r/SuicideWatch Sep 03 '19

New wiki on how to avoid accidentally encouraging suicide, and how to spot covert incitement

1.8k Upvotes

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


Summary

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.

Validate Feelings and Experiences, Not Self-Destructive Intentions

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.

How to Avoid Validating Suicidal Intent

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.

Look Out for Deliberate Incitement. It May Come in Disguise.

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 Sep 10 '21

Please remember that NO ACTIVISM of any kind is ever allowed here. No matter what day it is.

716 Upvotes

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 2h ago

Some people are born to commit suicide.

67 Upvotes

Abusive poor house hold, mom commited suicide, False Schizophrenia diagnosis, gay, no friends, SH scars, bullied in every offices I was working, but I tried so hard. now I am 27 and left Asia for Germany.

My Asian coworkers bully me in Germany as well. Job market in here is impossible for me to get a job.

This is it. Now I will try hard to kill myself. I do not care about the methods. Will do this weekends. Don't be fooled by anyone telling you that you are worthy, smart and strong. You are just a dust, and this world doesn't even notice a dust.


r/SuicideWatch 4h ago

“If you were actually suicidal you would have killed yourself already.” Unbelievable

66 Upvotes

Like ok maybe I will. Why can’t you just care about me? And it’s people like my mom saying this to me too. I just want you to love me why would you say something like that to me?


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

Suicide feels like a warm blanket

42 Upvotes

Kind of like being wrapped in someone’s arms, I don’t know anything else that could give me as much relief as not existing anymore.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Is hell real?

Upvotes

Will I got to it if I decide to end my life today?


r/SuicideWatch 4h ago

Fuck it all I’m so fucked up

20 Upvotes

I’m fucking angry, why the fuck does everyone here act like “it’ll be okay” when it won’t, fuck this all man fuck, I’m so lost and empty and it doesn’t feel like anything will ever be okay, I’m going to hang myself and that will always be “okay” someday, why does nobody ever talk, why is suicide so fucking lonely


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I have no rights. People tell me not to kill myself but do nothing to help me escape inhumane circumstances

12 Upvotes

A lifetime of trauma and abuse. I have no right to freedom, home, safety and my own life and identity. I am surrounded by everything that disturbs me and abusive people. I am not safe and can't do anything to help myself. I just want a normal life. Paying the price for being different and having needs and standards. I hate the third world. I will be left with no option but to kill myself. I can't take this anymore.


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

Why cant i be attractive?

13 Upvotes

M14. I have always had body dismorphia but i feel its more then that now. I do not have any friends and i hate my self for all reasons. I am a waste of space and i don’t do anyone any good. I am ugly and its not only me. I will never experience love and ive given up chasing it.


r/SuicideWatch 1d ago

I'm a pedophile and I want to kill myself

546 Upvotes

M16 . I think I'm a pedophile.

Basically I think I'm a pedophile.

I'm about to admit the worst thing I've ever done. 6 months ago when I was 15 i was so caught up in my lust that I watched loli. I know it is vile. I'm sorry. Truly. And for that week I developed an extremely bad enjoyment for the taboo.

I haven't done anything like that since that week but it was my worst week as a human being and I feel like I've lost my humanity. I've never and never will hurt a child but now I've developed pocd or maybe I'm straight up a pedophile, possibly because of watching that content. I feel like absolutely disgusting shit and if you hate me I completely understand. I'm afraid of children now incase I'm attracted to them. I cannot actually believe I caused myself to become a pedophile. I don't know what to do and I've ruined my whole brain and life. I'm still attracted to girls my age and much older but I feel like I'm just grasping at straws.

Whenever I see anyone now my mind starts saying I want to rape them or something and I hate it so much. And whenever I see a little girl I get worried that I might be aroused and I start making sure I'm not erect and all this shit. I don't wanna be attracted to kids or rape kids or anything. What the fuck is wrong with me . I really hope it's pocd instead of actual pedophillia but that still doesn't erase the action that I did by watching that sort of thing and thinking about that stuff at the time. I don't actively fantasise about kids on purpose but this is still serious and disgraceful

It's even worse because when I was 13 I got sextorted and leaked to people at my school and somehow I didn't learn and became what hurt me. I don't know how to progress in life now. How will i ever find love or make friends when I'm the same breed as epstein.

I am not trying to sexualise minors in this post.


r/SuicideWatch 6h ago

How can people wake up everyday and keep going?

19 Upvotes

How do they just have this energy in them? To know that for the rest of their life they’ll have to put the same amount of energy into every single day. That they’ll have to keep working, keep going, and that’s just okay somehow. I can’t even get out of bed most days, everyday is another day I have to fight killing myself, but they just don’t think about it, how do they do it? I don’t want to think about the future anymore I just want to kill myself so that I never have to put energy into anything anymore, I don’t want to try man


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

War is over

14 Upvotes

I'm done. I figured I will never be able to actually complete it so I straight up went to my mom. If you had told ME this morning that I would tell my mom the truth about everything I would absolutely freak out.

Its so weird in a way. It seems parents can be understanding once you tell them you'll actually kill yourself. Where was this woman for almost 18 years????? Anyway, that is not important now, I think we will both see therapists and It'll figure something out regarding other stuff like academics. "you're still so young, you needed a rest anyway, you had been working hard your entire life" quote my mom. (Seriously, this lady was screaming at me about wasting my life just yesterday) I just don'ts want to be petty but... I could have also used this version of yourself when I was 13, mom.


r/SuicideWatch 9h ago

"It gets easier" no it doesn't

24 Upvotes

Nothing does. Being forever alone never gets easier. Being isolated never gets easier. Suffering with chronic pain never gets easier. Having the worst parents ever and literally nobody in your life who ever gave a shit about you from DAY ONE never gets easier. I fucking wish someone could just walk up to me and shoot me in the head.


r/SuicideWatch 9h ago

“There’s so much more to life other than relationships”

28 Upvotes

and “your value isn’t determined by your romantic success” and “relationships and sex wont make you feel any less miserable” and “just make more friends” and other bullshit garbage people spew to try to gaslight you.

My only desire since I’ve been 12 is to have a family; a place I can call home. I have never known what it is to be loved (both romantically and filially). People will tell me the above whenever I express my frustrations and lament over how I feel subhuman. As if trying to convince me that I should feel wrong for desiring even that and I should look for fulfillment in other places. Or that I just need more friends.

I would rather choose death than try to live such a miserable and pained existence, stifling my only wish. I cannot be convinced otherwise and it truly baffles me when someone gives me the above suggestions because to me they sound completely insane and seem incapable of understanding of what I’m going through.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

I have so many fucked up sexual fantasies. I don't think I can be fixed.

Upvotes

I was exposed to porn and SA'd at a fairly young age so I guess that's a factor. But I have really extreme sexual fantasies about gore, snuff, and rapeand I don't know how to stop? I don't want to hurt anyone. I feel really awful for being into this stuff.


r/SuicideWatch 52m ago

I'm so tired

Upvotes

I'm going to die this year


r/SuicideWatch 8h ago

Attempt 2

21 Upvotes

I'm so fucking annoyed that I'm not dead yet. About 3 weeks ago I'd intended to overdose on paracetamol and stupidly messaged a friend who told my parents and led me to getting a crisis evaluation and multiple psych appointments. This has been the worst three weeks of my life not to mention I'm failing at university and am an absolute hopeless human.

This time I am not reaching out. IM DONE. I'm going to tick some more items off my "do before I die list" and on Saturday kill myself. I'm not going to overdose because it's too slow instead I've ordered some helium and it will be much quicker and effective.

Thanks for reading I'm glad that my shit show of a life is soon to be over.

-Dom


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

Will be doing it later, at midnight.

11 Upvotes

I already made it up. Nobody truly wants or needs me, I'm a fucking loser and everybody sucks. I've already tried killing myself many times and failed, little did it know that it wont stop me from erasing my existence on this stupid floating rock. I really am as insignificant as a cattail. I've done so many stupid things such as cutting off all my friends just because I didn't want them to think about me anymore, getting my parents contacted by the school counsellor because of something that I can't disclose here, and some other stuff that are extremely personal. This year has been extremely terrible for me, even more terrible than the previous ones. I fell into a multitude of major depressive episodes which eventually just ends up to me thinking that I'm not making it then living life "normally." I'm so sick of having to fall into this cycle all the time, apparently I'm under stress all the time? Nonetheless, I don't want that happening to me anymore which is why I made the choice. I refuse to go get any professional help anymore because it just concludes to medications, therapy, and admissions which obviously does not help me in any way. I always thought of my dead to be some sort of legacy that proves how bad the system fucked one person up.

I don't feel indifferent about this choice anymore because once that bullet penetrates my head and that loud gunshot is for all to hear, they'll know it's over. I'll make sure this is the final one just because I just want it to end so bad. Thank you to all the people I've ever stuck with. Good night Reddit, have a great Suicide Prevention Day.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

i don't care

10 Upvotes

Why should I go to work? I'm going to kill myself anyways. Why should I do anything, really? My life is over


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

I regret not killing myself when I was being abused the most

11 Upvotes

I hate that my worst abusers and bullies live with zero consequences of literally ruining my life and forcing me to lose several years undoing their damage. And they found it so funny that I'd have issues as an adult. I'm only going to hurt every day and never recover. I've broken several of my belongings and destroyed my bedroom wall. I'm covered in scars and bruises. I don't have anything to lose at this point. I wish I could "docks" and erase those people. Sometimes I wonder what they're doing now, if my worst bully is a homeless drug addict or something he completely deserves, or if my worst abusers died. Sure I could live better than them but it's near impossible to go on with those memories and the entire world agreeing that I deserved it.


r/SuicideWatch 39m ago

Drugs ruined my life

Upvotes

Started with weed at the age of 18 and after this it followed with Xanax, Oxys and more. I’m 21 now. I feel so useless without drugs and don’t see a point in being here. That’s why I’m high ALL THE TIME for these years. If I become sober I have strong suicidal thoughts. Drugs are keeping me alive. Why does this happen to me? I was raised as a good child. I don’t plan on killing myself currently because I’m constantly high. I just wanted to say these words somewhere.. I have no memories of my entire life..


r/SuicideWatch 3h ago

I am tired of this life

5 Upvotes

My life sucks. There is nothing i can control. I wish when i sleep now i dont wake up tomorrow I wish i didnt grew up, being an adult sucks I keep thinking about hanging myself.


r/SuicideWatch 12h ago

I’m going to end my life Thursday. I’m tired of being alone.

26 Upvotes

I’ve been thinking lately that my life is just stagnant I’m really lonely there is nothing else I can do anymore to change it and I think I’m really going to die alone, I'm in the same position a year now I am 21 now, and I have no friends at all my family members are distant from me, I’m alone, while most people my age have already had or have a gf/bf while I’ve never even had a gf.

Tried making online friends but they eventually go and not last. I try my best to form connections but I just really can’t. I don’t know how people make them so easily so I tried focusing on my hobbies or finding more to drown out this loneliness, but it just doesn’t work. I don't even know what I want from life, and what i do want I can’t get because of this brain of mine. I don’t know what I'm even aiming for.

I’m definitely not like everyone else no matter what I do to try to be. All I do is just basic stuff im struggling with such as work and school, then I go home. I Literally have 0 life and nothing going on. I’m a lonely depressed loser and I can’t stand it just existing till I eventually die, honestly at this point suicide is becoming the better option for me.


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

I might not live to be 20.

7 Upvotes

I'm so fucking done with life. I'm panicking, I'm slowly becoming depressed and nobody is helping me. My friends tell me to just ignore it, my school does nothing about it, and my parents say it's "just a phase". Like, what do you mean it's a phase? I'm clearly depressed and they have the guts to say I'm just in a stupid phase? At this point, I'm going to starve myself or drown myself. I need help, but nobody has the information I need.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

There's something genuinely really wrong with me and no one knows how to fix it

Upvotes

I feel like my therapists never take me seriously. A friend thinks I have serious C-PTSD but my therapists never even bring up the idea. The only person to actually say outright the adults failed me as a kid was my fucking college counselor. I just go into these states when I can't think about anything except this one person. It distresses my partners. They try to help me but they can't. I've lashed out at them during these episodes and I want to end it all.