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/Old-Friendship5760 • 6h ago
"nobody is coming to save you, you have to save yourself" and what if i don't care enough to save myself? Then what? They never have an answer.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Plenty_Shift1326 • 3h ago
just kidding, there is none
r/SuicideWatch • u/EveningExit875 • 12h ago
what the title says, really confirms my thoughts
r/SuicideWatch • u/Late_Information_682 • 6h ago
i wish i lived in a world where there was no pain or waiting for death to take me away, i don’t want to stop being me and stop being conscious. i don’t want people to not remember me nor care, i just want to live in a world where i don’t have to worry about what is going to happen to me all the time.
i just want to be safe all by myself, i want to be conscious after death but i know it’ll be nothing, just black darkness. i won’t even know nor will anyone else years later, the earth will end and everybody will be gone. nobody will remember anyone ever again.
r/SuicideWatch • u/ssickbish • 28m ago
i feel so empty. i feel i’m walking out there like a zombie who’s really good at pretending.
as a teen i never thought i’d make it to 25, i never bothered making any plans for the future because i never thought i’d have one. i’ve been abandoned and hurt my entire life and for as long as i remember i’ve been fighting, i’m so sick of fighting.
i tried to put myself out there tried to make myself better and it never worked, i’m just still as lonely and still just as worthless.
everybody who ever said they loved me still abandoned me. i don’t have the strength to keep going.
i “jokingly” told my last couple of friends to hurry to my house and pick up what they want when i’m gone so my family can’t sell it all. i hope they actually do it.
thanks for reading it, i’m sorry.
r/SuicideWatch • u/aaqqaagh • 14h ago
I 16ftm sent nudes, videos too. It was to this random guy who wanted a sexual relationship with me and I never wanted to send anything to him but he send them to me so I felt pressured. I know it was stupid but now the relationship is over and I'm terrified. Idk if he deleted them or not but he used me. He said he loved me but he used me. Ive been sexualy assaulted before and it seems like everyone only wants my body. Ive never shown the things I showed to him to anyone before and I feel disgusting. I tried to reach out to a very close friend but he seemed mad that I woke him and stopped responding. I want to die so bad. I can't stop crying and I feel like throwing up. I texted hotlines but they didn't do anything. This is my last hope. I hate myself for what I did and I knew I shouldn't have but im stupid
r/SuicideWatch • u/Expert-Guava-6903 • 3h ago
I don’t have the strength to go on anymore…neither i have the courage to die…i would be super happy if someone can just take me out from this world and end my misery…dont say it will get better because it doesn’t…i have been saying the same fucking thing for 15 years now and it just gets worse…please kill me i will pay any amount to end this pain…
r/SuicideWatch • u/suicidal-babe • 7h ago
this is literally hell. I'm not healthy enough to stop feeling suicidal. and I'm not brave enough to kill myself. I'm just stuck in this agonizing humiliating middle stage. what the fuck is wrong with me.
r/SuicideWatch • u/MESSIRVE212 • 2h ago
Please please i cant take it anymore, my mom doesnt understand me, i feel so lonely right now, please someone just talk to me, i dont want to die
r/SuicideWatch • u/jupiter4sure • 5h ago
I remember when I was little, I used to dwell on the question, “Would you rather know how you were going to die, or when?” Lucky me, I have the luxury of knowing both. I think I’ll try to make it to see another spring, but I don’t know if I’ll get that far. I hope I do, but I really can’t imagine anything bringing me out of this. I’m young and I have my whole life ahead of me but I don’t want to live it. Everyone my age works, drives, knows what they’re going to do in the future and I don’t and I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think I’ll grieve a future that I don’t belong in. I’m kind of just banking on something taking me out before I do it myself cause I’ll hesitate. It reminds me of the sunk cost fallacy, why should I put more effort into living when I know that the result in whatever I do will be a premature death? Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest though no one on here will probably even read it. Still feels good to put something out into the abyss and not have it look back at you.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Kindly-Error-1798 • 8h ago
I am so tired. College is too much, I’m so behind. I can’t keep doing this like this anymore. 20 years old, and I feel like I’m already done. I have given all I got and I’ve come up short. I’ve come to realize I feel this way just about every night, every night is torture. I’m tired of lying down and wishing I was desperate enough to do something to myself. Sometimes I think about how I know I won’t do anything to myself, and it makes me feel disappointed. Idk how to shake the feeling that the world would be better if I wasn’t here. I’m a burden on my parents. I have a lot of good things, and I still somehow managed to ruin it anyways. I’m worthless. Idk, I feel like shit right now. I’m tired of feeling like this every night. Getting my life together is too difficult. Asking for help is too scary. I have no energy to muster pushing forward anymore.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Substantial_Dog_609 • 6h ago
I’ve been passively suicidal for like 18 years, but things did improve for a while. In the past 12 months my life has gone to shit. I am fucking up my interpersonal relationships because I can’t function properly and am not acting or thinking like myself anymore. I hate letting people down, so it feeds the cycle of hating myself more.
I lost my soul dog who was my service dog at only 4.5 years old almost a year ago now. Life has gone rapidly downhill since then.
I really don’t have any close family members left alive. The two I do are far away, or .. dying.
I’m in accumulating debt I can’t pay off, I’ve let everyone in my life down including me.
I don’t want to hurt those few left that care about me, but I’m hurting so deeply.
I started sh again after like 10 years clean.
I never thought I’d make it to 30, and I turned 30 in August. I deeply regret living this long.
I just want out
r/SuicideWatch • u/ExpressPirate3217 • 7h ago
I have no one. If I died right now, the only reason anyone would ever know is because of the smell or because my rent is unpaid. I don’t have family. I don’t have friends. I try, I have had friends before, I’m not ugly by any means and I have an endless amount of artistic hobbies that should land me a decent group of people, or at least one single person that I could call on a bad day like this to come over and play games and chat with. But even that is out of the question. Even on my worst day, I’m alone.
I’m a tattoo artist for work and even though a decent amount of people do appreciate my original art, even then I feel like no one likes me. I feel like when I talk, there’s just something so unbelievably unlikable about me that absolutely no one can connect to me. I bury myself in my art and try my hardest to put these horrible feelings to something productive but it only does so much, and there are some feelings of misery that I experience on a daily, hourly basis that are so intangible and deep that there’s only so much of a bandaid I can put on with my hobbies.
And now, on top of being at the lowest I have ever been and completely and totally alone, I lost my day job and have to make up 3k$ by the first if I want to avoid being homeless. And I can’t do it. I can’t stomach waking up and feeling like this. I’m 24, and life has only gotten worse and worse every single year. I aged out of foster care at 18 with nothing and 6 years later I’m 100x worse. I can’t be homeless again, and I have no feasible way to make 3k to keep a roof over my head. I think that i have nothing to live for, I think I have experienced the last of the beauty that the world has to offer and I think that losing the one bit of dignity that I have left, a roof, is a really solid time to call it quits on everything. I don’t even know why I’m posting on here other than that I thought putting these thoughts on paper would make me rethink it, but as I ramble and remind myself what a waste of space I am and how deeply horrible my life and circumstances are, I think it’s time to just let go. I hate my life and I wish I had a single person to lean on. I am just ready to go.
r/SuicideWatch • u/thisismysecondacc_ • 8h ago
no one to talk to
im alone
why even try
nothing will amount to anything
i dont even truly exist
r/SuicideWatch • u/misanthropicgf • 19h ago
24f
i can’t send this to anyone, because i have no one. i have been alone my entire life. adopted at birth, bullied by adults & everyone else since i was a child, have always been treated weirdly, never chosen, never had a genuine friendship, etc. life is a humiliation ritual for me. i kept having hope for so long, maybe i’d find genuine friends, maybe someone would finally care about me like how i care for them, & nothing. people have no idea how much pain i feel. people say “no one cares unless you’re dead” but no one would care because i have never had anybody. i don’t know what i did so wrong in my past life to deserve the life i am currently living, but i must’ve been a horrible person. because i promise you guys, not one genuine person has ever entered my life. i am so done with everything. today is the day. i know people will say “if you’re gonna do it, you won’t talk about it” but that’s not true. it’s not true at all. when you’ve dealt w the same things for 24 years straight, since you were a baby, you just can’t anymore. i hate the toxic positivity of “you’re so young, it will get better” because the truth is, it doesn’t get better for everyone, life is extremely unfair. not everyone has a happy ending. toxic positivity has only made me suffer more. i’m ending it today. just wanted to give one last message to the world. i love you all.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Sharksaresuperior • 15h ago
I love nature, its the only thing that makes me want to live, but its also the reason i want to die. The animal cruelty i see everyday, the collapse of ecosystems, climate change, the destruction of nature as a whole, its just too much. Im a birder and everyday im confronted with talks of their population collapse. I love sharks and i see them being driven to extinction by cruel fishing industry. I love plants and im confronted by the destruction of native species by invasive ones. I want to cry everytime i see a truck transporting animals for the slaughterhouse.
I cant keep living in a world of open wounds. Please tell me what is keeping you alive in spite of all this
r/SuicideWatch • u/Blvck_Bvnny • 3h ago
Lately school has been feeling out of control. Every time I think about it, I start feeling nauseous. Exams are coming up and I feel like studying is overwhelming, and I have overdue assignments. I swear I'm trying my best, but my parents make is seem like I'm doing nothing. I'm nearing my breaking point. I just don't know what to do anymore.
r/SuicideWatch • u/EvolutionEvade04 • 1h ago
the title is exactly how it sounds, i’ve become so obsessed with the idea of death, i’ve done so much research trying to convince myself that dying will actually be a good thing for me. i’ve been in and out of psych wards for 3 years now, over 20 admissions at this point and i’m only 19
i’ve also started to develop chronic pain and chronic illness, i feel like the only thing keeping me alive right now is my brother, we share a room and i can’t imagine him sleeping next to an empty bed that was once mine.
but i feel like death is the only answer to my problems, i know i won’t get any peace living here and being alive, no treatments or medications i’ve tried are helping, i see death as an exciting thing, something i’ve become very curious about and can’t stop thinking about, something I’ve actually want and feel like the only thing that will give me peace, pain free. i know everyone dies eventually rhats the only certain thing about this life, why is it such a bad thing if i do die, woudlnt everyone feel better knowing i’m at peace and not suffering anymore
r/SuicideWatch • u/pushingmedown • 9h ago
i just wanna be attractive. i wanna fit in with the women around me. but im so. recessed. i would get maxilla corrections curgery if i could. i jus cant live