mental health “advocacy” is a scam

[nembutal]

the walls in my high school were littered with suicide hotline posters and advocacy. i was part of a mental health awareness group where we would distribute knowledge on suicide statistics and bring attention to symptoms though art and speech. being surrounded by those with the same belief on empathy made me believe that the world was more caring than i had previously thought.

but now, in my worst moments of suicidality, i do not receive the care and attention that i advocated for others way back when. not a phone call nor text to confirm that i am still walking the earth. "reach out", they said, and i did, to everyone i thought was closest to me. nothing came of it, and i began to view my time as an advocate as time wasted.

where are these people, aside from professionals who are paid to care, who apparently care for the mentally ill more than other generations? does no one want to feel like a hero, does no one have time to spare? i can't get to the bottom of the hypocrisy of a mental health advocate who is now going through their own struggles and receiving no help from any direction.

most importantly, why do these people grieve and wish they "could have done more" after your death when they had countless of opportunities to do so, not to mention mounds of evidence of warning signs?

what id do to be white knighted. what id do for a mentor who'd place me under their wing. but i dont even ask for help in that depth. i just want a small semblance of care. evidence that i exist outside of the four walls of my bedroom. why wont anyone reach out? is there something intrinsically wrong with me?

please, no horribly cynical responses. unless a cynical world is the answer to my question.

 

[Plentiful_Despair]

It depends on the type of cause for suicide thoughts, for mine there's simply nothing a "caring individual" could do to help me. This entire world feels so wrong to me, since many years. The entire way that human society works, you know what I mean? And also just biology. I hate our bodies, I feel so disgusted when I wake up in the morning and realize I'm still in a bag of meat thats slowly rotting and getting worse until its dead. Thats nothing anyone can just talk me out of, thats reality.

 

[Forever Sleep]

It's sad to say it but I'm not sure everyone has the strength or patience to cope with people like us. I think so many people are struggling themselves these days. It can actually be quite hard to know what to say sometimes I suppose.

Some people are just 'fair weather friends' too. They don't want to have their mood upset.

Plus, I find there's this weird thing that- when you haven't contacted someone in a long time, you fear they might be angry with you. So- you put off contacting them for even longer- which of course, makes the situation even worse.

I agree though. It is weird the way people seem to go overboard after the fact- after suicide about how they wished they'd reached out when- they probably had. I'm sorry you are feeling so alone.

 

[Priestess]

Anti-suicide fascists are no different than those irritating christians who stand outside abortion clinics praying and trying to stop people from having abortions. And, just like those christians just want to prevent abortions but don't actually care about the welfare of the baby, the anti-suicide fascists dgaf about us, they don't help us in any way other than trying to stop us from offing ourselves.

 

[Plentiful_Despair]

Anti-suicide fascists are no different than those irritating christians who stand outside abortion clinics praying and trying to stop people from having abortions. And, just like those christians just want to prevent abortions but don't actually care about the welfare of the baby, the anti-suicide fascists dgaf about us, they don't help us in any way other than trying to stop us from offing ourselves.

Suicide is seen as failure and cowardice by most people. I see it as courage. It takes immense willpower to resist the constant propaganda trying to tell us that everything is fine, that we are insane and should just kill our minds with meds. Fuck this shit, we can see, and BECAUSE we see we realize that life is a shit deal.

 

[ForgottenAgain]

the walls in my high school were littered with suicide hotline posters and advocacy. i was part of a mental health awareness group where we would distribute knowledge on suicide statistics and bring attention to symptoms though art and speech. being surrounded by those with the same belief on empathy made me believe that the world was more caring than i had previously thought.

but now, in my worst moments of suicidality, i do not receive the care and attention that i advocated for others way back when. not a phone call nor text to confirm that i am still walking the earth. "reach out", they said, and i did, to everyone i thought was closest to me. nothing came of it, and i began to view my time as an advocate as time wasted.

where are these people, aside from professionals who are paid to care, who apparently care for the mentally ill more than other generations? does no one want to feel like a hero, does no one have time to spare? i can't get to the bottom of the hypocrisy of a mental health advocate who is now going through their own struggles and receiving no help from any direction.

most importantly, why do these people grieve and wish they "could have done more" after your death when they had countless of opportunities to do so, not to mention mounds of evidence of warning signs?

what id do to be white knighted. what id do for a mentor who'd place me under their wing. but i dont even ask for help in that depth. i just want a small semblance of care. evidence that i exist outside of the four walls of my bedroom. why wont anyone reach out? is there something intrinsically wrong with me?

please, no horribly cynical responses. unless a cynical world is the answer to my question.

Hi, it's nice to meet someone that advocated for mental health support. I spent years of my life helping people with severe mental issues. I thought the systems in place were lacking so I created my own, tiny, system.

I don't know about others but, to me, I listened to so many stories, so many people poured their hearts onto me. I saw them grow, saw them decay, saw them die. Some stories I'll never forget...and, some events I'll also never forget.

Doing all that, for years, broke me in a way I never anticipated. I thought I had my boundaries well defined, that I could care deeply and be there for them and that once I was home I could close that door until the next day. I feel like I did it but now...I think all those years took a toll on me.

I loved helping others, I felt like it gave meaning to my life. There are people that got married because they met through the community I created during those years. Lots of people recovered, others not so much, one of them committed suicide and I'll forever wonder if I'm to blame.

I ended that service after 7 years. To this day I think about all those people. I really wanted to continue to do good but it was just so damn hard...I didn't earn anything from it. I paid money and used all my time to keep it alive. Also dealt with horrible people that threatened my life and the community and the police didn't do shit.

Sorry, I'm rambling. I guess all of this to say that, I don't know about others but I used to be a person that helped others actively. I think others like me exist, I just don't know where.

 

[username12345]

the walls in my high school were littered with suicide hotline posters and advocacy. i was part of a mental health awareness group where we would distribute knowledge on suicide statistics and bring attention to symptoms though art and speech. being surrounded by those with the same belief on empathy made me believe that the world was more caring than i had previously thought.

but now, in my worst moments of suicidality, i do not receive the care and attention that i advocated for others way back when. not a phone call nor text to confirm that i am still walking the earth. "reach out", they said, and i did, to everyone i thought was closest to me. nothing came of it, and i began to view my time as an advocate as time wasted.

where are these people, aside from professionals who are paid to care, who apparently care for the mentally ill more than other generations? does no one want to feel like a hero, does no one have time to spare? i can't get to the bottom of the hypocrisy of a mental health advocate who is now going through their own struggles and receiving no help from any direction.

most importantly, why do these people grieve and wish they "could have done more" after your death when they had countless of opportunities to do so, not to mention mounds of evidence of warning signs?

what id do to be white knighted. what id do for a mentor who'd place me under their wing. but i dont even ask for help in that depth. i just want a small semblance of care. evidence that i exist outside of the four walls of my bedroom. why wont anyone reach out? is there something intrinsically wrong with me?

please, no horribly cynical responses. unless a cynical world is the answer to my question.

I think the biggest problem about suicide is that it is considered isolated, random, unpredictable events. People don't really want to consider how not being supportive, inclusive, bullying, and abuse pushes people to suicide. They think that if they don't get their hands dirty they don't have to worry about it.

 

[betternever2havbeen]

That's why I come here-no one can really do anything but at least everyone is understanding and empathetic usually. The normies tend to be dismissive of depression and trot out crap like "life is what you make it"-they'll jump into action once someone has CTB tho with all their performative grieving. And lets not forget blaming this site for anything and everything.

And you gotta love the social etiquette around suicide-how they want us to tell them how we're feeling, but not TOO much or we're being negative and toxic. And don't ever mention being suicidal during an argument because that's emotionally abusive. Seems like there's no right time to talk about it at all. I'm sorry you haven't got the support you needed from everyone especially when you took so much time to try and support others