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neitherherenorthere

neitherherenorthere

Experienced
Apr 22, 2020
223
I have a thing for trying to quantify my feelings to some objective standard because it reassures me that my symptoms and feelings are real and valid. Whenever I feel like my depression is getting a bit better I rush to take every depression rating scale I know of to make sure I'm still officially severely depressed (even though self-assessments are flawed, blah blah blah). In the same vein, I want to quantify my suicidal thoughts on some kind of scale, but I've never found a rating system I've been happy with. Nothing matches my experience, and clinical assessments like the C-SSRS are totally useless.

I did a search on the forum specifically for anything on Emmengard's scale because I know that's a very popular rating system and I wanted to see other people's opinions on it. When I first discovered it I liked it because it was the first time I'd seen someone try to meaningfully convey different levels of suicidality (and it has illustrations!), but it doesn't line up with how I experience suicidality. I've also found Natasha Tracy's suicidal self-assessment, but that doesn't fit me either. Those are really the only two things that I've found that have put themselves out there as finalized personal rating scales for people to use that weren't developed for clinical/crisis settings.

There's an ongoing "how suicidal are you today" thread here, which just asks where you are from 1 (least suicidal) to 10 (most suicidal). This is useful is a somewhat different way because there are no definitions provided for what anything between 1 and 10 means, so the scale is completely subjective to the individual and therefore is accurate to their personal experience of suicidality. But this only communicates the relative degree of severity of someone's suicidal ideation, not the specific thoughts they're having or any actions they're taking.

I've been thinking about what a scale designed specifically for me would look like for a while but never bothered to properly work anything out. Everyone's experience is different which means my scale wouldn't necessarily work for anyone else, so I'm curious to know what other people's scales would include.



TL;DR, if you made your own suicidality rating scale tailored specifically for you, what would it look like?
 
wait.what

wait.what

no really, what?
Aug 14, 2020
972
Just saying that creating your own list of suicidality levels is a worthy pursuit. I'm personally too depressed and suicidal at the moment to create a scale showing how depressed and suicidal I am, though. Lol @ me.

Right now I'm at that "would be dead if I had an effective method but I don't and now I'm too depressed to go out and get one" level. Plenty of people live on like this for years, decades even. Lord knows I have. This is the kind of existence lack of access to assisted suicide prolongs, in case anyone was wondering.
 
GenesAndEnvironment

GenesAndEnvironment

Autistic loser
Jan 26, 2021
5,743
Right now I'm at that "would be dead if I had an effective method but I don't and now I'm too depressed to go out and get one" level. Plenty of people live on like this for years, decades even. Lord knows I have. This is the kind of existence lack of access to assisted suicide prolongs, in case anyone was wondering.
Sometimes it feels like our modern world resembles the middle ages when it comes to handling suffering.
 
neitherherenorthere

neitherherenorthere

Experienced
Apr 22, 2020
223
Sometimes it feels like our modern world resembles the middle ages when it comes to handling suffering.
For a very long time (in Europe at least) committing a felony resulted in the escheat of all of your property to the crown (land included). Since suicide was considered a felony, this means that everything the decedent owned would be taken as soon as it was determined that the death was a suicide. Not that it mattered to the dead person, but the rest of their family would go from farming, maybe raising some pigs, generally doing ok, to beggaring in the street literally overnight. Kind of sounds like the consequences of the American healthcare system, if you're unlucky enough to survive your attempt.

Speaking of historical suicide, I've been watching a lecture series by the Surgeons' Hall Museum about the use of poisons for murder in 19th century Scotland (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/surgeons-hall-museums-869321953 if you want to get tickets). Aside from being really interesting, I desperately wish we could still just pop round to the corner pharmacy and buy a bottle of laudanum for a dollar, no questions asked.
 

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