There has been an effective campaign in public health messaging to spread the idea that suicidal ideation is always a temporary problem for the sake of morale, even to the detriment of accurate reporting and statistics- what about those who suffer with feelings suicidal for years, are we simply false anomalies who don't exist? It seems so, if the media has anything to say about it. Journalists and media outlets are held to stringent guidelines on how they portray stories involving suicide, and even television shows have been advised on "the proper way" to talk about this topic in fictional narratives.
By creating the perception that feeling suicidal is guaranteed to be a short term event, rather than a long term one, it gives hope to some individuals. However, in the process, others become invalids if their experience does not fit the mold of what a suicidal person is supposed to look and act like. Suddenly, those who had sympathy shown towards them mere moments ago become enemies, and objects of suspicion, why?
Because many people have a stereotypical, narrow way of thinking about what it entails to want to end one's own life. They think in terms of flickering bursts of emotions, crisis, that can be mitigated by a temporary time out in the psych ward, wherein the person abruptly "comes to their senses" after that and does not think about suicide ever again. There is no such thing as a relapse, apparently. At worst, some people think that continued expression of suicidal feelings after an initial presentation of such pain is attention seeking and fake, even if there is 0 evidence to indicate this.
It is hard to change such backwards and small minded ways of thinking. No one wants to hear the uncomfortable truth that the advancements of modern medicine haven't progressed far enough to accurately identify when someone is suicidal in all cases, or to predict if they will carry out a fatal attempt. Nor do they want to recognize that some people suffer a long time, maybe even their whole life, and are not having a crisis lasting a couple days or weeks.
If you understand the matter through that lens, you realise why these sorts of people raise eyebrows of suspicion at those who hang out here a long time, despite this judgment being completely unfounded in 99% of cases. Because in their eyes, you're either suicidal for a few days and ultimately succeed in a fatal attempt, or you have a "crisis episode" lasting a few days then recover, there is no in-between. Waxing and waning ideation, relapsing after a period of improvement, having day to day fluctuations in one's mood, or being pushed to the breaking point slowly over time are foreign concepts to those who think in black and white and are constantly fed information by influencers, media, and even healthcare workers that suicidal ideation is ALWAYS fleeting, and anything else is a cry for attention or an act of maliciousness/manipulation, whatever.
This ignorant line of thinking is the cause of so much unnecessary suffering for so many of us here, and actively prevents progress from being made, imo. When there is no room for these difficult conversations to be had and the spectrum of suicidal thoughts and behaviours which exist to be acknowledged, how can the problem ever be mitigated to a substantial degree? Anyone who spends enough time on this site will see there is significant variety in the user base, and no two people's situations or how they present with their suicidality are exactly the same.
Of course, there will always be bad actors in any space dedicated towards vulnerability and sensitive topics, that is just par for the course unfortunately. But being a long-time user shouldn't be a de-facto assumption of guilt. I'd be more wary and untrustworthy of a new person, personally, compared to someone I have taken time to know and observe.
Of course, no one can fully understand unless they experience it for themselves, but I don't think many people realize how HARD suicide is, even if you've contemplated it every single day for months, or years. It requires overriding ever basal instinct we have to survive, often inflicting great amounts of physical pain, and confronting probably the greatest fear which exists for any living creature. Movies and TV glamorise the act and do not show the sheer difficulty of it all. There is a very specific numbness and mindset that is necessary to go through with it, and I have only experienced this shift in fear conditioning less than a handful of times in my life that would propel me to start an attempt.
A person like me is cowardly. I can wish for an escape from this world consistently, pray that I'll go out in my sleep, or a freak accident, but then struggle with this immensely. I have been suicidal for over half of my life, since 12/13 years old, and there is no greater pain than wanting to die almost every day of your adolescence and adult life. Yet, I have been told I'm attention seeking or faking solely for the fact that I have been suicidal for so damn long and not done it yet.
People don't realize someone can spend years silently suffering and planning, afraid, before they muster up the courage to face something as terrifying as death. The sheer ignorance of this is what leads people towards believing that those who are suffering a long time and talking about it online are malicious actors, and it blows my mind how anyone can think that the duration of one grappling with this makes it less real.
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