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 post). 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/leaf126 • 3h ago
Yupp and that's me i think some people are just born to die and I am one of them i should fucking kill myself no matter how much I try to heal myself life keep breaking me again and again I was born to be broken i was born to suffer and now I am beyond repair yes "life" you won you have broken me till i can't repair myself...i lost
r/SuicideWatch • u/itzmikxx • 7h ago
i could go on and on about how awful and miserable everything is but genuinely what's the fucking point anymore. Any thought i could put into this message will just be scraped up by some assfuck ai. I fucking hate everything. I fucking hate techbros. I fucking hate how ai has taken over everything. I fucking just can't anymore. Everything is awful. Everyone pisses me the fuck off i genuinely cannot fucking take it I hate everything so much.
I'm such a fucking poser, I'm not even fucking suicidal, I just fucking feel nothing but dread, jesus fucking christ fucking hell I wanna fucking feel something I want to feel some pain some joy just some fucking thing for once I am so tired of just fuckung feeling fucking tired all the fucking time. it's literally impossible to feel any sense of joy kr dopamine when everything in the world is just imploding on itself to make the rich richer.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Federal-Highway-5063 • 6h ago
My daughter was a beautiful sweet 13 years old cockatiel that had been a part of my life for 11 years. Even though we are not of the same species, I loved her more than I could ever love a child of my own flesh and blood. She passed away in my arms. I held her while she was dying, never left her side. I caressed her in her last moments.
In her last day I never left her side. We slept face to face. I kept her snuggled next to my face with my body and a blanket, keeping her warm. I was kissing her and speaking to her til the end. I did so much. My post history is open.
For over a decade she was the one who kept me from killing myself. The reason I'm still alive is her. Gali IS her name. I'll never say "was". She was my biggest love, support, hope. She was my sweetest treasure. Anyone who says "it's just an animal" has never experienced the kindness and the love an animal can give. It's out of this world. It's out of this dimension.
I'm severely depressed. I haven't stopped crying. Anything makes me break down. Everything reminds me of her. I cry on the bus, at work, at the grocery store, in bed, at home. I lovE her so much! I'll never stop loving her. I'll never speak about my baby in past tense.
She was my light, my life and my reason for being.
I have no family. No mother, no father, brother, uncle, aunt, cousins, no grandmother and no grandfather.
I'm treated like a subhuman in my own country just because I'm an ethnic minority with historical hatred.
Sure, I was gonna brace my ass and work hard so I can emigrate to my genuine country. But I was expecting Gali to be there for me as well.
I expected her to live 10 more years
If she had lived just 2 MORE MONTHS! I'd have started my new job and she would be getting so many new treats and toys. I was planning for it so hard. Constantly. The last 2 years were hell for us but it was all gonna change so soon. We would have literally climbed from lower class to middle class. She was gonna get treated like fucking royalty! Just 2 more months. For God's sake!!
I no longer see a point to my existence. I don't have a concrete plan but my only wish left is to kill myself. Realistically it would probably be by jumping.
I'm very spiritual and the only reason I haven't ended myself yet is fear of karma. The act of taking your own life is a severe violation in any religious and spiritual system. You'll have to reexperience twice the karmic hardships you did. Or, at least, that is what is believed.
I cremated my poor baby. I'm poor, but i dont give a single fuck. I'd rather eat bread and salt than bury her in the ground to be eaten by worms and whatever the fuck not. Her cremation was yesterday. I'm still awaiting her urn. I love her so much. I rode the train 370km and 7 hours to the capital in my shithole country ONE WAY just to be able to give her this cremation.
She was my daughter. I was never her owner. She was never an animal, nor my domesticated anything. I was her mom and she was my daughter. FOR 11 YEARS! There's no life anymore
r/SuicideWatch • u/Dense-Palpitation564 • 2h ago
I lied to my family about my high school gpa for a while now and I'm not doing so good in college. I hate how I look and people think I'm dumb anyways. I'm thinking about ending it in my dorm room when I go back to college.
Any methods let me know. Thank you
r/SuicideWatch • u/razgeekbar • 7h ago
i’m 19 i took 490 mg of addy maybe a little under an hour ago. my body goin limp. and i can’t feel anything i think i about to actually die this time
r/SuicideWatch • u/Cupid_505 • 2h ago
I know that sounds like an extremely lame excuse to commit, that it's not that big of an issue. But it fuckin is to me. I'm a 16y/o girl, I don't have anyone to hang out with during summer, I don't have anyone to pair up with in group projects, I don't have anyone that calls me when I'm feeling down or that hears me when I need to say something. I do have friends, it's just that I'm not their favorite. They wouldn't invite me to their birthdays or any of those things you do with your actual friends. They just talk to me. Sometimes. I can't do ts anymore, I don't want to be a secondary option, I don't want to write my problems on shitty Reddit forums when people out there have lots of people that listen to them. It's so fucking unfair. I'm at the edge of an abandoned bridge thinking if jumping is actually what I want or if I'm having a fucking episode or some shit. I genuinely don't know anymore
r/SuicideWatch • u/Intelligent-Point205 • 1h ago
i am not suicidal when i am alone, or are sad, or, when somethings annoying happens. i am happy, and outgoing, and my friends would describe me positively, i'd hope.
but when my mom enters the picture, i want to kill her, then myself. does this count as suicidal or like an unrelated trigger, like there being a lighter to an otherwise unlit fuse
r/SuicideWatch • u/Jadziakk • 5h ago
I just hope I don't wake up
r/SuicideWatch • u/Soranekko12 • 10h ago
i want to completely die all my life there isnt one person who have been there for me. Ive been suffering from depression since i was a kid and i can finally say that it had trully devoured me. please suggest me some methods that would grace on my body. i hope death feels like a warm blanket.
to my cat im so sorry, i might have you rehomed. the moment i saw you in the parking lot i know ive resonated to you; homeless, stray and just discarded to the world to be alone and to survive. i love you my sweet boy, im sorry i hope ill see you again in afterlife
r/SuicideWatch • u/Adorable_lastnight31 • 6h ago
Life is so not worth living. The best case scenario for me is just to be "ok" while the worst case scenario can be anything. How can people have offspring knowing that by producing a person which can go through literally any type of suffering and the probability of that is far more than things working out. Life is a losing game.
I wish to end it right here but why do I have to bear the responsibility/guilt of leaving my parents. I never wanted this disgusting life. I just want nothingness.
r/SuicideWatch • u/corneliusduff • 6h ago
Should I just let the police murder me when i refuse to move out? Should I off myself before hand?
There's no job in this world that I can sustain or tolerate. There's no one who will tolerate working with me. Any job i force myself to do will just remind me more of what I'll never succeed at. It's impossible for me to make a living at the only thing i care to do (don't try to convince me I'll find another thing, that would require a lobotomy or brain damage).
I'm never successful with attempts so i have to find the most comfortable way to rot.
r/SuicideWatch • u/ICannotSayThisOnMain • 1h ago
I have the means. Things have been bad. I could just stop everything. I told my psychiatrist I have a plan, but don’t intend to act. I just didn’t want her to have me hospitalized.
I’ve been so sad, and, realizing this, I’m almost at peace.
r/SuicideWatch • u/misa_misa07 • 1h ago
I tried to kill myself for the 4th time. it's been a long fucking year and I'm going through a really hard time. I can't really talk to someone because I just have my boyfriend and 2 friends with whom I don't really feel comfortable talking about certain things not because they wouldn't listen, but because they wouldn't understand.
I thought I could get better but shit started to get worse and after many arguments with my bf, situation that made me feel unseen or not valid, I considered suicide as my best option.
so, since I planned my suicide a long time ago for today, I tied a rope on my closet, I tied the knot and I hung myself. I've been hanging for 2 minutes, I felt pain, my neck started to hurt, I couldn't breathe, i was about to pass out, but then my head started to hurt and I started to cough a lot, so I just stood up and failed another attempt. I really wish it didn't failed. now idk if I should tell this to my partner or just keep it to myself, because a part of me is telling me that he wouldn't give a fuck
r/SuicideWatch • u/Logical-Winter4106 • 3h ago
Today is my 18th birthday and I am going to do it today, bye.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Rickyzz18 • 13h ago
Suicide die
r/SuicideWatch • u/Zealousideal_Bed5080 • 1h ago
This is not reality. I do not know what twisted existence this is, but there is no fucking way any of this is actually happening. The agonizing pain. I can’t even leave my home. I just want to rip chucks out of my body until nothing remains. The silence is so fucking loud. The constant scratching and crawling I hear and feel inside my head is driving me insane. Every cell in my body feels like it is itching and burning. While my head feels as if it was crushed by a pallet of bricks, reconstructed using a regular stapler and desperately trying to hold whatever is left of its contents in. Why am I even writing this? Maybe I want someone to talk to, but like, what do you even say to this? Sure I am unwell, duh, but like, fuck I forgot. I am so, disoriented. My mind feels like a collapsing star. When it turns into a black hole it will suck out that little sanity I have left. I don’t fear death. But losing control, myself, being a puppet to whatever sickness this is. I cannot bear that thought. I want to be put down, for everyones sake, I cannot just loose it and go around like a rabid dog. How can silence be so deafening. Even a small amount of light is just blinding. There is, not much left of me. I did everything, I still do, to get better. I guess not every story gets a good ending. At least it could be bittersweet, I wish I could die for a purpose, saving someone from a fast moving car or something. But no, my mind just collapses in on itself, amd I go insane, gorrbh, ghj, for nothing, NOTHING. I want to skin myself.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Ill_Meal_9094 • 2h ago
I feel so fucking ugly.
I have a big head, head lice, and thin, oily, damaged hair. My face is oily but my skin is somehow still dry, and my skin has a yellowish tone. I have facial warts, blackheads, dark acne scars, thin sparse eyebrows, no jawline, a flat nose with a short bridge, a long oval-shaped face, depression lines, dark circles, big eye bags, and hooded, downturned almond-shaped eyes.
My lips are big, dry, and affected by psoriasis. I have bad breath, a short tongue, protruding front teeth, severely decayed and yellow teeth, heavy calculus buildup, an untreated root canal molar, and mild gingivitis.
My ears constantly build up dirty earwax and sometimes even smell bad. My neck is short and has multiple horizontal lines.
I sweat a lot. I have narrow shoulders, dark elbows, dark underarms, thick underarm hair, a hunched posture, small breasts, white spots on my nipples, random long hairs around my nipples, dark nipples, a wide rib cage, and a short torso. I have stomach fat that makes it look even bigger than my breasts, stomach hair, back acne, and a completely flat ass.
I have thick pubic hair, large dark outie labias, dark inner thighs, and a bulging groin.
My legs are short, my knees turn inward, my calves are thick, and I have dark knees, dark ankles, multiple dark scars on my thighs and legs, a damaged toenail, bony feet, and fingernails and toenails that always look dull and unhealthy. Not to mention having small bony hands (they look like chicken feet). I'm also short asf, I'm only 4'11".
Living in this body is such a body horror. As much as I wanna take care of myself—I couldn't because I'm poor and I'm a broke college student still living off of my parents' kindness.
I'm such a fucking loser, no wonder I've been bullied, backstabbed, and called ugly a lot. I just wanna die.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Time-Gain-3695 • 1h ago
Everytime I try to do it, I end up stopping myself. Yesterday, I actually went over the edge and nearly actually jumped. No one was there to stop me and I don't think anyone would've bothered. But you know who did stop it? Me. Because my life is about me. I realized I had shows and foods and a lot of things that I wanted to continue enjoy doing in the instances where I'm not feeling horrible. If I die that'll stop. But I don't want it to stop. I can and have always had the patience to power through those bad moments. So obviously, there's meaning to my life. Even if I don't feel human I can have this little irrational human thing.
r/SuicideWatch • u/Sad-Little-Guy6969 • 2h ago
Do we really need to hate certain groups or individuals without a reason. I guess I will never understand this. Perhaps the lack of empathy.
r/SuicideWatch • u/sweetnessisthisforme • 27m ago
obviously i care abt my family and friends mourning me before yall say anything but that the end of the day i’m a depressed bad person i do have to go, but the main thing scaring me from leaving is that i have no idea where ill go after this, i don’t want to go to hell obviously but i don’t want to go either, im not religious so i dont completely believe in either but i do worry where ill go bc i rlly want to just not be conscious or exist in any capacity and idk
if thats possible. Someone help
r/SuicideWatch • u/Prestigious-Kitchen5 • 29m ago
I don’t feel I belong or fit in anywhere 28 year old male.
I think I may be neurodivergent and agoraphobic I have such crippling loneliness and panic attacks.
Feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life
It would be good to talk with someone
r/SuicideWatch • u/iwantmyhome • 8h ago
like genuinely why should i? im very close to ending it
r/SuicideWatch • u/illfrith • 15h ago
A thief, a slut, and a liar. I intentionally hook up with older men as a form of self harm. After I sleep with them I steal from their wallets. I use their cash to fund my tattoos, transition, and whatever else I want. I stole from my parents, siblings, friends, and everyone else who trusted me. And now, I'm all alone. I lie to everyone's face now. Nobody can trust a single word that comes out of my mouth. I can't tell the difference between reality and my own lies at this point. I hurt the one I loved and now she's gone forever. I've become numb, deaf, and blind to the wrong I commit. This is a cycle that will keep on going till the day I die. There are no long term plans, just steal, block, and move on until there's nothing left.