The way “normal people” talk about suicide is appalling.

[Reyki6667]

Why do you think that mental illness are still in this stage of development, Neanderthal thinking? When they exist since the beginning of time?
Because they are retards feeding bullshit knowlegde unable to comprehend reality.
And then the morons who learn that biased and fucked up knowledge become our health therapist.
This is fucking ironic.
They literally contribute into culling us into pushing us to suicide without even realizing their madness.

 

[Zzzzz]

Your instructor clearly doesn't care very much about personal freedom or choice. Or they are propagating lies that the suicidal are always irrational. Actually it's Society that is irrational to think in a harsh, often cruel "survival of the the fittest world" that some people are not going to feel the need to end it. Suicide will always be a part of humanity. Precisely because humans are aware of the fact that suicide will end their pain.

 

[Stan]

People have their own individual baseline for what normal is, therefore normal will always be subjective. Many things will influence this, back in the day the arts and media were good at setting those particular parameters. If you didn't live in a nuclear family and have a home life similar to that of a 1970's Disney movie, then you were not normal.

Clinicians to me like to have things in order and scale them. They have a wide range going from pain to the level of coma a patient maybe in. They can't easily scale a MH issue. I also find people fear to a degree what they don't understand. This is often shown in some unrelated retort to the situation down to downright bluffing on the subject.

What needs to happen is some balance to help those that don't understand the issues surrounding MH issues. I see now in the media that there is a TV drama or two that look at the subject in a more educational way (example being 'The Good Doctor'), but mainly when you see a person with MH issues, it is the stereotypical 'person on a bridge' or 'someone having a meltdown'. There is no run up to those scenes or no backstory. Therefore it is really understandable why the public consciousness see's people with MH issues as anything other than a sub-species of human who needs protecting from themselves.

The only way this public consciousness can change is through education, whether it be through stories, TV or films as that is an important player in how people form opinions (whether we like it or not).

I completely agree with the sentiment about sharing at times how or why we have reached this point as @BlueWidow said. If worded in a certain way, it gives ammunition to those who say 'permanent solution to a temporary problem'. The times I have seen it being done here only serves as a response for platitudes. Compare my life to an intricate tapestry, each thread that makes that tapestry is either a story, emotion, event of some degree, happiness, sadness and a bunch of other nouns. Together they form a picture. Pull them apart and its just a bunch of threads that tell nothing as the picture has now disappeared.

For me it goes back to education, getting people to understand what MH issues are, how they impact daily lives. The sorrow and frustration where no understanding or help can be gained through clinical or psychological involvement. Many years ago in my country they had a asylum called Bedlam. Rich people used to pay the wardens there to visit to watch the lunatics. Today that does not happen, but does the underlying feelings that anyone with MH issues are nothing less than an oddity to those without still exist?

 

[noctiva]

Hm, I disagree with some of the drug and doctor bashing here. To be able to treat the brain, we would have to have more knowledge about how the brain works. But it's an insanely complicated organ, shaped by our experiences and genes, nurture and nature. Unlike other organs, which are, in comparison, simple and straight forward, the brain is barely understood.
And we have quite a few disciplines that try to unravel the brain on multiple levels. Genomic, (epi-)transcriptomic, molecular, cellular, brain areas in themselves, brain areas in connection, whole brain, to name a few. And we are just not there yet to put it all together, due to the diversity in the brain.
During your development, you create double the neurons you have when you're 25. But you're smarter and your brain is more robust at 25 than during development. So why is that?
During development, the brain, based on mostly nature but also some nurture, overproduces neurons en masse. After birth, they start to die off. The neurons you use, you keep, the ones you don't use, you lose. It's called 'Fire together, wire together', basically neurons connect and stay connected if they fire at the same frequency, while neurons that don't fire at the same frequency die off.
As such, we all have very unique brain connections (and I'm not even taking important aspects into account, this is the simplified version).
Additionally, we're working on the psychological level, trying to understand the brain on a more holistic level, the parts that can be expressed and remembered, the later parts of nurture that follow after you're not a toddler anymore.
All that together gives us a very incomplete understanding of the brain and of the effect that nature and nurture have on it.

The problem then is: How do you work with something like that? What do you do?
Psychiatrists don't look at the brain, the only specialized doctor that does not examine the organ of the person they are treating. If you went to a cardiologist and he didn't listen to your heart and runs and EKG, you'd call him a quack. But in psychiatry we just aren't there yet. Last year I think is the first time that they started to image brains of depressed people before and after drugs, to be able to see how the depressed brain works and how drugs change that. This is a huge step in the right direction, once it becomes an actual thing to do for treatment. But at the moment, psychiatrists rely on your verbal statement on what is wrong to then try to find something to give you, that has helped someone else who has used similar words than you to express their problem. This is a tough job to do.
And to be fair, drugs don't do anything in a vacuum. Most drugs are only effective in conjunction with therapy. In depression for example, the depressed person has to change the structure of their brain by actively working on it every day. The therapist will guide this development, drugs such as fluoxetine (SSRI) are prescribed as fluoxetine has been shown to reopen critical windows in the brain allowing for a faster change in neuronal connections. This is however a double edged sword: reopening critical windows doesn't just allow you to get better, it also allows you to get worse. So you could get rid of your depression, or if something traumatic happens, you could develop PTSD on top of it. That's why a holistic treatment of different types of therapy and support from a psychologist are so important.

And, though I hate to admit it, there are some studies showing that people that have committed suicide have specific molecular and cellular alterations from people that die of different causes. However, we can't really treat this. Connexin 30 is one of those markers, it is reduced if not absent in people that have successfully committed suicide. Question is: with what we know about the brain and with the methods available to treat people... how the hell do we give a person connexin 30 in their brain? (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006322311003386, https://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(11)00770-0/abstract)

I'm trying to say that the science is not there yet, we have not unraveled the brain and we do not know how it works. As such it's really tough to treat it.

 

[Essence]

Everything you said makes perfect sense to me.
I just read your post to second time. I also agree with what you said at the beginning of your post:


I want to say that we are also propagating the idea that suicide isn't normal by referring to Those of no suicidal ideations as 'normal'. Which kind of implies that we are 'abnormal'. And reading threads here, we do think and feel abnormal, describing how we are different from 'normal' people, that we don't function 'normally'.
I think it's sad.


When I was in college I was studying psychology and one of the first things we learned was that there is really no such thing as "normal".

Exactly! I was also told this by my therapist years ago. There is no 'normal'.

 

[SoupSnakes]

Coming from a nursing background (spending almost the entirety of my career in A&E), I sometimes saw people when they were in the worst situations possible, having either attempted suicide and survived or attempted/very almost managed to CTB.

It still kills me how far the medical profession as a whole has come along, specifically mental health (just look at ECT, even 30 years ago) and yet people are still so ill informed about it or still try to impose their opinions on an individuals situation.

I've dealt with suicidal thoughts from a very young age and have attempted many times. When I used to see those people, I listened. I completely empathised with their situations, no matter whether I understood it or not. I would then come out of the room and have to have the 'attention seeking' discussion or be told I haven't exacted enough information to be able to appropriately refer them on to Psych.

I recall very clearly a girl (15 years old) who hung herself, successfully. We later all found out from news stories she had been being bullied at school which was the reason behind it. The sheer lack of understanding from my colleagues at the time disgusted me. The amount of "surely she realises it gets better?" Or "how could she do that to her family, she could have just moved schools" (or stuff to that extent) I heard just hurt my heart.

Even after very open discussions about my own mental health, people still just didn't get it. I fully believe that people who haven't been anywhere near having these thoughts or feeling the way a lot of us discuss feeling, just cannot understand it. Even when it comes to doctors etc, unless they're psychiatrists, they aren't informed enough about it despite the training.

I agree with the above statement that the brain is a very complicated thing but I feel like a little bit of understanding can go a very long way. It's just such a shame that people have such bad experiences.

 

[Meretlein]

Disgusting.

Medical professionals are ironically proof on why we need a space like this.

 

[Darknessallaround]

Why is it that bad people who lack empathy and compassion get to be so happy

It's precisely because they lack empathy and compassion that they are happy! They lack emotional intelligence will never feel depressed or suicidal because they will always put themselves first regardless of the cost to others.

Those of us here who despite our pain and desire to ctb, are often still putting other's feelings before our own, hence why we are still here and suffering.

 

[bigj75]

yae i don't know how the average person can speak about it. I think the average person can't fully articulate what they've never experienced to that degree. of course everyone feels sad but suicidal people are not just sad. it's so much more complex than just being sad.

 

[Corraled]

Why do you think that mental illness are still in this stage of development, Neanderthal thinking? When they exist since the beginning of time?
Because they are retards feeding bullshit knowlegde unable to comprehend reality.
And then the morons who learn that biased and fucked up knowledge become our health therapist.
This is fucking ironic.
They literally contribute into culling us into pushing us to suicide without even realizing their madness.

Because the scientific method is not used in psychiatry. Its also not used in plenty of respectable pseudosciences. Instead of science, they go with "reasoning" as if any amount of reasoning will magically generate new knowledge, but they still call it Science! because of prestige.

 

[LittleJem]

I'm beginning to think my family are being profoundly selfish for not respecting my wish to end my suffering. I have told them for years. They are not there when I want to die every day. I call the Samaritans and not them. Really, fuck them. I have asked them for chances to say goodbye, and I don't feel considered by their attitude.

 

[BlueWidow]

Because the scientific method is not used in psychiatry. Its also not used in plenty of respectable pseudosciences. Instead of science, they go with "reasoning" as if any amount of reasoning will magically generate new knowledge, but they still call it Science! because of prestige.

I completely agree with you. They are desperate to call psychiatry and psychology "science" by claiming it's just a simple imbalance of brain chemicals and giving you some magical pill that rebalances the chemicals will suddenly make everything OK again. Unfortunately, the human mind & brain are not that simplistic. Therein lies the problem because they need it to be that simplistic so they can continue to feel superior & like their methods are scientific, and like they're helping people when they're really not.

 

[BridgeJumper]

And this is why medical professionals (all of them, but psychiatrists and therapists the most) piss me off so much and why I truly and completely despise them.
I have given them the chance to 'help' me / 'save' me for years. And all I heard were lectures about exaggerating / downright faking my issues, selfishness, cowardice and atttention seeking.
Why should I listen to someone who has no idea whatsoever how it feels like to want to die? They just go through some medical training, get a piece of paper that states that X is now a doctor, hang it on their wall and assume that they know what I am going through and whether its a legitimate reason to kill myself.

I jumped off the bridge and was wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher with a tube inserted, strapped down so I couldnt move and accidentally worsen my back injury, eyes wide as plates, puking up water and barely able to understand whats happening around me. and then this BITCH that calls herself an emt comes in to give me a speech about being an attention seeker and a princess, complains to me about how I interrupted her only coffee break and urged me to try again in the middle of the night so I dont bother anyone. Seriously? In what kind of dystopian world something like that coming out of the mouth of a medical professional is deemed acceptable? If she hates the idea of helping people so much, maybe she should quit and get a job cleaning toilets in Walmart? 'Geez, I couldnt gossip with my friends on facebook today because I needed to pull a drowning person out of the river'.
The other doctors and emts were no better, they cracked jokes about how I should jump headfirst or how it would be nice to do it in a sexy swismuit to show off my body while I waited for a spine xray.
When I overdosed on 100 pills they first asked me if I was lying, and then put me in an unmonitored room and made me sleep in my own vomit for 15 hours, because apparently Im not worthy of care. When I slit my wrists all the way down to my elbows and needed 14 stitches per arm, they stitched me without anesthesia so I could 'learn my lesson'.

No ammount of brain science and no arguments will convince me their objective is to help me!

 

[DoNotLet2]

people be like:
I am so sad, I hate my life - DoNotLet2
Shut up, do you have to be such an "attention wh*re"? We don't need you - people
Ok, imma go ctb - DoNotLet2
Don't you dare! You're not allowed to! - people
This is so pointless and they are the ones who call us insane. Who is insane? Who can't think? Rhetorical questions.

 

[WearyWanderer]

After more consideration, everything the OP said makes sense to me. It made me recall something. Once when I was 14 and had ODd on pills, I had to go by ambulance to the hospital. I lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere and the nearest hospital with a psych ward was 30+ minutes away, even by ambulance.
I remember the female EMT spent most of the time ranting to me about what could a 14-year-old possibly have to commit suicide about. The inference, of course, was that because of my age my problems couldn't possibly be that serious.
After listening to her rant on and on for a while, I finally got very angry and I said, "You don't know the first thing about my life!", and I proceeded to tell her the circumstances of my birth, how my mother had died when I was only 3, the fact that I had 2 step mothers both of whom my father met in a bar. My first stepmother was cheating on my father with her ex-husband which caused serious issues in their marriage, then my second stepmother came from a marriage where her spouse had been cheating on her and, of course, my first stepmother had been cheating on my father so they both went into the relationship very suspicious of each other. All the drinking causes physical fights between my father and both of my stepmothers. My sister got cancer and died when I was 13. I started having a mental break down when I was 12, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I had plenty of reasons to be suicidal by the time I was 14.
By the time we arrived at the hospital, the woman seemed completely dumbfounded by all the things I had just told her. She never apologized to me for lecturing me and belittling me by assuming that because I was only 14, I had no reason to end my life, but she didn't speak another word to me either.

Wow, that sounds fucking terrible, BlueWidow! I'm so sorry that the EMT lady was so cruel to you and unapologetic, especially right after the traumatic experience of a failed attempt. You definitely deserved a huge apology from her at the very least. I fully agree that most emergency medical services are unacceptably lacking in even basic mental health training. The amount of people who work in the medical field but apparently have little to no empathy for other human beings is sickening.

Sending internet *hugs* to you and I'm sorry about the loss of your sister, I can't imagine how difficult that was for you.

 

[JimFord99]

What classifies normal people as normal?

 

[marcusuk63]

What classifies normal people as normal?

The majority, ergo on here and being suicidal is normal :

 

[WearyWanderer]

And this is why medical professionals (all of them, but psychiatrists and therapists the most) piss me off so much and why I truly and completely despise them.
I have given them the chance to 'help' me / 'save' me for years. And all I heard were lectures about exaggerating / downright faking my issues, selfishness, cowardice and atttention seeking.
Why should I listen to someone who has no idea whatsoever how it feels like to want to die? They just go through some medical training, get a piece of paper that states that X is now a doctor, hang it on their wall and assume that they know what I am going through and whether its a legitimate reason to kill myself.

I jumped off the bridge and was wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher with a tube inserted, strapped down so I couldnt move and accidentally worsen my back injury, eyes wide as plates, puking up water and barely able to understand whats happening around me. and then this BITCH that calls herself an emt comes in to give me a speech about being an attention seeker and a princess, complains to me about how I interrupted her only coffee break and urged me to try again in the middle of the night so I dont bother anyone. Seriously? In what kind of dystopian world something like that coming out of the mouth of a medical professional is deemed acceptable? If she hates the idea of helping people so much, maybe she should quit and get a job cleaning toilets in Walmart? 'Geez, I couldnt gossip with my friends on facebook today because I needed to pull a drowning person out of the river'.
The other doctors and emts were no better, they cracked jokes about how I should jump headfirst or how it would be nice to do it in a sexy swismuit to show off my body while I waited for a spine xray.
When I overdosed on 100 pills they first asked me if I was lying, and then put me in an unmonitored room and made me sleep in my own vomit for 15 hours, because apparently Im not worthy of care. When I slit my wrists all the way down to my elbows and needed 14 stitches per arm, they stitched me without anesthesia so I could 'learn my lesson'.

No ammount of brain science and no arguments will convince me their objective is to help me!

My God, I couldn't dream this shit up. All of these so-called "medical professionals" are so sick and twisted. To joke about and guilt trip a literal suicide survivor - I'm at a loss for words. And the lady who thought it was ok to state you are inconveniencing her, then fucking tell you to try again *shakes head furiously*

Sadistic, cruel and inhumane torture.

You deserve eons better treatment than the excruciating physical and mental hell that all these hospital workers put you through.

I sincerely hope your physical health is bearable and I'm so immensely sorry about all the shit you've experienced.

Off-topic, but I also wanted to tell you that you're a very gifted writer.

 

[puppy9]

That explains my horrible experience at the psych ward.

 

[JimFord99]

I have been spared from this experience, puppy9, alas.

My God, I couldn't dream this shit up. All of these so-called "medical professionals" are so sick and twisted. To joke about and guilt trip a literal suicide survivor - I'm at a loss for words. And the lady who thought it was ok to state you are inconveniencing her, then fucking tell you to try again *shakes head furiously*

Sadistic, cruel and inhumane torture.

You deserve eons better treatment than the excruciating physical and mental hell that all these hospital workers put you through.

I sincerely hope your physical health is bearable and I'm so immensely sorry about all the shit you've experienced.

Off-topic, but I also wanted to tell you that you're a very gifted writer.

Let's face it, that is all they can do, all they do know, within their own limitations. Failures in their own profession.

 

[BridgeJumper]

My God, I couldn't dream this shit up. All of these so-called "medical professionals" are so sick and twisted. To joke about and guilt trip a literal suicide survivor - I'm at a loss for words. And the lady who thought it was ok to state you are inconveniencing her, then fucking tell you to try again *shakes head furiously*

Sadistic, cruel and inhumane torture.

You deserve eons better treatment than the excruciating physical and mental hell that all these hospital workers put you through.

I sincerely hope your physical health is bearable and I'm so immensely sorry about all the shit you've experienced.

Off-topic, but I also wanted to tell you that you're a very gifted writer.

And the saddest thing of it all is that people have it all backwards and insist that Im just twisting stuff to make them feel sorry for me, and that all of those doctors want to help me. And its not even neurotypicals and mental health workers, but fucking suicidal people too!
I just posted a rant about this on another site, the main topic was about me not being able to get help because all treatment centers that provide actual therapy tailored for my disorder refuse to admit me, and the response was 'But you already get hospitalized 6 times a year? Thats plenty help, what else do you want because Im confused'. So apparently being dosed up with toxic medication that makes me writhe and convulse on mybed for days, sitting on a white hospital bed or pacing the hall 24/7 for a few months and being told Im just a drama queen and need to suck it up is the help that I need? I could just as well lock myself up in my room and throw away the key and it would work eactly the same.
Even my dad (whom I love dearly, one of the few people that never abused me), basically agreed that I just want attention. Umm thank you dad. That was so thoughtful and nice of you.

Sadistic pricks and power abusers.
Okay rant over.

Thank you for complementing my writing style. Ive been meaning to write a book about all the twisted stuff that happened to me in hospitals, that one post would be just an introduction to chapter 1.

 

[hypo666]

One time in A and E an A and E doctor had actually conjured up a story in her head, because she refused to believe the story I told her.She was convinced I lived in the local area and was sick of my housing situation with bad neighbours and had done what I had to try and sort it out. I didn't live in the local area ,in fact no where near.In fact if she had probed further I do believe they would have detained me . But noticing the reception I got I decided to keep my mouth shut and say nothing else,so hopefully they discharged me.


Basically because I had a personality disorder she was convinced I was lying about where I had travelled from that day.I know it was because of the PD diagnosis on my records ,she admitted at one point that she had done a psychiatric rotation and had come across patients 'like me' before.

When eventually a nurse stopped her mid rant and said I was telling the truth ,she just changed subject and convinced herself I was lying about that. Maybe she was overtired or something,but how she behaved was bordering on insane herself.A and E wasn't even busy, but she found the time to come in my cubicle and have another go at me while drinking a cup of coffee.!! . Experiences like that put you off asking for help ever again over suicide and self harm.

 

[BridgeJumper]

Dont forget the time when a bitch ass nurse came into my room completely uninvited to rant for 10 minutes about my attention whoring and me taking away resources for people who 'genuinely need help', and coming straight into my face to bitch more whenever I turned my back at her and tried to concentrate on something else. I lost my shit and punched her and she went off about alerting the authorities. Like she hasnt brought it upon herself.

Im borderline pd + bipolar and Im basically considered human trash by them :)

 

[JimFord99]

Hypo666, I guess you are living in the UK? This is the sad state the health service is in.

Dont forget the time when a bitch ass nurse came into my room completely uninvited to rant for 10 minutes about my attention whoring and me taking away resources for people who 'genuinely need help', and coming straight into my face to bitch more whenever I turned my back at her and tried to concentrate on something else. I lost my shit and punched her and she went off about alerting the authorities. Like she hasnt brought it upon herself.

Im borderline pd + bipolar and Im basically considered human trash by them :)

Well, no comment on this, sad state of public service.

 

[hypo666]

Hypo666, I guess you are living in the UK? This is the sad state the health service is in.

Yes Iam from the UK, ,that experience happened in a scottish hospital in inverness a few years back . They discharged me a few hours after that. I even offered before to sit in the waiting room for the crisis team in case I was putting them out,but they told me if I left the cubicle they would call security. In the end they discharged me without me even talking to the crisis team,the crisis team never appeared despite them calling them and I was blamed for taking up a bed space. . I found in most cases the attitude in that hospital toward mental illness was not only appalling but extremely backward.

I have met police officers with better understanding and empathy.