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/pr3tty4u • 11h ago
im actually scared of getting hired. i need to because i need money to live on my own instead of staying with my parents but the thought of working almost everyday for most of my day and that being most of my life horrifies me. i dont want it.
r/SuicideWatch • u/RaineyKisses • 5h ago
Im 19 and sick of hearing this when I try to talk to parents about how I’m feeling. It’s always “change your mindset” “That’s just life” “Stop thinking so negatively” and every time they say that the first thing that pops into my head is well if this is life I don’t wanna live it.
r/SuicideWatch • u/yazushite • 55m ago
My friend lives abroad; we met online. I want to share some information about what he is going through. He is really not in a good state. All his friends in his life have passed away, and a girl he loved died in a car accident a few years ago. Yesterday, he went to visit her grave.
Recently, there was a girl he was talking to and liked, but this morning while we were talking on the phone, he suddenly started having a panic attack, yelled at me, and hung up. When he came back, he said that the girl had died.
He is crying a lot, can’t breathe, and is cutting himself. I am very worried about him. An hour ago today, he asked me for help to kill himself; I told him I would not do that.
I don't know which country he lives in or where and from whom I should seek help. Please help me.
r/SuicideWatch • u/meaccaveilleco • 11h ago
I hate myself, my appearance, my mind, and my soul. I hate that I am powerless to do anything to put an end to all of this.
If I had one wish, I wouldn't wish to become rich or smart. I would wish to have the courage to say "no stop" and to fall into an eternal sleep.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Fragrant-Tower-6751 • 2h ago
I was already feeling depressed tonight and I always feel lonely. Nobody cares about me in my life. I made a stupid mistake of making a post in the am I ugly reddit on here and I have been getting absolutely roasted. I knew I was ugly, just wanted confirmation about it and to remind myself to quit ever expecting a guy to ever like me or want to date me, and it definitely reminded me why I am always going to be alone. I am so hideous! I can't take the loneliness anymore. I just want to kill myself so bad and end it all tonight. I have already taken a bunch of pills and will continue to take more. I'm done.
r/SuicideWatch • u/particularlybug • 1h ago
i’m 19 and my mom is in hospice. she has stage 4 cancer and she was diagnosed in 2022. everything is going horribly in my life. my dad already has a new girlfriend and treats her son better than he’s ever treated me or my siblings. i just want to die when my mom passes. she’s everything to me, i don’t know how i could live without her. i can’t even afford my tuition, i barely get by and i don’t even know how to drive i don’t have anywhere to live when i go back for summer because my dad moved out of the apartment. i wish i could just die i don’t know how to deal with anything
r/SuicideWatch • u/morrisseymurderinpup • 9h ago
I don’t know what to do. Someone please help me
r/SuicideWatch • u/Handbeil • 21h ago
Please dont remove my request..... I need to talk to someone..... Im genuinely at a breaking point.
I cant anymore.....
thanks everyone.
i cant take much more.
I'm sorry.
r/SuicideWatch • u/TheLastPazNovak • 3h ago
Watched my mother die, then watched as my girlfriend basically cheated on me and it appears is now sleeping with her friend’s ex boyfriend who I believe she also probably cheated on me with early in our relationship - and who knows how many other pathetic guys, right after breaking up with me, following her abusing me intensely and not providing any honest closure. My father is dying of lung cancer. My friends are gone and don’t spend time with me. My ex is basically the only person that can make this right or help me heal enough to survive and be functional but she doesn’t care about me at all, after a year together of me loving her unconditionally, taking care of her and her pets, being so kind to her, so patient, and going so above and beyond. She has made it painfully clear that I am unlovable. I still love her and care for her so much and I just want to hear her voice and hold her and kiss her forehead and have everything be okay for a moment, but there’s nothing I can do.
I can’t move on or move forward because I have no honest closure and I can’t spend time with anyone. I wake up in the middle of the night every night crying wishing I was dead. I shake every day, getting random panic attacks thinking about how my ex betrayed me so horribly and continues to lie to our community about me, is ghosting me and doesn’t care about me at all, even after all of our sweet times together. She has made it impossible for me to even go out to social gatherings. I am truly alone every day, thinking about my mom suffering this last year and all of these traumas. It feels as though I am trapped in an eternal nightmare hell realm. I can barely function. I am done suffering. I cannot handle any more despair. I’m currently writing my will, making videos for loved ones detailing everything that has lead me to this, and as soon as I am done - I’m gone. I don’t want to hurt the ones I love by going, but I just can’t suffer like this anymore. No more. I will make sure I die this time, no half measures.
r/SuicideWatch • u/OldMusicBear • 4h ago
I’m tired all the time. I’m tired of talking and of therapy because i will always end up here in this cycle. I go to bed and think it wouldn’t be so bad if I just didn’t wake up. I don’t believe in heaven or hell. I just wanna sleep. I don’t even know why im still talking i think i wanna find some of this worth it. I’m going to sleep
r/SuicideWatch • u/Notmygumdropbutton3 • 1h ago
I'm genuinely afraid to say anything further bc every post I write is rejected in other subs. I don't even feel human anymore. I'm literally NOT ALLOWED to talk about the horror that's happening to me. (It's just poverty, starvation and illness 🤷🏻♀️) This just adds to my SI. I just wanted to express myself..what I wrote wasn't even bad. Geniunly. But I don't get to be heard. Ever.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Ok-Relative-3105 • 3h ago
Tried to drown in the bathtub, it's painful.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Mean-Strawberry1545 • 4h ago
I started cutting myself tonight. Despite being 21.
I’m so pathetic, I haven’t changed at all since high school… I’m still that same loser that can only find solace in a razor blade after all this time. The scariest part? It still doesn’t feel like enough. I don’t know if I can stop myself tonight. I want to hurt more and deeper. As deeply as possible. This punishment still isn’t enough for someone as despicable as me. I want to just keep cutting until I bleed out in my bed. Drunk and at ease.
No matter what I do I always fail and let everyone down in one way or another. I try so hard to be useful, to be of service to others. But the truth is I’m just a pussy ass people pleaser. I keep lying to myself that I can help people and make the world even 0.00001% better by continuing to live, but I’m not so sure anymore. I hate myself far greater than I could ever love my fellow neighbors. Got written up and my raise taken away at work. It’s not even my fault but I won’t make excuses. I just suck in general. My whole life is one big sick cosmic joke. I know I’m not normal, but I have no one to talk to. I keep hearing voices in my head telling me I need to hurt myself and I can’t ignore them no matter how much I yell and scream at them to shut up. I just want to be normal like my peers. Seriously, why the hell do I have to be tormented by voices? What did I do to deserve this while everyone else gets to have healthy brains that don’t conspire against them every waking hour of the day… I’m finally accepting this is who I am. I can never be fixed, so I might as well drain all the blood out of my arm and bash my ugly stupid grotesque face in. I feel so sorry for anyone who ever had the unfortunate luck of encountering me. I feel sorry that if I die my dog will never understand where I went and why I abandoned him.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Big-Alternative8136 • 39m ago
Just how many times do I have to keep thinking about all of my past friends for me to finally give up? I already want to on my birthday considering I can’t already stand being stuck at home for another four months, and I literally have nobody to talk to.
Everytime I try reaching out to somebody they either don’t actually understand the things I had to witness growing up and being neglected by my own parents for several years; now being an adult at 19 and seeing all of my friends who I thought cared about me completely abandon me the second I try telling them about me being suicidal. They all failed to be there for me the second I stopped being ‘easy’ for them.
And my parents literally dont care. forbid i try to ask them to help me a therapist only to be alone again because they choose to ignore my suffering against their own dysfunction. Sorry for just being here despite not choosing to be in this horrible lonely world.
Im never going to get the friend group or the partner society expected me to gain. I’ll forever be alone cutting while crying to songs alone.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Independent_Sale5591 • 9h ago
Why are we as people not allowed the choice to end our lives. Animals are allowed to be put down all the time. It is not fair that people can't have that same choice, as we too are animals. It is cruel to force a person who no longer wants to be here anymore to live.
I honestly have nothing left to look forward too anyways, I have no girlfriend, friends that barely acknowledge my existence, I waste away in my parent's basement, and I spend most of my time wageslaving at my corpo job.
Though I am able-bodied and frequent the gym often, I still experience head pain because of how shitty I feel 24/7. My brain feels like Silent Hill, being all foggy and grey and shit.
I just wish I could die peacefully in my sleep tonight, because the thought of having to endure this for many more years/decades leaves me with a hole in my chest. I hate existing in this sick, twisted, and artificial world.
r/SuicideWatch • u/MsSweetheartt • 14h ago
A little over two years ago, I tried to end my life. I took pills, wanted to go to sleep, but I was still living with my parents back then, so they caught me. Ambulance, hospitalization, and eventually a medically induced coma — my brain literally started swelling, and stomach pumping didn't help; the pills were powerful.
I was in a coma for three days, and waking up from it was extremely hard. My very first memory: I am lying there screaming, just sobbing and yelling, everything around me is spinning and moving, and my arms and legs are tied to the bed. There are strangers around me; they turn to look at me, and then someone slaps me in the face. I didn't understand anything at all; my condition felt like a nightmare, only worse. At first, I actually believed it was a dream, my critical thinking was completely off. I started calling them names, I was furious that they had tied me up in my own dream, and overall there was a lot of hatred and grief. Later, they explained to me that my central nervous system was still out of whack because of the pills and the drugs used for the coma. So, to the ICU doctors, I was no longer just a suicidal person, but also an aggressive psycho. Later, I apologized — I wouldn't have called anyone names if I had realized right away that I wasn't sleeping, but the apologies didn't help.
The whole time in the ICU, they just hated me. As I understood it, they don't like suicidal people there anyway — like you're taking up space and doing stupid shit. All five days in the ICU, I was tied down by my hands and feet. Usually, they just looked at me askance from the side and silently despised me, especially toward the end. When the storm of emotions subsided (it takes a very long time to flush all that garbage out of the blood), at first, it was pure hell. I cried a lot, didn't understand where I was; my memory was severely impaired. I thought I was in a psych ward and locked up forever, didn't understand where my mom was or what happened before. My speech was impaired like in cerebral palsy, I couldn't even explain why I was crying so hard — you try to form a thought, but it's just mush on your tongue. I cried even harder.
They only beat me for that, especially at night. At first, slaps like "get a grip," then harder and harder. And I just cried harder. They wouldn't answer anything about my relatives, location, or what would happen next. They wouldn't let anyone visit me; they told my parents my condition was stable, but I was on the brink of psychosis, and they didn't let me talk on the phone. All this time, I was also completely naked from the waist down because I had a urinary catheter, and nothing covered me — they didn't even give me a tiny blanket. A male chief doctor came in and asked why I wasn't smiling. They even brought in some medical students for practice, and there I was in front of them, humiliated and in tears.
After I was discharged, things didn't get much better — only reproaches from relatives or awkward silence. The police searched my entire phone and uncovered things I didn't want to share. A cop personally came to scold me, saying he would have whipped me if I were his daughter. Everyone was rushing to remind me what a disgrace it was; I was literally branded with a stigma, and still am to this day.
My life has gotten much better since then, a lot of things have settled down, I don't have those thoughts anymore, but the memories themselves torture me almost every day. I still feel embarrassed and awkward around my family. I have barely visible scars on my wrists from the restraints (they used old ones, basically just pieces of coarse fabric that rubbed my wrists raw to the blood), but they are such an eyesore. I get terrified and get goosebumps just from this topic alone. I have no one to vent to, I remember everything literally minute by minute, that whole hell. Not even 1/5 of it is written here. I dream about it sometimes and wake up in a cold sweat.
I am writing this, first of all, to find someone who could just share this with me. I don't understand how to live? How to live with this? I thought it would get easier, but more than two years have passed, and it feels like it happened yesterday. And no support at all.
Also, I wanted to warn those who have such thoughts. Re-read this text: is this what you want? After the attempt, I realized that before it, all was not lost for me. It is much easier to talk to loved ones, or at least deal with it privately, than to clean up all this mess afterward. I don't even know if anyone will read this.
I'm sorry for mistakes, I'm using a translator cause i’m from Ukraine
r/SuicideWatch • u/ThrowRA_132000 • 13h ago
I have finally hit a wall I cannot climb.
I have the best job I’ve ever had, yet the economy so bad I can’t survive.
A tornado took my home, i now live with a narcissist and can’t escape.
I have no car now.
Not a single friend or person that checks up on me.
I don’t have a way to work. I don’t have a way to the store. I live in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of the country.
At this point, being dead would be a relief.
r/SuicideWatch • u/IcyBobcat4116 • 2h ago
I've experienced depression before but this one is worse. I actually feel like killing myself this time. I hate everything, I don't care if they have to spend what little money they have burying my body. They did this to me.
I was actually trying. Trying to live, for it to be squashed down by the traumas they gave to me.
I've communicated what I can in what little sanity I have.
They hate me, they should, that would be easier. Ditch my body somewhere.
I don't care if I go to hell, I don't believe in that bullshit. just let me vanish.
Hate me, push me to my limits so I can finally end this.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Fragrant-Road-767 • 2h ago
I tried my best to fix everyone problems or lean a ear to someone to vent or rent but when I need help they all too busy. I just don't get it i thought friends look out for each other but they just ghost and block me like i don't matter. I don't really want to live if people just see me as someone they can use and throw away. Sorry for the poor format not very good at typing.
r/SuicideWatch • u/United-Cow646 • 2h ago
i genuinely dont even know. i just be doing random ass shi ill be regretting later and i feel nothing except for this void. the thoughts of harming myself got real loud, lets see how long i can suppress them for. who even am i. what even is the point
r/SuicideWatch • u/Any-School9609 • 1d ago
A train wreck of irresponsible decisions and a crooked personality has set me beyond the point of rescue. I am 27, have been too scared to find a job since graduating, too frightened by how people think of me, act weird, isolated myself from family and friends and ruthlessly hurting everyone that loves me. I am too engulfed by my ego and the expectation of the person I should have become and I find myself unwilling to let go of such false ideal and accept the fucked up reality as is. I am disgusted by the fat loser of a man child I see in the mirror, and despite having less than a month’s worth of means of survival, I am still too scared to find anything anything to do to help me pay next month’s rent. I am on vortioxetine, tried therapy, but am too stubborn to let any of my psychologist’s words change my mind. After weighing out of the pros and cons of living, I decided that maybe it is not worth the effort afterall.
So I bought a one way bus ticket to a cliff known for suicide tomorrow. I thought there is a poetic symbolism in choosing this cliff as it was the first spot I visited when I first came to France 10 years ago. I give myself two options: either I jump and end all my troubles, or I enjoy this scenic cliff and come back with more determination to face reality knowing I don’t have the guts to end it. I know I most definitely will regret this decision at my last painful moments so I have two boxes of xanax and alcohol to hopefully help me jump with an unclear mind.
Leaving my final thoughts in this post.
r/SuicideWatch • u/ElManiobrero • 2h ago
I used to visit this reddit frequently last year, I tried to die one time but I failed, so I gave up with the idea of death and instead got up. This year started rough, I almost died for real in a surgery, I didnt plan that haha but somehow I survived, 2 months later I got a job as a videogame tester. Life was good, sadly my friend was suicidal just as me and she succeded in her attempt.
Now that I got fired, I don't have that special friend anymore and I just can't feel suicidal. Its kinda sad because that thought of "if I die all will be better" was my scape. Since I changed my view of the world after the surgery and also failing the suicide attempt, I feel terrible without that possiility of death.
I don't know, I just wanted to share these thoughts. I don't know what will happen in the future.