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Quick PSA: If you are contemplating suicide you should reach out to professionals for help. You are not alone in this struggle and deserve to be happy and live

• bananamuffin 8y ago
  money
  • izzydata 8y ago
    Money seems irrelevant in this scenario, but there are plenty of free services that will assist you. I also doubt friends and family will charge you to talk to them.
    • bradenb 8y ago
      I don't think it's irrelevant. Sure, you can get immediate free support, but long-term help is not cheap.
      • izzydata 8y ago
        Perhaps not, but the point being that money doesn't matter if you commit suicide.
        • syn0byte 8y ago
          That fact is very likely to be part of the reasons they attempt it in the first place.
  • NTDF9 8y ago
    This. America is not a society where anything happens without money. In eastern countries, there are easy to go community centers like temples, churches, local social organizations, festivals etc., all for free. Just go in. There is always someone to reach out to. There are always welcoming people.
    • hnaz 8y ago
      You've got to be kidding me. How many churches are there in the US full of welcoming people?
      • NTDF9 8y ago
        The people in US churches are welcoming. But the society isn't. The individual under duress is always losing the time value of money by going to Church instead of bettering their financial condition. Heck, an entire political party blames individuals under duress for their own financial condition. This would not happen as much in the east. While time value of money exists, life so cheap that people can take time off, anytime in their life, just go to a church and heal. And no political party will blame them for their financial condition. They will always get resources from other people, for free, just because they are in need.
        • pkaye 8y ago
          Which "eastern" country are you talking about? Things vary a lot from country to country.
    • vlahmot 8y ago
      This is just patently false. There are many resources that are free for those in need. (Help lines, churche/synagogue/mosque, support groups, etc)
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        You get the help that you pay for. I know you want to believe that the world is a good place and someone who's suffering enough to consider death as an alternative can be helped easily and cheaply, but that just isn't the reality we live in. My experience is that free help is a bunch of minimum-effort volunteers. Depression can be a very complicated thing and it isn't well understood by very many people, often even the expensive professionals just throw drugs at it.
      • xena 8y ago
• mbrundle 8y ago
  There are many free hotlines available for people in this situation. UK: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/suicide/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/suicide/ Other countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
  • jupiter90000 8y ago
    Have you ever called a hotline when you've had a life crisis? I'm just wondering how often people that suggest this have tried it themselves.
    • chris_wot 8y ago
      Yeah. Utterly hopeless (at least in Australia). I was attempting to talk myself down from suicidal thoughts, I called as anonymously as I could (turned off caller ID and didn't give my name) and they still called the police. The service I called was Lifeline Australia. I suggest that if you don't want to experience the absolutely dire and abusive mental health system that you don't call them. They may say they are confidential, but they aren't. Even after I made an official complaint about their lack of warning on their phone system (which states they are confidential!) they have done nothing about this. It really feels like they are trying to trick people into calling no matter what.
      • chris_wat 8y ago
        Don't be a dick mate. Lifeline Australia has helped me countless times and has never shared my information or done anything that is not confidential.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
        • chris_wot 8y ago
          Given you are trolling, I think it highly unlikely I or anyone else should believe you.
• dokem 8y ago
  Why can't suicide be noble? Why can't we respect a decision to not participate in this experience that none of us asked for in the first place? Why is the answer more pills or shrink sessions just to keep on to the next day? Please tell me one actual down side of suicide for suffering person. It's selfishness ultimately; we want them to stick around for us, not for them.
  • tim333 8y ago
    One downside is it seldom seems much fun. Sure you can have noble suicide like the Kamikaze pilots but usually its a messy and upsetting business.
    • phyller 8y ago
      As an American I wouldn't call that a noble suicide. Waste of life all around for a misplaced sense of honor. Which apparently is still misplaced today. I'm not sure you can have much of a noble suicide in fact. I know it is sort of fetishized in some aspects of Japanese culture, like seppuku (harakiri), but I think it is a mistake calling it noble even then.
  • goldfeld 8y ago
    That means you believe you simply die and your pain is alleviated, which many people (who are not intellectually lazy) don't agree with, so they might want to genuinely help out. In any case suicide most often comes from a moment of spiked anxiety or panic, so why should we just let people who would otherwise care and like to be near us take their lives in a moment their rational brain isn't working with the calm generally afforded for important decisions (say, business decisions) that have big effects the person contemplating death otherwise cares about?
  • coryrc 8y ago
    Because people who fail at suicide mostly report regret immediately after reaching the point of no return.
    • casefields 8y ago
• virmundi 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, why does one deserve this? What universal truth is behind it? I understand that the question might be unpopular, but think about it. Suicide is well within the realm of self-determination. If a person decides, "I'm done.", why should we not allow that, or, seek to prevent it? We might say, "It causes harm to the family." So does divorce, but our society is practically giddy about out growing spouses as a sign of maturity and knowing ourselves better. "It's so final for a temporary condition.", might be your next line. Is it temporary? Let's say you have actual depression. Not mild depression, but major, chronic depression. That's not temporary. Drugs don't appear to work. If they do, they're masking the problem. Stop them, I mean wean yourself off them, and you're back to being depressed. Why not allow people to end it? To loop this back to the original question, why does one deserve, where deserve sounds like a right, to be happy? When did the Universe declare that? When did we vote on that? Ultimately this idea seems to be only emotive with no thought about the human condition and ability to make our own choices.
  • b_tterc_p 8y ago
    Well after reaching the bottom of philosophical non cognizance, most people come to realize that being happy is nice and that we should try to do that. So maybe just trying to be happy and help others be happy is a decent worldview.
    • virmundi 8y ago
      I'm okay with that world view. My issue was with the concept of deserving. No one deserves to be happy. You can earn happiness. There are a myriad of ways to make yourself happy or content with your situation If we start saying you deserve happiness, then anything that makes you unhappy is an attack against your very being. It's a human rights violation. People are going to feel entitled to being blissful all the time. That is a danger road.
      • projektir 8y ago
        > If we start saying you deserve happiness, then anything that makes you unhappy is an attack against your very being. It's a human rights violation. It is. This way lies truth. But one is too afraid to walk it. At the end of it is horror.
• wowzap 8y ago
  Be careful - in some states like New York this can cost you the ability to ever purchase a gun and be able to defend your life.
  • post_break 8y ago
    You're getting downvoted but it's a legit concern. Not all depressed people are suicidal. And some people live in rough areas that need a gun because the police are not with them 24x7.
• DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I've spent a lot of time suicidal. I generally dislike seeing PSAs of this sort.
  • projektir 8y ago
    I hate them. So formulaic and false.
    • jrowley 8y ago
      What part do you find false?
      • projektir 8y ago
        People in society do not feel anywhere near as empathic and sympathetic towards their fellow man as someone posting that PSA might imply.
  • jrowley 8y ago
    Doreen, I’m sorry to hear you spent a lot of time suicidal. If you don’t mind me asking, do you think that comments like mine are self serving / and ineffective at actually preventing suicide?
    • DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I think they are generally counterproductive. Saying stuff like "you are not alone" while referring people to an unspecified "professional" is completely empty. It feels like a slap in the face. It belittles very real problems that people actively try to shut suicidal people up about. I'm dirt poor. I have been for years. People here aren't comfortable hearing that. They seem to fear I'm asking for a handout. I appear to be the highest ranked woman here. I had hoped to use HN to network. That hasn't been very effective. Pretty much every time I comment on that and suggest that my gender is a barrier to me resolving my financial problems, someone jumps up to inform me that I am wrong and stupid and HN simply isn't a good means to network and my gender is not an issue and sexism is not an issue and, also, I'm just a loser, basically, among other things. Men routinely tell each other here "You must be very competent because you have so much karma on HN." No one says that about me. When I point out I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard, I'm dismissed, belittled, accused of being obsessed with ridiculous, empty and meaningless internet points etc ad nauseum ad infinity. I have a diagnosis of atypical cystic fibrosis. Talking about that at all is typically drama. I have spent more than 17 years getting myself well. No, no one is writing articles about that. Instead, I get attacked for trying to say anything about health topics. I basically get called a liar, deluded and a teller of tall tales who can't possibly know anything whatsoever useful about medical anything. If I say anything about my accomplishments in life, I'm accused of making stuff up, exaggerating and generally being full of crap. Absolutely the only thing anyone is willing to believe is that I spent years homeless. That's basically it. And longstanding and intractable poverty is absolutely not a reason for anyone here to hire me, promote my work, help me figure out how to make money, etc. No, it's apparently just evidence that I must not have any valuable skills or knowledge that is worth any money whatsoever and fuck me, not their problem. I've been here over nine years. The negative treatment I get on HN is one of the things that makes me suicidal. The blatantly obvious sexism involved in my intractable poverty that everyone routinely denies is one of the things that makes me suicidal. The fact that I have to walk on eggshells and not state that too frequently or too bluntly also contributes to me being suicidal. And most of the time I don't want to poke too much at that in part because being banned from HN would make my life even worse, and in part because a large part of the psychological anguish there is due to a short list of awful people who specifically crapped all over me in specific. So it isn't really fair to hold all members equally accountable for the incredibly bad behavior of a few people. On the other hand, there are any number of other people who could have helped me and thereby completely wiped out the importance of those negative experiences to my life. So it also doesn't really make sense to say it's just that short list of awful people and not "everyone." And I carry that psychological load every single day and every time I log in here and I get zero credit from anyone, much less the short list of awful people in question, for not turning that into public drama on HN during an incredibly difficult time in my life that has lasted for years. So listening to some paragraph long PSA referring me to some nebulous "professional" knowing the nine years of nonsense I've endured just makes me see red. Because I'm absolutely sure you wouldn't do anything at all to redress any of those wrongs right here on HN, much less cure my medical condition or give me the cash to buy a house (or do a fund raiser if you aren't that rich), not because you couldn't try to find ways to help redress some of my problems to some degree, but because you honestly don't actually care. It's not your problem and you aren't actually going to help. So I find it monstrously uncompassionate akin to flipping me a bird for being poor, stupidly having been born female and making the egregious mistake of having a genetic disorder. And that description is going to generally be true for most people who are suicidal. They are generally going to have one or more serious personal problems that the world at large neither wants to help with nor wants to hear too much about because it makes them uncomfortable. The specifics will vary, but, in a nutshell, suicidal people have big problems and they routinely get met with an attitude that they aren't really supposed to talk about them and they can't expect real help for any of that. I just want my life to work. That's it. That's all I want. And I've literally spent years working miracles to try to get there and I still can't get there largely due to social BS. I see PSAs of this sort to be more of that pattern of social BS where the entire world wishes me well and hopes my problems get better... Just don't expect them to help and "take your issues elsewhere, honey. Not my problem. You can be not alone with someone else, not me."