>I do wonder if my experience is representative of the norm or not. When you need help, you find out pretty quickly that institutional support is like bumpers

>I do wonder if my experience is representative of the norm or not. When you need help, you find out pretty quickly that institutional support is like bumpers in a bowling alley gutter - it's crude and manufactured. It might keep you on the lane, it sure doesn't help you bowl any better. You also find out that even well-intentioned people aren't much better. What sucks about suicidality is that everyone is so sterile about it. Maybe it's that everyone is so on guard against personal connections except from select loved ones. For some people, it might even require talking to someone in a similar headspace just to get on the same page and start talking for real. But I've found out I helped people after the fact, and if I knew I was playing defense going in, I'd probably would have been too scared to say the things I did. Anyway, here's a nice article, the first half of which explains that failure to communicate better than I ever could: https://eggreport.medium.com/envying-the-dead-skyking-in-memoriam-99262389268f https://eggreport.medium.com/envying-the-dead-skyking-in-mem...