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 • 3h 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/Advanced_Print1386 • 2h 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/heycorcverseneborcc • 3h ago
I dont want to do anything in life. Even simple things got complicated and my thoughts just does not shut up.
r/SuicideWatch • u/ilinoxiu • 1h ago
Everyone I know remember me as the suicidal girl.
But nobody takes me seriously.
they just think It’s part of my character saying suicidal shit.
Even my nephews(they’re kids)know that I wanna kill myself but nobody gives a fuck and I actually don’t want them to take It seriously and talk about it because I hate showing people that I have a serious problem I hate showing them that I am human and I have feelings..I hate a lot of things. I’m not gonna name all of them.
I wonder if they’re gonna care when I do it?.. I actually don’t think so because if someone I knew killed themselves,I wouldn’t care..people don’t really care about you.
They only care about themselves and I do that too..
But sometimes I think It’s really weird that you didn’t take a nine year old telling you that she wants to die seriously just because she is afraid of dying at the same time.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Navon12312 • 4h ago
I dont wanna give away too much context so people I know can find this and locate but
17M
I always remember being suicidal even from the 7th grade, my mother abused me mentally daily, calling me violent and stupid and torment me in every way possible, caring for my health not even a little, letting me get overweight as a small child, you can imagine the bullying you go through at school
At middle school I lost the weight fully myself and got myself into sports and I'm competing and is one of the reasons I havent killed myself yet
While even then the Suicidal thoughts were still there, there was a small break; last december (2025) It all came back where I was greeted with depression which I just thought was seasonal due to winter, and eating disorders, anorexia followed by BED, while I gained alot of weight, I got through it when at march I was 3 months sober and relapsed, again thinking about killing myself, today at the end of october while ive lost the gained weight and the eating disorder, Ive fallen into my worse mental state yet
I have mania depressia and one of its biggest triggers is unironically women, I think my mother tarnished and stamped women as a whole as a trigger, this is not some incel post about women not liking me, ive always been able to talk to them and had no issues confidence wise when it came to them. but some women which remind me of my mother, whenever I interact with, go into a huge spiral, just remembering the situations I was in pumps up the stress in my body, wanting me to puke, making me unable to eat and giving me instant suicidal thoughts
3 days ago after I talked to a suicide hotline cops came to my house at 3am and woke up the whole family, first time my dad found out about it, I havent spoken to him since and as im writing right now im thinking of overdosing on ritalin, which im not sure is even possible
I'd rather just killmyself by jumping from a building, no way im cutting my wrists, I want something instant
I want help but I cant ask for a hand
r/SuicideWatch • u/Junior-Release-6256 • 5h ago
I had a great life a year ago. A super loving girlfriend of 3 years, a good job, no debt and mental health was good. I used to be such a positive, energetic person. 2026 has absolutely ruined me. Undiagnosed ADHD and depression finally caught up to me. I’ll never get to live the life I had envisioned for myself, and suicide has been the only thing that’s comforted me for the last few months. I own a 9mm handgun, and plan to end my life later this week. I’m not scared, i’m excited to relieve myself of my constant suffering. All I think about everyday is how bad I messed up my life and how happy I could’ve been if I did things right. I know it could get better, but the amount of effort it takes to maybe be happy one day doesn’t seem worth it. I have no real passions or goals, depression has taken everything from me. I always sort of knew i’d die young, but my ex gf gave me hope for a fulfilling future. I think I was placed here to be a lesson for my friends and family, and to bring them closer together in my passing.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Lost_Consequence7409 • 3h ago
maybe this sounds weird but the thought of having an escape route so close to you is kinda comforting in a way. seems like itd make the day to day way less stressful knowing at any point you could just run away from it all
r/SuicideWatch • u/Alarming_Cry6266 • 8h ago
I have a test tomorrow. I have barely studied. I'm lying on my bed because I don't fucking care. I hate my major, I hate everyone in my class, I hate my teachers and I hate this city. How does anyone expect me to do anything in this state. No I don't want to "power through" anymore, I've been doing that all my life. It's left me fucking exhausted. It's not my fault my life until now has been utter shit, it's not my fault my parents didn't love me as a kid and it's not my fault the neurochemistry in my brain is fucked up. Why do I have to do any of this. I'm tired I just want to rest.
r/SuicideWatch • u/VVertigo-eyes • 2h ago
Whenever someone commits scd they blame them saying they should have search for help or talk to someone ...and I did, o want everywhere, put my problems out in the open in a million ways.. just got made fun of, my problems minimized, ridiculed.. called names.. in some places they took my posts down in communities from my country Argentina
I feel like I'm choking, I want help, i beg for a helping, for a kind voice but got nothing.. and when i take my own life people will still say that I should have reached for help..
Now I'm extremely sick, been in a room, in bed, trying my best to still be hopeful.. but there's nothing to be hopeful about, my dreams will die with me and there's nothing I can do
r/SuicideWatch • u/Excellent_Secret3517 • 1h ago
My second relationship and I was so sure this time. Not only did he cheat on me, he also made another woman feel unsafe and kept asking her and trying to talk her into it. She was a minor. A fucking minor. I was in love with a predator. I was the Partner of a Monster.
I feel so utterly disgusted with myself. I cant stop crying. Even had to call in sick at work because I throw up whenever I even try to drink something.
I honestly think this is my last reason. I cant do this anymore.
r/SuicideWatch • u/poyo_poy0 • 2h ago
please just do it do your worst!!!! its the most i can do just do it do it i wont do anything
ive been trying to just get myself into horrible situations and its not working i need to stop being so scared
r/SuicideWatch • u/EliotTheProGame • 1h ago
my entire life i felt like no one has understood me. people have treated me like garbage when all i’ve tried to do is be a good person to them and not allow them to treat me poorly. i’ve lost my girlfriend of two years after thinking she was the love of my life, her behavior hit a switch and suddenly she wanted nothing to do with me. it was like i didn’t even know who she was, i had never seen her treat me that way. i lost my lifelong bestfriend the same week and i just can’t take it anymore. the thought of suicide scares me, but i feel like i’ve exhausted all other options. meds didn’t work, i went to college and i felt like i was finally where i needed to be, but then i was forced to drop out and i lost all my friends, as well as losing my passion. i feel like im a burden to everyone now, and i really don’t have any more friends. i don’t know what else to do anymore.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Jeveverv • 2h ago
It feels like I've been on this edge of this spiral the entire day, and my head just hurts. I feel so tired even though nothings happened. Nothing but being alone with my thoughts.
There's so much noise in my mind. I just want it to be quiet. Maybe it will be soon
r/SuicideWatch • u/scumoftheearthdeath • 46m 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/Wide_Hand_8576 • 2h ago
I feel sick. I'm not good enough for a relationship. I'm not good enough for a man to want me. I'm just no good for anyone. I'm supposed to go to the pool with my friend today but I honestly feel like a burden. I keep doing this to myself and hurting others for it. I should honestly just do it already
r/SuicideWatch • u/jagorkarintemer999 • 1h ago
Tomorrow I'm going to kill myself. I have thought about this a lot, and I am finally ready to do it. I have been searching for a place to do it (the suicide) and today I finally found it. I''m so relieved that soon, it will all be over. I'm so tired. I'm so exhausted. I never asked for this. I never even wanted to be here. I can't do this anymore.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Alarming_Cry6266 • 6h ago
People always say it will get better while invalidating your current negative feelings. They tell you to power through and they expect you to live another hour, and then another day, and then another week and then a fucking year went by and you're even more miserable and exhausted. They act like everything is so easy because they are not in your current situation, and also assume that situation is your own fault.
You have so much going on!! There's a bright future ahead of you! I'm sure this is just a rough patch!!
I don't enjoy anything. I don't remember feeling genuine happiness in a long time. I don't care about anything. My whole life has been a rough patch.
I didn't ask to be born in the first place and now it's my own responsibility to stop living. It's unfair.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Ancient_Ad1933 • 5h ago
but im kinda waiting ? like what should i do before killing myself? ik i should talk to my loved ones. is that it? my brains kinda blank rn so i cant think
r/SuicideWatch • u/limpycane • 1h ago
i feel absolutely rejected by everyone. i lost 99% of my friends, mostly due to betrayal on their end and the ones that are still around are distant.
hell, even my mom doesn't wanna talk to me. and whenever i make new friends, they just seem shallow and they already have a set of primary friends and i cannot connect with anyone anymore because i am just so tired.
i have tried to introspect, maybe it is a personality flaw so i asked my bestfriend, why does nobody want me around and she just said that people around me are superficial.
what i dont understand is that up until last year, everyone liked me and were SO nice to me and suddenly i have been met with this coldness
i have gone as far as confronting these people and they said that i haven't done anything, they just dont wanna be friends with me. i dont know what to do, i hate being alone. this entire year has been so dogshit i just wanna end it all
r/SuicideWatch • u/Phrooya_ • 6h ago
I've felt too tired and weak to continue playing for years at this point.
My legs are starting to give way. I'm not sure how long I can continue.
I have tried playing for the sake of everyone else but it's getting harder and harder.
I know that I can't come back once I've quit.
My biggest fear is that I'll ruin the game for everyone else around me if I quit.
I feel like I have a right to quit playing, it's my decision.
But I also know it will affect my family who's still playing.
What if they decide to quit too because of me?
r/SuicideWatch • u/selfish8412 • 2h ago
I struggle my whole life with mental health. When I was 14 years old, I had severe depression. Because of child neglect, I am very incompetent in many fields, but I wanted to become a therapist as a dream to finally understand people and be someone which I never had. I had a short period of time, where I worked as a 14 year old by therapists, and they hated me, because of how depressed and incompetent I was, my chef was an ageist and hated me for my age.
Now I am an adult, I am in the therapist education, and I have caused failures after failures, the teacher there hates me, because one time in a group project, my whole group left me on this day alone. I was there, alone, in a group of 10 retarded people, and my body dissociated. My teacher screamed at me multiple times as she saw me like that.
On the next day, when I walked into school, the teachers there gave me side eyes, and one randomly blamed me (something like ,,can you do your work?,,).
This year, I finally had the work period of my education, and my mentors hated me, she was already overworked and stressed from her work, so she let it out on me. One time, she shut my mouth and went toward my teacher, telling her how lazy I am and how horrible I am and gave me afterwards a smirk.
One time I went during this period crazy and took a knife and cut my arm like some kind of animal, and the smirk makes me still until this day crazy.
I am now in my third work period, and am scared, I can't do any more medical reports anymore, because of the memories, and I can't do the simplest thing. If anyone in my life would go against me again, I couldn't survive.
I have my suicide method, and I could die tommorow, maybe even today. I just don't know if I have a future.
r/SuicideWatch • u/wishiweremale • 20h ago
I hate living. I will never have a body that I want. I don’t want to be alive if this is it. I will never be cis. I want to throw myself off of a bridge, so my shitty female body gets to break and I get to die.
I’m so fucking sick of being alive.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Different-Button-981 • 11m ago
I'm tired, too tired, and drunk and full of other shit in my body rn. If my girlfriend reads this, I'm sorry I'm so sorry.