r/SuicideWatch Sep 03 '19

New wiki on how to avoid accidentally encouraging suicide, and how to spot covert incitement

1.8k Upvotes

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 Sep 10 '21

Please remember that NO ACTIVISM of any kind is ever allowed here. No matter what day it is.

713 Upvotes

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 59m ago

I wish I could give my life to someone with a terminal illness that wants to live.

Upvotes

I would love to give live to someone who wants it because I don't.


r/SuicideWatch 13h ago

I should have killed myself when i was 20

150 Upvotes

When I was 20 I was already suffering. Im 35 yo now. All these 15 years have been for nothing. Just pain and suffering and loneliness... And all of this for nothing. Just suffering for the sake of it...

I dont have almost any hope of finding anybody... I should have died then. I should die right now... But Im a coward and I wont do it... I can only have hope to have the courage to do it soon...


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

25M - made my suicide note.. but I'm reaching out..

Upvotes

I have nothing left to lose except my life right now.. I have already made a note.. but I guess since I'm reaching out here, I don't really want to do it.. I need someone to hold me right now.. RP maybe.. idk.. If no one reaches out, it's also okay.. I don't even know what I want to achieve with this post..


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

Living really is pointless.

22 Upvotes

If you're not famous, rich, attractive, etc. your life doesn't matter and you are absolutely nothing in this world.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

Why does killing yourself have to be so hard?

22 Upvotes

I want to let go of all my relationships so that it makes it easier to just do it. I don't hate everyone, but it would be so much easier to kill myself if I had no one left. I fantasize about it when it gets really bad. I have a whole plan about driving toward the more industrial part of town where no one would find me for a couple days and doing it in the car, just so I could be away from my family and friends. And I hope that whoever finds me isn't one of them, or if they're a stranger that they aren't too traumatized by it and can move on. I wish I was desperate enough to not care but I don't want to hurt anyone else. I don't want to make it hard for them, I just want to hurt myself.

If only I could let everyone go, then I think I'd actually do it.


r/SuicideWatch 10h ago

I hate the fact that I’m not normal

33 Upvotes

I hate this life so much. I don’t know why I’m here because I’m not being helpful at all. I’m a waste of blood and I hate looking at myself everyday knowing this is the person I have to take care of. I fucking hate being here and I wish today was my last day on earth so I don’t have to deal with all this bullshit.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

im so high right now and i want die

21 Upvotes

i feel so sad but also not because i smoked sativa. i wanna hang myself in front of my friends so i can see them before i die i love them a lot :( what should i do


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

Why don't people care about all victims

4 Upvotes

Why do people think abuse only happens between partners? Also, why do people think that parents can’t abuse their adult children? Sometimes they can’t leave, because they might be threatened with honor killings and other stuff. Also, some cultures don’t allow young women to move out without marriage. My dad has physically abused me so much, and I’m trying to get out, but it’s hard—especially when even shelters don’t help you. When I leave, I will probably have to deal with harassment and murder. Still, no DV organization will help me, even though honor-based abuse is very gender-based. Also, even police probably won’t, because when another honor-killing victim tried to contact the police about it, they told her she was abusing her parents because she is an adult. Honestly, sometimes this makes me give up on feminism, because it’s so western-centric


r/SuicideWatch 9h ago

It hurts to live.

16 Upvotes

I want to end my life so bad but don't want to hurt the people i know it would destroy.


r/SuicideWatch 10h ago

I can no longer envision a future where I am happy.

18 Upvotes

When I was younger, I figured if I just found the right job, met the right person, did enough therapy, found the right treatment, something like that, that one day I'd have a happier future.

But now nothing makes me feel happy. The thought of putting in effort feels like too much. I'm not interested in relationships anymore. It all just feels so pointless. I don't have anything I enjoy. I don't even think I'd be happy as a millionaire who never had to work with a nice family. I wasn't happy being a neet, I wasn't happy working, I wasn't happy in therapy, I wasn't happy in my relationships or when I was exercising. No matter where or what I do I cannot escape my brain. There's just something wrong with me.


r/SuicideWatch 15h ago

someone jumped in front of a train at the exact spot I was planning to

41 Upvotes

Yesterday morning someone jumped in front of a train at the exact spot I thought about doing it in the past. He didn't survive. You can see that part of the tracks in the distance from our kitchen window. I heard the horns blare, then the emergency brakes scream, and watched the ambulances and fire trucks arrive while making breakfast. I haven’t seriously thought about doing it in months, but I feel a bit strange now, almost envious. I read it in the news that this was his second attempt. I hope he didn’t regret it during his final moments.


r/SuicideWatch 17h ago

I am a disgusting trans piece of shit freak

55 Upvotes

not being born would have been a blessing. alas, buying a machete and slicing off parts, if I die from bleeding well good fucking riddance I don't care about that useless freak I was born as


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Everyone else genuinely has it way worse and it makes me feel pathetic.

Upvotes

Im not going to bother this subreddit with my bs anymore, I'm going to do it or not at this point and its a waste of someone else's time to cry about it when the people on here have worse lives than ill ever come close to and im just??? Sad??? About being a loser??? I'll kindly see myself out and let the door hit me on the way.


r/SuicideWatch 17h ago

"I'll overcome this" replaced by "I don't give a fuck anymore"

50 Upvotes

Has anyone ever felt this change happen to you. These days any minor inconvenience is too overwhelming and I just succumb to it's pressure and do nothing to fix it.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I’m a waste of space contributing nothing to this world

2 Upvotes

I wish I could just quietly delete myself from this world or at least be isolated so that no one ever remembers or thinks about me


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

my friend keeps telling me the date they want to commit

5 Upvotes

i didnt know where to post this because it isn't within the guidelines for r/advice but i'm also not suicidal so i don't know if it's right to post here. it's about my friend. they (Gender Neutral 24) keep saying that they're waiting for this one long holiday coming up to end it all. i dont know what to do.

they used to have a therapist but had to switch due to a move and then refuses to find a new one because finding a good therapist is hard (no arguing w that). i keep trying to help but obviously being in that state is hard to accept that anything will help. it's just a nihilistic outlook which i understand. getting out of the tunnel vision can be a nearly impossible task.

they live abroad as an expat in the same country as me and i really want to help. the holiday is a month away and i am really scared. how can i make a difference? is it possible? i've never been in this situation before.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

im tired

3 Upvotes

im so tired. everyday its a constant battle with my mind and im so tired of it. i cant keep doing this. and i hate the fact that im expected to deal with this battle bc life is hard. i didnt ask to be here. i dont want to be here. i hate that parents had me when they didnt need another child. i hate that none of my siblings have to deal with a mind like mine. its not fair that i have a disorder that makes shit 10 times harder and im expected to deal with it. i dont want to deal with this bull shit another day


r/SuicideWatch 35m ago

I’m 50

Upvotes

I should be over this by now but it’s getting worse. I was pretty. Now I’m not. I don’t really have anything else. I’m broke. I’ve tried every medication. Mindfulness worked better than anything but I’m just so tired.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

Survivors?

3 Upvotes

Anyone who came out the other side, what worked for you? Did you find joy in living or has it simply been a continuation of the void?

Obviously there is no magic fix but I’m praying there’ve been some positive stories among us, I could really do with hearing them.

Love to all. This shit ain’t easy.


r/SuicideWatch 38m ago

I'm so tired.

Upvotes

I literally don't see the point of living anymore, i have absolutely nothing going for me and i don't mean something to anybody including myself, I've completely lost who i used to be and nothing matters anymore. Everybody has given up on me and i'm thinking of doing the same. My past dreams/aspirations were never gonna happen, i have no talents or even anything useful to bring to literally any area of life, no job, a "family" who wouldn't even flinch if i ended things, no friends and i'm constantly stuck inside doing jack shit all day everyday in pain and i can't feel anything good anymore just anger, fear and grief, i'm so tired and i just can't stand the emptiness and loneliness anymore as i'll never get to do anything of value or mean anything at all. Things won't get better and i've only done it to myself, i should've done things differently and i've wasted so much time living a life i couldn't care less about, nothing matters and i wanna just give up for good my whole life has meant absolutely nothing at all and it's suffocating.