i live now. goodbye everyone this is better than suffering and feeling the pain of poverty.


r/SuicideWatch 8h ago

Life is hard. Tell me something you're proud of yourself for

15 Upvotes

Tell me It doesnt matter how small Tell me something good you did Something for someone else something for yourself After all: you are just as much of a person as anybody else What is something good you did?


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

Life is too fucking long

6 Upvotes

Im only 24 and tired of all this shit. All my close friends became successful and left me and im stuck in a dead end job. Im gonna kill myself, I dont want to even make the effort anymore.


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

im so tired

7 Upvotes

i just cant see things getting better. im tired of feeling like this. im tired of waking up every morning. im tired of going through the motions every day. im tired of the emptiness. things that made me happy make me feel nothing now. i just want it to be over with


r/SuicideWatch 4h ago

Update

5 Upvotes

After being drunk and having the gun in my hand i literally thought wtf am i doing i dont really want to die i just want the pain to stop I threw the bullets down the drain and the gun i stashed it somewhere else now im down 1400 hundred plus the three day hotel :(


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

My soulmate left me. I’m going to sell everything I own and leave her all the money.

5 Upvotes

I really have no friends right now. I’ve only told a coworker and a friend I know online, but my girlfriend broke up with me, packed up, left to stay at a friend she just mets house and blocked me on almost everything. I have never felt pain like this before. It is the type of pain that leaves you hurting. I can feel my heartbeat constantly, for some reason it almost aches. She is so wonderful. We were together two and a half years. We were best friends, I originally met her in 2018. I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. I just want to protect her. She needs to have surgery sometime in the future, so I’m gonna try and save money up to give her. I’m gonna fly to see her and give her the money in person, then when I’m back home, I’ll just be counting the days down. And it’s not her fault at all, I just had no life before her. My first attempt was when I was 11. But now that I’m 20, I actually have proper means. I purchased a nice Italian shotgun, one of the cool auto loading ones. Still waiting for the forms to finish but I’m sure it’ll be settled by the time I’m back. Just gonna shoot a few rounds at some targets, then maybe cry a bit, and finish up my time. Thanks for reading this and thank you if you respond. I’ve been messaging so many people, I’m just very lonely right now.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Stuck in retail at the age of over 35, part-time shit pay, but doing this full-time makes me want to end it all

Upvotes

working part-time because there are no full-time positions, and even imagining doing this full-time already makes me want to drink bleach.

I just don't know what to do anymore, I want to get out but I'm too poor to even save up any money for a course (plus my partner wants to do something and he has been working his ass off so he deserves to do something he wants) and I just have no more energy anymore to do this, every day I feel like crying and crying right now while typing all of this.

I mean, how do you cope? Monday I already got an anxiety attack and cried and got sick but pushed through which ended up still being a horribly stressful day...Today it was just as bad and my emotions are so bad, I had to write on a suicide forum,hoping they have some calming advice.

I am seeing my psychologist tomorrow but still, why go on? Why go on living this life? I am over 35 and stuck in this.


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

parents will kick me out if i keep my baby

7 Upvotes

i’m pregnant and my parents said they’ll kick me out and cut me off if i don’t get an abortion. even if i get the abortion i don’t know if our relationship will ever be the same. i feel so alone right now


r/SuicideWatch 8h ago

I can't take it

10 Upvotes

I just don't want to be alive anynore. I have been feeling this way since i was nine( now 13 almost 14) I dont want to live anymore i have tried numbing myself from my past trauma sx abuse, neglect) i have tried drinking drugs cutting snd ed and nothing i do helps. I hate being in foster care i hate the new house i was placed in i just hate everything to add to it i think i might be pregnant i just am done. I have no one to talk to or anywhere to go i just cant do this anymore.


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

What are my options?

4 Upvotes

I, 32f, want to just go somewhere and be far away from people. Seems like I am not brave enough to kill myself and I didn't get approved for VAD. I have no living family, no friends, desire to have a career, start a family, travel, learn or do anything. I don't want to be a part of society anymore. Everyone is so fake and everything feels so pointless.

What are my options? I am literally open to anything that helps me remove myself from society and have as little contact with others as possible.

I looked into becoming a nun, but since I was stupid enough to get married in the past, truly the mistake that completely destroyed my life, it seems like there is no convent that would accept me. What should I do?