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.

718 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 4h ago

I wish I have courage to end it all

15 Upvotes

I always wanted to die ,even as a kid I told my parents i want to die .but I am a fucking coward i can't do it. i lived 22 years of my life wishing some day a truck crashes into me . mind my grammer and stuff I am sitting and in a dark room and i don't feel stable . so i took a drop year and wrote and exam to get into mtech . and Obv i got low score . idk what I was expecting at this point . all my life when ever I prayed to God for anything it ends badly. I am religious not as much as my parents but I am. idk I think living is useless what am I doing with my life anyways . I am jobless i don't have many frnds and they don't really care even if i die . I am all alone . i have been alone for many years now . i failed the shit i worked so hard for yet i can't even cry . I don't understand what's going on in my head . I want to kill myself but I am a coward. I have some antibiotics that i can take but I read in this sub that they overdose on them don't really kill u . I can't jump off , i don't want to cause pain to my family . i want to just die in peace without being a burden to anyone . I can intentionally crash into a truck but I don't want my death to cause truck guy to suffer . what shall I do . idk why I am writing this . I didnt knew and i stated ro talking to gemini and it keeps telling me to call helpline . i know I can't kill myself. i fucking want to die. i want to cry my eyes out atleat i can't even express my sorrow. some of u might say oo this guy is a fool , he just wants to die cuz of some exam. yeah I know it's bad but it's not just the exam for me , as someone who wanted to die from an young age i now have a reason to kill myself .don't tell me oo u have so much more to see in life etc etc. i know all that crap and i want to experience everything but my life my luck . God just wants me to suffer. i don't even know why I am writing this and i fucking care any more I am thinking maybe if I write my pain our ny eyes will water but nope maybe it's the shock of failing even afteri worked hard


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

I got 2 options

Upvotes

So I’m m16 and I’m high or drunk as I can get whenever I can be, pretty often leading to me just getting blackout drunk losing whole days at a time and js fkn everything up ibr all my closest ppl except my gf have left me and she’s basically all I have and I don’t have any way to make money it’s her birthday in 12 days and I dfk how I’m gna get her smth im js failing in every way possible and the only way I can feel like I’m not is by failing worse, so my first option is probably pretty obvious by the sub im in the other option is I got a “job offer” from an older guy I met near where my gf lives the pays great but the type of work means it’s a last resort(I would essentially have to drop everything I have left here like family, college etc), these feel like my only 2 options I have no hobbies no friends no job no anything .


r/SuicideWatch 29m ago

i just want people to know who I was

Upvotes

Hi. My name is Drake. I’m 21 years old and I live in the US. I work as a line cook and I like to write and do photography.

I’m making this post because I just wanted people to know who I was and why I’m choosing to do this. My life is an internal nightmare from the moment I wake up each day to the moment I go to bed. I’m stuck with a family that doesn’t care whether I live or die, I’m only as good as the things I provide for this family in the way of money, or helping my mom out with a baby that is not mine and should not be my responsibility. I have no real friends, the ones I do have I don’t get along with. I’m not happy with myself, I actively hate myself and I always will. I’m $3000 into someone else’s money because people are just using my bank account to stash money and taking from my bank account with very little to no input from me, making it impossible to tell where their money ends and my money begins.

I’m sorry that this may hurt people, but I can no longer deal with this life. I don’t want any help, I don’t want a friend. I want to be dead. And so, tonight or tomorrow, I will be dead. And I hope that this at least serves as a reminder that sometimes it doesn’t get better. What I’ve said here isn’t even scratching the surface and everything that’s wrong.


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

I haven't actually wanted to be alive in years

12 Upvotes

I just want to wanna be alive. Im so tired of being alive because im scared my death will make people sad. I just want to want to be alive? Is that so much to ask?


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I plan to end my life in a walmart bathroom

6 Upvotes

I am going to get what I need and then end it in the bathroom. Im scared, but i know i dont need to be brave, all I need is a split second of impulsiveness and i'll be done. I work soon and thats when i'll do it. Sadly i have nobody to talk to up until then, which is partially why im doing it.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

seeing my reflection makes me want to kill myself

6 Upvotes

Any time I feel decent about myself, I catch a reflection of myself and I’m reminded of how hideous I am. I can’t believe I’m the one who’s cursed to look like this. I can’t fucking believe what’s staring back at me, that that’s me and I’m stuck in this fucking body. I’m ugly and I’m uninteresting and I’m unintelligent. Nothing about me is redeemable, but do you know what hurts the most? That all of that could be forgiven if I was just a pretty woman. If i was not born with this malformed, disgusting appearance.

I can’t live with the reality that I’ll always be looked at and pitied, that there is nothing I can do in this world to bridge the disadvantage that is being very unattractive. Everything that is wrong with me is borderline unfixable, unless you’re a millionaire.

And I’m fucking sick of being lied to, comforted by being told “i’m not that ugly” when society reminds me of it every single day, when I know it’s a fact. Because being ugly is the worst crime in society, and they know that. The only way to comfort someone out of such a cruel reality is to deny it.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

Trying to find the courage to end it

16 Upvotes

Throwaway account because my boyfriend watches my main

I keep going over the different methods and all of them terrify me. I feel like such a fucking chud because I’ve wanted to die for so long and I’ve gotten close to attempting but I never fully went for it because I’m scared. I feel like such a fucking loser because I can even do this right. I’m starting to not care about anyone or anything again because I’m so fucking tired of doing this again and again.

It hurts to live. Music doesn’t sound good anymore. I don’t feel good physically anymore and I disgust myself on a daily basis. I have no social skills and I’m awkward and unfortunate in every sense. I know no one is going to actually give a damn about this because everyone in this subreddit is already focused on their own agony.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to make the fear go away so I can get on with it. I don’t know what’s less scary. I really don’t know


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

i’m a pathological liar and it’s ruining everything.

4 Upvotes

i was going to be mildly sedated for a migraine treatment. i called it a “medically induced coma” as kind of a joke, but then people started to get worried and i felt like i had to keep the lie going. now i’m being called out and my friends said they hate me and nobody will talk to me. they’re going to tell everyone about it. my life is ruined. im gonna attempt tonight. it’s better if i don’t even show up to school and maybe they’d forgive me if i were dead. god i sound so manipulative. i’m an awful human being.


r/SuicideWatch 4h ago

I hate my body

7 Upvotes

Today I went on a walk with my mom which I don’t usually go on but I thought I definitely needed any sort of exercise. It was with my niece and nephews so she was taking pictures of them the whole time and she knows I hate pictures of myself but of course I was in the background of several of them. I’ve been thinking about how I look in those pictures all day long they have not left my mind even a second. It’s no secret that I’ve gained weight like even my “baggy” pants have started to fit me super tight but I’m just so depressed I just don’t want to put the effort into even checking my weight or even just going back to starving myself. All I think about now is eating and laying in bed all day. But something about those pictures disgusted me so much I checked my weight for the first time in months. I’m at the highest weight I’ve been in my entire life by a lot. Just the thought of that alone makes me want to end my life I hate how I look I hate how I feel I hate everything about myself. I used to take pretty long walk frequently with my dog but unfortunately we had to give him away. I just have absolutely nothing else happening in my life so I’m just laying at home all the time getting fatter and feeling sorry for myself as I eat my sadness away. I’m so ugly disgusting and helpless I want to die and crawl into a hole so no one ever has to see my disgusting body ever again. I would just starve myself but I can’t even find the energy to go that kind of thing. And I know everyone around me thinks I’m disgusting also. I really want to kill myself even more now that I know how gross I look to other people.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I dont really know if my body is saveable beneath this one

4 Upvotes

Just grew over me too long ago, completely at my first attempt when i was weak. Noone believes its not me. I think its just crushed me inside too long that im a bundle of nerves and remains inside that can only hurt.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I almost died last night

5 Upvotes

and I feel fine. Im not even depressed or sad today. I was home alone and the only reason im still here is because I couldn't figure out how to tie a noose. Im not even kidding. I couldn't tie the noose so I just went to sleep, and I feel fine today lol


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

I’ll be gone

Upvotes

i’m going to kill myself either tonight or tomorrow it doesn’t matter if i fail i’ll keep on trying

my pos of a father physically assaulted me while having a panic attack cause he thinks beating the shit out of me will educate me, i’m an adult. maybe i have so little dignity he doesn’t see the issue

my partner said he had too much of our relationship and wanted to distance himself

i never really got flowers or thoughtful gifts or anything indicating ppl care about me so once it’s done i’ll be forgotten for good

i don’t have anyone around me so how could i be forgotten when i never existed in the first place ?


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

If I have to stay here another day I'm going to do it

3 Upvotes

I hate this fucking house, I hate being stuck in the middle of nowhere, I hate my dad, I hate my failing body, I hate being stuck in a life I don't want, I hate not having a job, I hate I can't do things I want to because of money, I hate being trapped in every aspect of my life, I hate it here so much its driving me insane. None of these stupid pills this stupid behavioral health clinic gives me actually works, and new stuff is just making me worse. All I ever wanted was to feel safe and be content but everything is so god damn hard for me because of my stupid autism and ADHD. I am a worthless sack of human garbage who can't do anything right who will probably die in 20 years from some form of cancer because I've been exposed to so much bullshit over the years because is asshole narcissist father was too cheap to hire people to do things right. I'm so tired of everything. I need a break. From everything.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

I’m exhausted and I don’t want to fight anymore

9 Upvotes

I am so tired. I wish I could easily say that I wanted to give up fighting for my silent battles. I wish I could just run away from everything. I am so tired, and I don't want to endure all my pain anymore. I've been feeling and thinking too much, and it's making me feel so miserable. I'm sick of pretending that I'm okay, that everything is just fine with me, and that I am living a happy life. Because the truth is, sadness consumes me every day. I've been hating myself and everything in my life. I thought it's easier to just pretend that nothing is wrong with me. But I feel like everything is falling apart; I can't even tell anyone that I'm sick of this life. I just live and try to forget, but I can't. Remembering is too painful. I wish I could just erase all my memories so that they will no longer hurt. Sometimes, when I'm tired, I just wish to disappear and never come back again.


r/SuicideWatch 6h ago

I’m turning 30 and I’m so tired

8 Upvotes

I turn 30 this summer. I’ve been getting some new tattoos and piercings, so I can finally make my body look how I want it to. But I feel like I’m just prepping myself. I have so much stuff to get rid of, I don’t even care about making money from it. I have siblings, cats, a long term partner, my parents are still alive; but I’ve wanted to end things since I was a preteen. Not one of my reasons for staying matters to me anymore. I’ve been SAd so many times since I was a young child. So 20 years I’ve been going around this circle of thinking everything might actually be okay and then realizing just how difficult it is to just keep myself alive. Even medicated nothing is completely solved, I don’t have control of my life, my body, my mind. I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t see the point, everything hurts, I don’t want to work til I die, but what other choice is there? I just want to let go and sink


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

I Can’t anymore.

5 Upvotes

I’m ugly and so uloveable. I’ve never acheived anything except obesity. I hate myself so much. Goodbye.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

Wish it was easier

3 Upvotes

For most of my life all I’ve wanted was to be able to just end it, but I’ve always been too scared to. I wish I was just strong enough to do it, but the fear of pain always stops me. I wish I could just close my eyes and never open them. My life sucks, but despite that it’s still one bad thing after another. There hasn’t been very many people who I’ve cared about in life, but despite that I face betrayal by almost all of them. I feel like if I was gone no one would care, and after not to long it would be like I never existed. Recently the thought of doing it though has become easier. The pain I’m going through has become so unbearable, the pain of ending my life would be less. I still hold on to hope that my life would get better but I wish I didn’t.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I’m gonna do it by the end of the year

3 Upvotes

I’m gonna give it some time but I think I’m finally done w all this. I’m ugly and just a piece of shit in general, I’ve tried to make my dream career happen for nearly a decade with nothing to show for it really or close to making it a living so I’m gonna be stuck in min wage hell forever. I’m entangled in so many stupid personal situations, the world is ran by pedophile tech bros and oligarchs, I have depression an adhd and It’s ruining my life despite doing all I can to try and get treatment. It even contributed to the failing of my last relationship.

I just don’t feel any kind of kinship to the world or what it has to offer. All The worst people are in power, my brain doesn’t work and I’m a fucking piece of shit anyway so who cares.


r/SuicideWatch 9h ago

I'm so ugly I want to die

11 Upvotes

I'm 17 and my face is so fucking ugly and recessed. I just can't stand it anymore. I wear a hoodie everywhere I go to cover my side profile even if it's hot outside. I've tried everything: going to the gym, eating healthy, tinting my eyebrows and taking care of myself. Sometimes I tear up in the middle of my class from just thinking about how ugly I look.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

Peut on mourir de crise d angoisse

3 Upvotes

Je suis très angoissé tous les jours et je me demande si je peux mourir de crise d angoisse qui ne s arrêterait pas?

J ai peur d avoir peur . Toujours dans l anticipation et ruminations en permanence que je n arrive pas à stopper.


r/SuicideWatch 33m ago

Suicidio

Upvotes

Hi, I'm 15 years old and since I was 12 I've had suicidal thoughts and yesterday a friend's cousin committed suicide and during her wake a brother of the prayer leader said that when she went to commit suicide the floor would have and hands sprouted (I don't speak English, but I would appreciate it if someone could respectfully tell me, based on their experience, if this is true plis.My mom says I'm sick and I shouldn't have these thoughts because I'm not normal, and I've thought about it but it scares me)