4 ms·

Well, that depends, if you willingly chose not to treat yourself when you were able to, you might have had a choice. Just like when you have cancer and willing

by koide 14y ago

Well, that depends, if you willingly chose not to treat yourself when you were able to, you might have had a choice. Just like when you have cancer and willingly choose not to undergo treatment. There's the choice. of course it's not an easy choice, treatments are still lousy enough in both cases to be worth thinking about whether or not to take them.

tptacek 14y ago
A vulnerability to suicidal provocation doesn't predetermine your fate any more than a vulnerability to sodium predetermines your death by heart disease. Unfortunately, our ignorance of mental illness allows us to chalk deaths from suicide up to "personal choice", when a more complete understanding would allow people who suffer from depression to work with doctors to craft mitigations to the stimuli and circumstances that create suicidal impulses. Instead, we're like "well, you can spend the week in an in-patient facility, or here are some pills and go try to figure it out on your own."
- koide 14y ago
  Exactly. I was just pointing out that even in these early days there are some choices and people can get treatment, and said treatment does work in some cases. Just saying "it wasn't his fault, he had nothing to do with it" is probably not the best message to send, even if it's actually true when the victim is actually pulling the trigger or jumping off the bridge. Complementing it with something like "I wish he had had the opportunity to get better" is probably more humane.
gms7777 14y ago
When it comes to the idea of treatment, there is an interesting hiccup. I can't find the statistic right now unfortunately, but I've heard it in many instances that somewhere near half of mentally ill individuals don't believe they are mentally ill. I've been through the situation myself, I struggled with dysthymia (a form of chronic depression) and anxiety for more than a decade, and had been near suicide before, but to my absolute core didn't believe that there was something wrong with me. I thought that this was just what life looked like to everyone and I was just too weak to handle it. Such is the nature of mental illness at times, that the disease itself is working to convince you that it doesn't exist. It wasn't that I chose not to treat myself, it was that I didn't know the option existed.
- koide 14y ago
  Yes, that's true. Though there's a minute where (some) mentally ill people get lucid enough to realize they can do something about it. I know some cases where people from that point could pull out on their own, and other people that looked for treatment. If it's not too much to ask, how did you do it?
  - gms7777 14y ago
    The long story follows: It was complicated, at some point I developed this odd rational understanding that there was probably something wrong with me, that it wasn't normal to be this "moody", but I simultaneously believed that I was just being "whiny", and I had no reason to be depressed and that to ask for help would just be admitting that I'm a weak individual and it would be insulting to people that actually had problems. I've been in treatment for a while now and that second voice, it never quite went away and I still have moments of doubt, but I am now able to recognize that that is the voice of the disease. And thats the thing, at the times that I was at my "sickest", I also felt I was the healthiest, I never would have acknowledged that there was anything wrong with me, even when I was on the brink of suicide, because those were also the times I hated myself the most and I felt this was just a personal failing of mine. It took years to come to that point when I recognized that I needed treatment and it came one evening during a period that I had been doing much better, but I had an "episode" one evening when something inconsequential had made me incredibly upset, and I was in this deep spiral of being upset, then being angry at myself for being upset (since I recongized it was inconsequential), and then being angry at myself for being angry and so on. And I was walking home from school (I was in grad school at the time) and bawling my eyes out and hyperventilating and scratching at my arms to the point that they were bleeding rather distinctly and I was crossing the street, and I saw headlights coming towards me, and I had this very distinct thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to just get hit and die? Then I wouldn't have to feel anymore". And this scared the crap out of me, because I was just healthy enough to recognize that this wasn't normal, and I was finally at the point when I couldn't really deny it anymore. I ended calling the schools mental health services the next day and I got into therapy (which was one of the more difficult things I've ever had to do and I hated every minute of it, but I credit it with probably saving my life), and got on some drugs for a while. And I'm not really "better" in that its gone, its still something I deal with all the time, and there are still plenty of times I struggle with that internal voice but therapy taught me to be able to identify it and separate it from myself.

by koide 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

A vulnerability to suicidal provocation doesn't predetermine your fate any more than a vulnerability to sodium predetermines your death by heart disease. Unfortunately, our ignorance of mental illness allows us to chalk deaths from suicide up to "personal choice", when a more complete understanding would allow people who suffer from depression to work with doctors to craft mitigations to the stimuli and circumstances that create suicidal impulses. Instead, we're like "well, you can spend the week in an in-patient facility, or here are some pills and go try to figure it out on your own."

koide 14y ago
Exactly. I was just pointing out that even in these early days there are some choices and people can get treatment, and said treatment does work in some cases. Just saying "it wasn't his fault, he had nothing to do with it" is probably not the best message to send, even if it's actually true when the victim is actually pulling the trigger or jumping off the bridge. Complementing it with something like "I wish he had had the opportunity to get better" is probably more humane.

gms7777 14y ago

When it comes to the idea of treatment, there is an interesting hiccup. I can't find the statistic right now unfortunately, but I've heard it in many instances that somewhere near half of mentally ill individuals don't believe they are mentally ill. I've been through the situation myself, I struggled with dysthymia (a form of chronic depression) and anxiety for more than a decade, and had been near suicide before, but to my absolute core didn't believe that there was something wrong with me. I thought that this was just what life looked like to everyone and I was just too weak to handle it. Such is the nature of mental illness at times, that the disease itself is working to convince you that it doesn't exist. It wasn't that I chose not to treat myself, it was that I didn't know the option existed.

koide 14y ago
Yes, that's true. Though there's a minute where (some) mentally ill people get lucid enough to realize they can do something about it. I know some cases where people from that point could pull out on their own, and other people that looked for treatment. If it's not too much to ask, how did you do it?
- gms7777 14y ago
  The long story follows: It was complicated, at some point I developed this odd rational understanding that there was probably something wrong with me, that it wasn't normal to be this "moody", but I simultaneously believed that I was just being "whiny", and I had no reason to be depressed and that to ask for help would just be admitting that I'm a weak individual and it would be insulting to people that actually had problems. I've been in treatment for a while now and that second voice, it never quite went away and I still have moments of doubt, but I am now able to recognize that that is the voice of the disease. And thats the thing, at the times that I was at my "sickest", I also felt I was the healthiest, I never would have acknowledged that there was anything wrong with me, even when I was on the brink of suicide, because those were also the times I hated myself the most and I felt this was just a personal failing of mine. It took years to come to that point when I recognized that I needed treatment and it came one evening during a period that I had been doing much better, but I had an "episode" one evening when something inconsequential had made me incredibly upset, and I was in this deep spiral of being upset, then being angry at myself for being upset (since I recongized it was inconsequential), and then being angry at myself for being angry and so on. And I was walking home from school (I was in grad school at the time) and bawling my eyes out and hyperventilating and scratching at my arms to the point that they were bleeding rather distinctly and I was crossing the street, and I saw headlights coming towards me, and I had this very distinct thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to just get hit and die? Then I wouldn't have to feel anymore". And this scared the crap out of me, because I was just healthy enough to recognize that this wasn't normal, and I was finally at the point when I couldn't really deny it anymore. I ended calling the schools mental health services the next day and I got into therapy (which was one of the more difficult things I've ever had to do and I hated every minute of it, but I credit it with probably saving my life), and got on some drugs for a while. And I'm not really "better" in that its gone, its still something I deal with all the time, and there are still plenty of times I struggle with that internal voice but therapy taught me to be able to identify it and separate it from myself.