People ending their lives?

[girlfriend44]

Are more and more people giving up on life? Heard another suicide today and its going to be debated in Parliament tomorrow?

Is it because mental health services are poor, have they always been poor?
Is life just getting harder for people?
Or has it always been hard?

I can remember when suicide was rare now you hear it so much sadly.

It's got one. The fucking Title - What else can it mean?

I was suicidal for a time. My GP referred me for assessment. They refused to help me and sent me leaflets on sleeping.

The refusal to help me was because I was under police investigation. I was only suicidal because of the police investigation because I was innocent.

I emailed them and they said that they would help me when the investigation was over. I told them I didn't think I'd make it that long. Silence.

My boyfriend killed himself 16 years ago. Mental health services were as much a joke then, sent an occupational therapist out to assess him instead. Third time lucky for him that weekend eh? I worked in the same team as the people who should have been helping him...

DS1 cut his friend, and colleague, who was hanging down a few years ago. He’s in the army and was on duty that weekend, he got a call from the police to say this lad’s girlfriend had phoned to say he’d text her to say he was going to do it. The police were on the way but they wanted someone to go check on him. DS1 went and his sergeant followed on.

Unfortunately, despite best efforts from everyone involved the poor boy, and he wasn’t much more than a boy, died in hospital a few days later. I think of him a lot.

Suicide is far too common amongst the armed forces and veteran community. Mental Health services in this country are so under resourced, the staff try their best but they can’t do what they need to do with what they’ve got.

@XenoBitch oh no, I didn’t think it was a dig or anything. I just wanted you to know that MH staff agree with you on this. Any death in hospital is one too many. Honestly, any suicide in the community is also one too many but, and I hope you understand this, that is much more difficult to prevent. Everyone deserves help and support. I only wish we could do more.

I think the fact that some people are asking for a trigger warning on this thread, with a very very clear title and nothing at all hidden or surprising, just shows that some people have no resilience at all.

Mental health services in my area are hopeless . In my place of work we often have to deal with suicidal people and 9 times out of 10 mental health nurses will say no sign of mental illness even if that person has voiced suicidal ideation . They get a phone number and told to see their GP. If your life is shit because of a relationship breakdown , bereavement , debt anything really no amount of intervention in the world can sometimes change any of this . I’ve known quite a few people who have taken their own lives and it does break those left behind especially their parents . I would say though in all of those events there wasn’t any hints of anything wrong before hand .
I don’t think social media helps at all and I think for all the ‘be kind ‘ things people post most of the time when people are really going through it they will get told nicely they will just need to get on with it or someone else has it worse .

Good God what is it with some people and 'trigger warnings'?

The thread title couldn't be more clear if it had a bloody diagram attached.

So a trigger warning for what exactly?

Gonna get flack for this..

I think it's appalling that the one thing you have no control over is your own life. The one thing in your life that is absolutely your own, and you can't choose to do with it what you want.

Or common sense.

They haven't always been poor at all. Mental Ill health has plagued my family for generations. My mother in 1962, and my brother in the late 70s, both received much better MH care than my DD26 had had in the last 16 years.

It is like opening a thread that says "share your pet spider pics" when you are arachnophobic. .

Suicidal feelings are usually temporary. If you can hold on the feelings do pass. We all talk about mental health as if there is some magic potion the NHS can give us that will make it better, it’s not so simple. It takes a multi-factored approach starting with lending a listening ear.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately.

In the last month, I know of two people personally who have ended their life. One male, one female, both in their 30s. The female with a young child. It is just so, so tragic.

Whilst I agree with your view, I'm hoping to get to over 80!
We need a Dignity in Death law and procedure asap.

This.

A lot of frustration at NHS MH services is that is it not a magic fix. There is no instant fix for MH issues. They all take work, and they take a lot of work from the person with the issues.

I knew someone who used to slag off the local MH trust all the time as they would not "help" him. He was offered all sorts of help.. he just would not do it.
It is like refusing to do physio after an injury.

Why would you be in a care home at 75 you?! If you are in good health and look after yourself as you age you should still be shimmying around in zumba classes at that age and doing U3A. (Apologies if there's a health reason you can't do this).

It happened. People didn't talk about it because it was so embarrassing, shocking and people would be unkind about mental illness so you kept quiet. The social stigma in the past was on another level.

I think life is pretty tough for a lot of people at the moment. Financial inequality is increasing, which drives an increase in criminal behaviour. Society is less cohesive and there’s a real feeling of everyone for themselves. The world situation feel unstable to me, with wars and interference in politics from Russia and (what feels like) a failure of western powers such as the US.

There’s also the internet, with all its available information. One reason suicides can increase is because people attempting it often don’t know how. Now they can find out.

And mental health services are on the floor, along with the rest of the NHS. No wonder people are in despair and don’t know where to go for the help they desperately need.

The arrival of the internet (and perhaps next AI) might be a significant destabilizing factor. There was social upheaval following the introduction of mass printing, for example. Change is rarely easy and everything is still in flux. I hope the world situation begins to stabilize and we can return to steadier times, but I can absolutely see why suicide would be rising.

Mental help support has got worse. I went to the GP with depression in 1990 and I was referred to a psychiatrist straight away. In 2014 I went through a traumatic experience and was told to go online and do a 6 session cbt course for anxiety. It didn't help because my problems were deeper than that. I kept going back to my gp who said all she could offer were the local services which consisted of various 6 session courses, none of which were appropriate for me. Basically the only way I could actually speak to someone about my problems would be to pay to see a psychologist myself, which I cannot afford. Eventually, my GP got fed up with me and gave me antidepressants which I've been on for the past ten years. There's no 'proper' help unless you can afford it.

Ah that’s ok then 🙄 Thanks!

I knew this would be triggering for me upon reading the title, but couldn't stop myself from opening this thread.
I've been affected by 3 suicides.
My grandmother - I cannot tell you how much I adored her, I was in love with her and we were so, so close - took her life when I was 14. The pain I've felt ever since is indescribable and I'm late 40s now, it still hasn't gone. She was only in her 50s. I couldn't, as a child, understand why she'd chosen to do it, and I still can't understand now. I've never been given any explanation for it as it's not talked about in my family.
My stepfather - he took his life when I was a child and my sibling was a baby. There was no warning, no sign. It was sudden, over and done with in 2 minutes, and it single handedly ruined the rest of our childhoods. It destroyed my mother's emotional and mental health. It plunged us as a family in to economic hardship from which my mum has never recovered. I would say it's actually probably ruined the rest of my sibling's life because he's never been able to mentally recover from it.
And my mum's best friend, who I was close to, took her own life with a 3 year old daughter. She had severe post natal depression. Needless to say, her daughter has grown up devastated.
I think what I've learned is that suicide causes lifelong intense grieving and guilt for loved ones.
I spend most days wondering how all those 3 loved ones would be today if they'd lived and got through what they were feeling at the time. If they could look back and say "I went through a really dark time then, but I'm so glad I got through it".
Might be because of my personal experience, but I think suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness; I believe that at that time, how they are feeling is all consuming and they can think of nothing else.

I don't see it as selfishness at all. I think suicidal people are not in their right mind and can't make rational decisions. They're not able to consider their loved ones' feelings in that state.

My dad took his own life 16 years ago. He walked into the doctors told them he wanted to die and they told him he was fine. He had been mentally unwell for years and in and out of hospital for years, so was known to this doctor. He pleaded for help and they turned him away. Yes 16 years ago but I don’t think much has changed in that time. I am still so angry that a man can walk into a surgery and ask for help on the same day he ended up taking his own life! Yes it was his choice but if the doctor acted differently he might still be here, or would it always of ended this way with or without that help that day? Unfortunately we will never know

For the most part I forgive them. The impact they had on innocent strangers is the part I struggle with. It came to light after they'd died, that they had both been planning their deaths for months. They'd gotten their financial affairs in order. The one who left a note (which had been written weeks before) did have diagnosed MH issues. They were both functioning in their lives well enough to fool colleagues and family that they were fine, whilst planning their own deaths. So it's hard to accept that they both planned to do it in such a way, that innocent people were endangered and potentially had their lives ruined. It was premeditated, if you will. You'd think if you were planning it, you'd at least have the decency not to endanger or seriously traumatise others.