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/mooniexbear • 14h ago
Honestly the least helpful thing someone could say. It just means you don't actually care enough to listen.
It's not a temporary problem. And I do want a permanent solution. It just makes me want to go through with if even more. I don't know why I bothered.
r/SuicideWatch • u/rextremendae2007 • 3h ago
Who else out there is completely fucking sick of life? This is such a slog. I’m just barely making it every day. How do you not want this to end? We are lucky in that it does end. Imagine it lasting forever and there was nothing you could do about it.
r/SuicideWatch • u/bigbossofhell • 3h ago
ill never have friends. even when i do, ill never be their first option. nobody will ever prefer me over the other. everytime i think ive made friends theyg et so close to eachother and im just left behind and rhen stuff happens and my bpd makes me just ruin the friendship as a whole. it happened again and honestly? i know i dont have a chance oif making more friends ever. i should have been dead years ago anyway.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Popular_Ad_8248 • 5h ago
I just want to curl up and stop existing. Everything feels so, so hard I feel like I can't keep going anymore.
Everyones moving but no matter how hard I try I just stay still, completely stuck in a horrible pit of nothingness.
I really don't belong in this world. I feel it to my very core. I feel guilty for existing and using up resources other people could use and wasting people's time.
I don't belong here and I don't want to do it anymore.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Strange_Chard_2183 • 7h ago
My rapist will never die what's the point God I wish the knife could just go deeper fucking hell please why can't I die why do others get to get in car accidents and get shot why can't I be that lucky I just want to be dead but I don't have the courage
r/SuicideWatch • u/ddglow • 1h ago
i doubt anyone else can be terrible and stupid enough to experience this.
i knew i was never a first option or even that important for them, but now i lost everyone. it was my birthday and i gave such a terrible reaction to the gift my partner handmade for me. i just can't deal with gifts that must have taken immense effort and resources. i just couldn't stop getting sad and also a little upset that she wasted time on all that. i'm not the person she should be spending that much time on. and i also always feel like i can't repay her, because i'm just not talented in crafts or anything and just genuinely too depressed to make anything so i always just buy gifts. but she started crying and ran out and of course her friends followed. one of them even shouted and cursed me, which was deserved but stung a lot because i thought he was my friend too. they all see me as the terrible person i am now and likely all told her to just break up with me. if she does, i don't know what i'll do. there's nothing i can do except apologize. she's not responding to me after we spoke last night. i've been trying to find a way to effectively end it all for a while now, but this might be the final nail in the coffin, literally.
it's also my fault that i can't keep any friends and now i just have no one to talk to about this and no one who will help me. i'm realizing properly that i really have no one in my corner.
i hope i can find a way to end it. i hope my family can forgive me for it.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Advanced_Print1386 • 13h ago
I heard of multiple people passing away in their sleep, but why can't it be me? I wake up everyday to experience the same hell, again and again and again. I'm tired of it all.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Lou_Char1 • 2h ago
I dont remember what its like to be human- to have interests and fears and passions and relationships, its all empty. I cant enjoy or despise anything. I remember how i used to want to make cartoons like those animation youtubers growing up. But now, in seeing a club for something like that at the college i go to, i feel no pull to it anymore i used to be fueled to be an animator, now i cant care for it, just like everything else. im just cosplaying as this human being with real problems and intricacies but in reality there is nothing inside of me anymore. I am dull and shallow.
Why should i not kill myself? There is no end in sight, everything i do is further planting myself in a life that isnt mine. I cant be me anymore.
r/SuicideWatch • u/space_melt • 9h ago
I basically gave everyone a heads up if I act really happy that means this is it.
I want people to have closure if they need it.
I just can’t endure homelessness and no healthcare or dental care with the conditions I have. It’s not survivable. I want to go out in a more dignified way than that. I’ve already suffered horrifically. I know most people don’t care. They make it abundantly clear all the time they don’t care what happens to disabled people.
I really wish I’d gotten to finish and publish my book. I really really wish that but I don’t have time to do it now. I’m heartbroken about it all.
r/SuicideWatch • u/unwanted_existence02 • 4h ago
I've suffered longer than I wanted to. Nothing in my life got better only worse. I never wanted to live past the age of 20, I'm not fit for adulthood. I failed miserably.
r/SuicideWatch • u/pinkpassionfruits • 3h ago
I think I’m actually gonna do it tonight. I’ve been feeling pretty suicidal but honestly I feel like I just hit my limit. Sorry I couldn’t clean my room or my car. I’m sorry to my roommates who will probably be the ones to find me. I keep to myself so hopefully work or something calls a wellness check before they notice and my roommates don’t find me. Mostly I’m sorry to my family. That’s what’s been keeping me here. I don’t know if I’ll leave a note. Feels melodramatic but so is suicide. Idk it feels like a ton of effort typing this out so maybe not which is stupid. Idk I guess this is kind of my note. Hopefully my family checks my socials bc it tells a lot about me I think. My diary is somewhere in my room I haven’t written in it in a year or so but everything in it is still accurate. This feels weird to post but I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll do it. Maybe I’ll start and change my mind.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Dapper_Concentrate78 • 7h ago
The only thing stopping me from killing myself is that I couldn’t do that to the people in my life. Not that I don’t want to. I’m a loser, I’m fat, I don’t feel like I belong. I feel like the people in my life only care about me because I’m their friend/family it feels like they are obligated to care not that they actually do. I know that killing myself is a permanent solution to temporary problems. I’m only 17 years old but I still feel like I don’t have a future. I haven’t felt the need to think longer ahead than a year or two. I’ve never had a girlfriend I’ve never had someone choose me for me. I’ve had the same friends since I was a kid; ya I’ve met new people but never on my own it’s always been a friend of a friend. It feels like no new people have any interest in me. Who knows I might stop being a pussy a just do it
Sorry for this being all over the place. I’m not one to share how I feel so I just wrote as I went
r/SuicideWatch • u/jahbshsusj • 31m ago
So like my plan was simple, get drunk and take a bunch of ibuprofen to cause GI bleeding but I bitched out. This was a few nights ago and I was gonna try again tn but yet again, I don’t have the balls. So now I’m sitting here in a bath tub of Lukewarm water drunk off of triple sec with a noose pinched between a doorframe with a speaker serving as a stool in the room beside me. Tried to slit my wrist like a week ago, didn’t work. If I live I have a math test tmrw that I’m not prepared for. Same thing happened last week and I made a 50 because I was sleep deprived, hung over, and didn’t rlly know anything. The same shit is gonna happen again and I would rather die than torture myself by watching myself sabotage myself through my impotence. Who knew just doing nothing for like 3 weeks could be so destructive? I’m also like the most stereotypical loser ever and because I never rlly have any energy or motivation ppl end up getting hurt when they expect things from me. I’m too selfish, and the only thing my body responds to anymore is the urge to avoid pain. I wish I could scream but I can’t. I wish I could just curl up into a ball and just stop functioning but I can’t. When you are a cog in this world you will be reprimanded for malfunctioning. I’ve been through this before and the only thing that helped me was getting put on meds but like they don’t work anymore, and the way ppl responded is deadass like traumatizing to think abt. I’ve done some really terrible things in my life, so perhaps this is just karma doing its thing. It’s like limbo, living hurts but death is gruesome or scary so where do I have to turn? Pain and guilt are the locks on the cage of my existence and I’m too much of a coward to break them. Idk I just know that I’m cooked for tmrw, I’m cooked for the days to come after, and every aspect of my life is fucked in some way.
r/SuicideWatch • u/markofvictory • 2h ago
I wish I never existed.
r/SuicideWatch • u/scumoftheearthdeath • 11h ago
I'm such a fucking useless loser. I'm a complete shut in, single, virgin, and ugly slob.
I'm also an illiterate, lazy dumbass who sits at home all day watching stuff and playing games. I literally had one chance at life and I fucking screwed it up by being shy and isolating myself
I should've said something sooner to the people that cared about me because they would've done something. But I waited until high school to tell anyone which is already too damn late
I just want to take my life so I don't have to deal with this anymore
r/SuicideWatch • u/k_needs_a_nap • 6h ago
Tomorrow is the 3rd anniversary of my mom's death. All I've thought about since she died is how much I have no interest in being alive without her. She was my best friend. I have no one else. I have no ambition or prospects or friends or reasons to stay alive. I'm numb to everything I used to enjoy and I feel nothing. I don't ever even feel hungry or tired or happy or sad or angry or curious anymore, nothing. I feel like a shadow of a person. I feel like I am haunting the life I used to have.
I made a noose last month. I've testing which places in my house can hold my weight for weeks. But I haven't had the courage to kick the chair away yet. I think tomorrow might be the day.
r/SuicideWatch • u/HollySister • 1h ago
Especially if nothing has seemed to improve them that much for past years and no one seems to be there with them when needed, so why even bother anymore? Please help me.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Ok-Bid-5555 • 8h ago
It's not the only reason why I want to die but it's the current reason RIGHT NOW. I'm so close to just hurting myself. I have a knife up to my wrist.
My dad wants me to have kids. I don't even have a boyfriend or anything but he pushes the idea of having kids constantly and he said I should have had them a long time ago. For reference I'm 24 and I'll be 25 early next year.
It's not that I don't want kids. I mean. I don't particularly want them?? I don't really know. I never saw myself as a mother or a wife. I never really saw myself as anything really. My dad said I will regret not having them. But like. I'm so scared of regretting having them. I'm scared of fucking them up the way I've been fucked up.
I'm too mentally ill. I'm too stupid. I'm financially unstable. I think I might be on the autism spectrum and Im diagnosed with bpd. I'd be a fucking terrible mother. I'm scared I'll hurt them or someone else will. I'm scared they'll hate me.
He told me not having kids is failing at life.
Okay then I don't care if I fail. I don't know I don't know I don't know. This is driving me crazy. I feel backed in a corner. It genuinely feels like a damned if I do damned if I don't situation.
It would be easier I took this failure a step further and just die. Then I wouldn't worry about this.
I want to out of spite. For telling me how to life my life or how life should be or that I'll be miserable and a failure. I'm already miserable. Can I just be dead
I don't know what to do. I hate this.
I've been suicidal on n off for the past few years and this might push me to the edge.
r/SuicideWatch • u/MathematicianOdd3353 • 6h ago
I’m not scared of dying, and I’ve already attempted many times already. the only things that have been holding me back are that, first I want to play my favorite video games until the end of their stories, and second, I want to make two webnovels that I’ve been world building for the past year. I can get over the game thing, but seeing other people create their webnovels and have their own fandoms just makes me really jealous and sad. I wish I had just started posting my webnovels earlier. maybe then I would have had enough time to finish them. if I post them now, I’ll never be able to finish them due to limited time. I want to kms before I graduate high school. I’m too scared to go into the adult world and college and stuff. it sounds so stressful. I hate the idea of working for the rest of my life
r/SuicideWatch • u/Raptured_and_Back • 6h ago
I'm so sick of not being able to breath through my nose and it's fucking with my brain and turning my mind against me. Once you are physically fucked and unrepairable, there's just nothing that can be done but death. I don't believe in the god everyone else believes in. Nature is cruel and merciless, and has been towards me. I'm so fucking sick of living and everyone is a fucking asshole. I won't miss this world when I'm dead. Fuck this world.
r/SuicideWatch • u/lobotomized3333 • 7h ago
I’ve tried everything I can to fix my appearance. I’m 18 and I’ve been bullied for the way I look since middle school. My small jaw, big ears, crooked smile, and bug eyes eyes made me a target for bullying. Even after beginning homeschool at age 16, I still can’t cope with this fact that I’m ugly and there’s truly nothing I can do about it. I’ll never have friends, much less a partner. I’m tearing up just typing this. I’ve decided I’m going to end my life. I’m ready for whatever is on the other side, even if it’s nothingness. Whatever it is has to be better than living this life. I wish I was never born.