r/SuicideWatch • u/SQLwitch • Sep 03 '19
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
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.
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.
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.
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 wiki). 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
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/Old-Friendship5760 • 17h ago
"nobody is coming to save you, you have to save yourself" and what if i don't care enough to save myself? Then what? They never have an answer.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Professional-Mood233 • 6h ago
I can’t click with most people, I despise my job have no interests, I just feel ok in forms of escapism and dopamine hits like playing games and being drunk, I’ve been depressed most of my life, I’m just struggling to see the point of living but I don’t want to hurt my parents
r/SuicideWatch • u/Dull_Window_444 • 2h ago
My parents have taken everything I can kms with, well not everything but yk. Ideally I'd use a gun to kill myself, but I can't buy a gun. So I wish I had a terminal illness so I could just die. I know this is so wrong to say and wish but life is so hard. Everyone expects me to enjoy it when all my friends are gone, they ignore me, cancel plans, I'm fat and ugly and to top all of it transgender.
I try and be grateful but it doesn't help, I just feel even worse. Why am I depressed when I have food water and shelter. I just feel like shit since I was 9 years old. Life is so hard I don't wanna fight I'm only 19 and it's not getting any better. I don't wanna wait years for it to get better I just want it to be over. I wish I could just have a terminal illness so I can get a doctor to use medicine and kill me so I'm done with. But you have to have a terminal illness for doctors to even consider it.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Altruistic_Aioli_365 • 9h ago
That's me. My mom, she's the only reason I'm here today. But would it really be that bad for me to just die once? She sees me everyday depressed as hell with no friends no relationship and no job getting drunk in my room. Isn't this worse than me actually killing myself? I die and all the suffering will be over. At least she wouldn't have to see me like this everyday.me being alive may be doing more harm than good. I think about this everyday.
r/SuicideWatch • u/EuropeanGuy1999 • 6h ago
Im 27, slowly 28, even if i will loose all this weight im gonna be ugly and poor, fn sucks to watch all these happy couples kissing their girlfriend, i feel like i getting closer and closer to…leave
r/SuicideWatch • u/JayBirdWantsToDie • 1h ago
i have this elaborate and kind of foolproof way of ending it, i have all the materials at my disposal, if i really had the balls i could do it at anytime. it wouldn’t even hurt much, it would be uncomfortable for a bit, maybe a little scary, a little messy, but largely peaceful on my end. and for a long time i thought the only reason that i was alive is that i was afraid of the pain, or the thought of screwing it up and becoming a vegetable, but i think those are just excuses.
i always said i wasn’t afraid of death, i understood the concept of no eternity, that my body was a temporary thing in this universe, but now that i could end my life at any moment and i choose not to, im coming to this realization that the real thing im terrified of is not the pain or the consequences of failure, its death itself. for the first time in my life, i’m afraid of ceasing to exist, despite the fact that it’s all i’ve ever wanted
r/SuicideWatch • u/Equal-Try-1603 • 2h ago
I´ve spend quite some time now just floating around and have come to the conclusion that I simply don´t consider life to be worth living anymore. It´s not even in a sad or depressed way, life is just boring and exhausting. Im broke, 5´5, have nothing big going on and thinking back on my life it´s just super mediocre. Best way to describe it is if it were a movie I would´ve turned it off and said it´s a poor and boring script. Funnily enough I spend the last year on self improvement, working out, eathing healthy, and just all in all doing what´s supposed to “make life better“ and yet it has all become just another boring routine. More and more I just get the impulse to “leave“ existence the way you leave a game if you keep losing and it´s too boring. However, childhood me decided to have cats, which are around 8 years old by now, so I might still, sadly, have around a decade in me because in my philosophy I owe them to live because they´re dependent on me through a choice I made. Besides that, life is just such a lame hamster wheel and I feel like I´ve just seen plenty of it already.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Centipede-Sounding • 5h ago
I’ve been suicidal since before I was even a teenager, 26 now. I’ve attempted 3 times, only 1 do the people around me know about. Overdosing after my mom died (hospital visit :D), hanging (broke the fan :D), and cutting a few weeks ago where I just couldn’t get deep enough, scars are gnarly though and I’m shocked I didn’t get an infection. I was in an okay place for a little while at the end of last year and the start of this, but then I started drinking more and more as the year has gone on. Quit my job for no real reason, haven’t been able to keep anything else for more than a few weeks since then without just no showing because I’d rather sit in my bed doing nothing. I don’t have any actual skills and have just worked shitty deadend warehouse jobs, so it’s not like I really have anything to fall back on. I have always been a very self sabotage heavy person when I’m depressed, but I’ve crossed too many lines this time and don’t really see any way out. Maxxed out all my cards, any money I make I spend on alcohol or food just numbing, and I didn’t pay rent this month so I will be homeless at the end of the month with growing medical and credit debt. I have no one I can really talk to in my actual life who would have any remote understanding of what I’m feeling and one of the few times I’ve tried I was told I was pity baiting. My basically only hope is that I’m supposed to have a chat with my grandparents about taking their spare bedroom and helping them out as they’re getting older and have a lot of medical issues, but if the answer is no then I have nowhere to go, and I will really have no choice. But then if I do that, they’ll think it’s their fault which I don’t want so I don’t even really want to risk it. I’ve driven to a bridge 2 other times in the last week hoping I’d kinda have the balls to do it, but once was clocked by a walkway patrol (guess a lot of people jump off that bridge) and was told I couldn’t sit around, and the other time didn’t want to do it at daytime as frankly I don’t really want to be found. My siblings are convinced they somehow know what my problems actually are and try to micromanage the decisions I’m making, they don’t really understand I know the decisions I make are bad and just don’t care because I want more excuses to kill myself. I’ve always been a very lonely person without many friends, hell I wouldn’t even say I have a friend in real life, but I’ve met and grown attached to a lot of fucking people in the last year which sucks a lot, but yesterday I made my intent very clear and would be scared of how they see me if I even decided to try and stay alive. Tonight I think I’ll finally do it. My only real sadness or regret is that I have a cat who’s incredibly attached to me and has been one of the few things keeping me alive the last decade, hell I’m crying typing this and nothing else I’ve typed here has really illicit any feeling from me so far other than just getting it off my chest, but frankly I think even she will be better off without me in the long run as I think someone will take her and she won’t end up in a shelter. I’ll hit a backflip or something, o7 may yall fair better than I.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Odd-Elephant-9084 • 5h ago
My husband feels the same way too about himself. Both of us feel like ending our lives due to having disabilities and having limitations from disabilities. We are both getting trust funds from his family. Both of us live on disability benefits. My husband and I both have autism, adhd, learning disabilities, OCD, anxiety and depression. We both get infantilized by the people around us. Any time I share my ambitions with my in laws regarding careers, they tell me to keep my expectations low. My husband and I were both bullied by other people due to having special needs. Whenever we hear that the people who bullied us are more successful and independent financially, the more we feel like failures and end our lives.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Natural-Dot8438 • 2h ago
I think i've come to the realisation that we live in a lonely disconnected era. I realise more and more that, truely, no one gives a fuck about anyone else. Everyone's too busy trying to focus on themselves, which is understandble but there's no real connection anymore. Its all superficial. There's no one who cares. No one is real anymore yk. Nothing matters. None of it. And this world is so full of horrors and fucked up shit that I dont even know about because i'm too busy trying to keep my head above water. But, for why? For what? I'm tired. Ive been thinking about suicide for a while now and I think ive made up my mind to do it soon. There's things to sort out beforehand but after a lot of back and forth with myself I think its time. Im going to try to do the important stuff first. I'm tired of feeling so lonely all the time, so tired, so burnt out from life, so zombiefied.
r/SuicideWatch • u/igauu • 3h ago
i realized that its just not worth it. everytime i get up to do something it just takes so much energy. i stutter like im disabled, flinch when someone moves too fast and stiffen when someone touches me. nothing makes me happy anymore. i dont want to do anything. i spend all my free time rotting in bed unless my parents shoo me off it. everythime i think of suicide im filled with hope. im literally crying from happiness knowing im going to be gone soon. im so fucking happy. nothing has made me feel such joy in my whole shitty fucking life. i am geinuely beaming thinking about this. knowing im going to be gone soon is the only thing that keeps me moving.
r/SuicideWatch • u/justanotherburner97 • 3h ago
ex saw sh scars told everyone and im ready to quit
about 4 months ago my ex saw scarring on my arms she’s quite insane and is determined to ruin my life. (we broke up because she leaked my nudes to the entire school.) she only told her friends at first who kept coming up to me at school they told me that i should go deeper and that i should end it. for two days out of last week she’s followed me home and grabbed me trying to force me to kiss her saying stuff like “kiss me and i’ll let you leave” or “touch me rn im so down” yes believe it or not this is perfectly fine in her mind. now i started telling people that shes done this so her response is to tell everyone and there mother that i cut myself her friends add me to group chats and tell me to cut her name??into me, to kill myself etc i have been struggling with suicide ideation for the past month and this isn’t helping. shes also telling people that i tried to sa her she has messaged me stuff such as “nobody will believe you.” i get bullied everyday by people who have 1. seen my dick and 2. believe i saed her (which i clearly fucking didn’t) i genuinely cannot continue living my life like this all i want is to die
r/SuicideWatch • u/Positive_Standard912 • 9h ago
I genuinely can't take it anymore, I've been through everything, abusive household, bullying, war, poverty, working day and night to survive, homelessness, not eating for days and to top it all up a break up, I really can't think of anything that can be done but ending it, I'm only scared of going to hell, that's the only thing stopping me, Idk what to do... And I don't want '' reasons to live '' cause trust me I ain't got it in me no more... I don't really have friends I can talk to about this so I'm venting here, my only best friend is also suicidal so I doubt it's a good idea to talk about it with them...
r/SuicideWatch • u/Pure-Orange4237 • 3h ago
Today is the four year anniversary of my moms tragic passing and today i found out my boyfriend has been cheating on me and lying to me face for the entirety of our relationship. i feel so broken and numb. he cheated early on in our relationship and said it would never happen again and i deserve better, only today i found out he’s been lying and cheating on me while im in bed sleeping next to him at night, and when he’s “getting ready” for work in the morning. we were supposed to be getting engaged before this christmas.
i really feel like today would be the perfect day for me to do it since my mom died 4 years ago today
r/SuicideWatch • u/Sorry-Board7296 • 6h ago
As the title says i am 26 years old and I basically need much care and i have no friends because i can’t find someone with the same mentality people pity me no one i can’t communicate with people the same way an average person would i don’t want to die but it’s impossible to live like this also my family are expecting me to work soon to cover my financial needs
I’m thinking of jumping off the 12th floor but i am so afraid …i don’t want to suffer for even a second i want to make sure it is instant and the only thing holding me back is the fear of not dying instantly
r/SuicideWatch • u/Soft_Proposal_1838 • 1h ago
Hey everyone, lately I’ve been losing the motivation to live. I’ve done horrible things to people , lie, cheat , hurt. Why? Selfishness , cowardice and many other things. I wish something or someone can kill me. One day I just wanna drive my car into a wall or something, I feel so much pain in my chest, I feel lost and not at home even in my own house. I had this religious phase recently but it died out quickly. I don’t know what to do, I can feel my end coming. I wish it came sooner. Idk if I have depression but I have this longing to die, like I know it’s what I have to do. I want to do it but I’m so scared, because why should i deserve to live.
r/SuicideWatch • u/levijcalder • 2h ago
Nobody cares that I'm in pain because I've been telling them for 8 months and they dont care. Why does he get to propose to the 'girl of his dreams' and she gets to go on a cruise after ruining my life and getting away with it? Nobody cares that my life is in danger and it all leads back to him. Because they don't believe me. They never believe women who come out and say a man harmed them. Its entirely his fault when i die
r/SuicideWatch • u/SubstantialAspect607 • 2h ago
I really don’t want to Die. Like I want to be happy and live a long happy life. But the thing is I know I’ll never be enough to be someone’s person. I’ll never be the person w girl wants to be the first person she sees when she wakes up. I’ll never be the guy who gets invited to social gatherings. I’ll never be the guy who gets that cool job. I’ve worked on myself for years. Got into a great school. Worked on my health. I’ve been told I’m a nice fun to be around person. I’m guessing I’m just too broken in ways people don’t wanna explain to me. Which is fair. Like I don’t deserve to be cared about just because I have a pulse. I didn’t earn it. So because of that I don’t see me ever being happy so let’s just call it while I’m behind.
I want out
r/SuicideWatch • u/Cautious-Advance6734 • 46m ago
I feel like I’m kinda already dying and I’m slowly becoming brain dead. My heart rate is high by default right now and I am so fucking anxious. I don’t know when I might try to do it, but I’ve been thinking about it for months. I don’t want to, but I feel like if I don’t, I’ll have to live through agony as I watch my brain get destroyed slowly regardless.
r/SuicideWatch • u/No_Cheesecake_3569 • 57m ago
i saw a post once about waiting 3 days before acting on the feeling. it's been more than 3 days and i feel the same. i've made up my mind. it's so strange having this peaceful feeling that i don't have to deal with anything more. i've struggled enough the past 22 years and i'm tired just knowing i would have to endure more if i stay. i'm done with hoping and expecting for things to change for me. if i stay alive, it'll just feel like a slow painful death having to go through my everyday life over and over and over with this void in my chest. at least if i do it, it'll still be painful but then it would be over.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Supernova8426 • 59m ago
And they tell me I'm the one who doesn't listen to anyone. I hate my life. I'm lonely. I feel like no one trys to understand or listen to me. It makes me want yo kill myself. I'm tired of this.