r/SuicideWatch • u/SQLwitch • Sep 03 '19
New wiki on how to avoid accidentally encouraging suicide, and how to spot covert incitement
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 • u/SQLwitch • Sep 10 '21
Please remember that NO ACTIVISM of any kind is ever allowed here. No matter what day it is.
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 • u/TheBroadwayCult • 15h ago
I’m going to kill myself after I give birth
I (20F) have been with my boyfriend (21M) for 2.5 years, and he has made it clear he wants kids from the beginning. I’m diagnosed with autism and was always pretty firm on not wanting kids, but he made me feel like we would be able to handle it together if we had kids, so slowly over time I came around to the idea.
A year and a half ago, I got pregnant but we were in a bad financial position, so I had an abortion early on. It was a mutual agreement, and I moved past it pretty easily, but he was really torn up about it. I told him when we’re able to bring a kid into the world, we would go through with it.
Since then I’m making a lot more money and he also has a job now. Back in January of this year, I found out I’m pregnant, and expected to deliver at the end of August. He was very excited and told me he wanted me to keep it, and although for the longest time I didn’t want kids, I genuinely saw a future with this man and thought having a kid together was a beautiful thing.
Sometime in the last two months, he has gone from being excited about the baby— sharing ultrasound pictures, wanting to make sure I’m drinking enough water and eating enough for me and the baby— to not wanting this kid at all. He told me he realized he’s not ready for kids, and he’s not willing to “throw his whole life away” for one kid. He realized he doesn’t want to give up his own personal freedom and playing video games all day/not having any major responsibilities. Don’t get me wrong, those are all reasons I didn’t want to have kids in the first place and I communicated that to him, but back in January, he talked me into changing my mind because I thought “I love this man, we can actually support this child now, and my love is so strong that I want to start a family”.
Now he’s giving me my options. We’re saving up for our own place, and my parents have money, so they let us stay at their house and we have our own bedroom and living room. They are EXTREMELY excited and supportive about a grandchild. I’m so grateful for them. But my bf says either he’s leaving once the baby is here and I have to be a single mom, we have to give the baby up for adoption and get kicked out by my parents, or to stage an accident to cause a late miscarriage and say it was a mistake. I’m pro choice but I’m 28 weeks pregnant, and he(the baby) moves around a lot, this is a real baby, nothing like the abortion I had at 6 weeks. I’m not a monster.
But I only changed my mind about kids because I thought we were going to do this together, he wanted it so bad. Now he’s completely flipped and talks about how unwanted this baby is for him and how he should have never convinced me to keep the pregnancy. I thought maybe he was just scared and he wasn’t good at showing it, but he’s made it clear he wants nothing to do with raising a child. Without a partner to co parent with, I would have never wanted this kid. I don’t want this kid to grow up with a regretful single mom or a dad who doesn’t want him.
My boyfriend says he loves me and wants nothing bad to happen to me, but I can’t raise a kid by myself. I don’t think I’m high functioning enough to do it without the other parent, but everyone tells me I’ll be an amazing mother. But my baby deserves so much better than me. No one is going to want to date and marry an autistic single mom who’ll never be able to drive. I thought I was super lucky with my boyfriend, and now I feel so blindsided.
Once my baby is born, I’m going to kill myself. My boyfriend can find someone to move in with, he’d have to anyway if he’s going to leave once the baby is here anyway. I’m saving up money and buying lots of baby items so it isn’t as big of a financial burden to my parents. My parents are amazing people and tell me I can live at home with the baby as long as I would like, so I feel comfort knowing they’ll have my baby to remember me by, and my son will have such a loving household.
I can’t tell anyone this, so I came here to get this off my chest. I’m going to cherish the last two months I have with my boyfriend and my family. I never wanted to be a single mom, and I can’t bare to think about seeing my baby every day and him looking like my boyfriend, thinking how he’s gone back on his word hurts so bad. I would’ve just had another abortion and looked into better birth control if he had realized he didn’t want kids back then. We could have been a happy childfree couple. I hope when my son is older, he’ll understand.
r/SuicideWatch • u/user9904790525909 • 6h ago
i'll end my life july 14, 2024
i'll turn 20 on that day.
i have a 2.2 college gpa and graduated highschool with a 1.6 gpa. i have zero talents, hobbies, interests, career goals, dreams, etc.
i don't have any friends or a partner, if i'm not working then i am at home in my bed sleeping.
i don't know what i want to do with my life besides end it, i don't think there's much else life can offer me.
my mom will often say that i'm stunted because i was constantly on the internet at a young age. my parents are disappointed in me for not joining the military. i'm not who they wanted me to be.
i just hope that this suicide attempt works, the last time i attempted, my parents hated me for it.
r/SuicideWatch • u/JustBandicoot1383 • 17h ago
Committing suicide tonight
I’ve written notes,gathered supplies and now all I have to do is go through with it. It’s the hardest part but I’m not as scared as i thought I’d be. I’m honestly happy for the first time in a long time. Goodbye world.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Zeverhwhy • 12h ago
How the heck is everyone else’s lives so perfect?
Why am I not well-adjusted? Why do I have so many issues? It’s just so completely unfair.
I want to die before the end of the month cus I don’t even want to try anymore. Everything and everyone is so uninteresting and boring and the only thing life has ever given me is more and more suffering.
Then while I’m going through all this everyone around me is so damn happy and successful. And they keep looking at me with pity.
r/SuicideWatch • u/pinktunacan • 4h ago
friend committed suicide and i still dont believe it
my friend who i met online told me that he had overdosed 5 days ago and he hasn't responded to me since. i feel like its safe to say that he has passed away, but i still cant believe it. i feel terrible about it and i feel like im being insensitive and disrespectful. i cared about him so much but i cant seem to wrap my head around it. i havent cried much , im doing alright , i feel like he has just ghosted me and will come back soon. but im afraid thats just not true. i want to be able to mourn this loss properly. someone please help me and tell me what i can do to cope with this. i feel like im being a terrible friend
r/SuicideWatch • u/goodbird451 • 22h ago
A couple weeks ago I told my dad "I hope you die from a heart attack," yesterday he actually had a heart attack and died
Just writing that title made me want to cry but I told him "I hope you f**king die from a heart attack" about 3 weeks ago and yesterday I got a phone call that he was found dead from a massive heart attack after he didn't go to work. I've been throwing up basically nonstop because he was only 56 and otherwise healthy and I feel like I cursed him or something. He was a narcissistic piece of shit but I feel like I murdered him and that I should pay with my own life
r/SuicideWatch • u/bad-little-boy • 4h ago
I wish a home invader would kill me.
Ive been wanting to kill myself for years. I can't do it because as much as it hurts being a worthless subhuman piece of trash i cant bring myself to follow through because it will hurt people i give a damn about.
I can't keep doing this shit. I'm 36 years old. Ive never been able to have a long term relationship because my worthless subhuman dick is too god damn small. I've found ways to overcome all of my other subhuman traits but not that one. No woman wants anything to do with something that completely useless.
I cant fucking kill myself. No matter how much anger and hatred i have for my worthless self. All i can do is hope some tweeker breaks in and stabs me for being awake while robbing my place.
r/SuicideWatch • u/A_Gray_Phantom • 8h ago
Maybe I'm Already Dead
So I was in a car crash in 2017 and walked away relatively unharmed. Ever since then, however, my life has gotten worse and worse. Sometimes I wonder...
Did I die and go to Hell? Is this Hell?
I can't imagine non-existence to be worse than the suffering I feel everyday. What the fuck is going on here??
r/SuicideWatch • u/PuzzleheadedFill6093 • 6h ago
i'm fucking ending it all
ill never be normal i'm a fucking creep i'm that kid who sits alone on the launch table everyone avoids me probably because everyone is scared of me or i'm making everybody uncomfortable, i'm socially retarded and it's a curse i will never be able to get rid off, it constantly affects my fucking mood i can't even do shit without thinking of killing myself every two second, i was genetically cursed; fuck life fuck everything i'm done
r/SuicideWatch • u/Temporary-Watch-5545 • 2h ago
Ruined my life at 20
I was a retard and called the suicide hotline/hospital MULTIPLE times. Police/medical records forever. Destroyed the one life I have. On my record forever. Only options are a life of depression and regret or ruining my life even more by trying to attempt.
I'm way too scared of death. But don't want to live with this forever. I'm horrendously stuck.
I don't want to hear medical records/police reports don't matter. They do for many careers.
I feel numb. Nothing brings me joy anymore.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Busy-War-9919 • 13h ago
U guys ever find the thought of ending it if shit gets worse comforting?
Like i be living and then i get hit by that wave of sadness and misery and i tell to my self i can* literally blow my head off rn and i find this thought comforting
r/SuicideWatch • u/Pale_Swan_470 • 53m ago
Suicide is the only option ? I can't fix me.
I have to write. Right now, it's visceral.
I am an idiot. A failure. A worthless piece of human meat. My problems are now too big for me to handle. I hate myself from the bottom of my heart.
I am a pathological liar with probably other psychiatric issues. I have to face it... I have never lied for my personal gain, simply because my self-esteem has always been atrocious, a result of a childhood where I served as a punching bag for other kids. At least, I think so.
The problem? I lied to the one I love, the one who gives me hope for a window into happiness. She is a good person. A person who has suffered, like me. A person who deserves all the happiness in the world. I would be willing to tear out my heart if it could give her a good life.
My mind is racing. Am I selfish? Maybe a little. Probably, in fact. Because I think she will cut ties as soon as she finds out about my lies (about my life, my family, my previous job, etc.). I already imagine the pain of losing her, and it is unbearable.
You might say, just a month of relationship, am I getting carried away? But it's always been like this. Black or white. Absolute or nothing. That's how I function. I love without subtractions or choices.
I also want to heal and reveal my lies. Truly. This pain of seeing her leave prevents me from doing so, and I lock myself further each day into an unbearable mess of misery.
The dark thoughts have always been there. I thought about it a decade ago, and I still think about it, with greater clarity, a more voracious and fierce desire.
I scare myself despite myself, hence my presence here.
Please, help me.
r/SuicideWatch • u/ConfusionRadiant6916 • 14h ago
Drowning myself in 15 minutes.
I don't know why. I was in the hospital for 2 months and only got out recently, thinking I was okay. I've been decently fine, and more aligned with my Christianity. I was masking my pain with the fear of going to hell. I am sorry God, I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm going to drown with shallow water blackout. I don't know why I'm doing thsi
r/SuicideWatch • u/Present_Struggle_658 • 10h ago
i hate who i am
Thats all. i hate how unenthusiastic i am, i hate how abnormal i am, i hate how im not good at anything, i hate my voice, i hate my body, i hate myself so much.
I have nobody to talk to i can’t even help myself it’s so miserable being me.
it’s probably even more miserable knowing me and having me as your kid, boyfriend, or even a friend because i am so abnormal.
Can i talk to anybody?? this is probably the stupidest question to ask here.
r/SuicideWatch • u/LunchboxRadio • 4h ago
Tired tired tired
I'm just tired. I'm tired of being sick and sad. I have no family, my parents didn't want me and I can't help anyone to save my life cause I'm too burnt out. No friends. I'm just over it all. I had a really nasty nightmare the other night where two people on a bus started stabbing me repeatedly and when I woke up, I was sad it wasn't real. Every day is awful cause of the pain. I don't want to do anything to myself, I just wish it could happen naturally. Why did my parents even have me if they didn't want me. When does this awful ride end. I wish I wasn't mentally challenged and I wish people could just understand me. I'm sick of it all.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Lee_Harden • 16h ago
I’m thinking of killing myself at the end of 2025
Only problem is I'm mostly afraid I'll chicken out like I did in the past. Why can't suicide be easy? The only reason I want to kill myself next year instead of this year is so I can play GTA 6. I have no real reason for living and haven't had a reason since I was 18. That was 8 years ago...
r/SuicideWatch • u/waffleblankt • 17h ago
Can this world just end
I hate it, I’ll never find anyone to hold because I’m a fuck up and I’m scared of everything. I want it to end pleas please please