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.

I agree, there is a general move towards an external locus of control. We need a trigger warning because the thread title isn’t clear enough, I eat shite and am unhappy with myself but that’s because of advertising, I’ve been sacked / failed my exams and it’s the fault of my teachers / employers.

Realising how much control we have over our lives is incredibly empowering.

It’s more talked about/known I think.

On a personal note, I remember after a serious attempt I had a spell in ICU then a hospital.
Family told people I was in rehab for drinking (I was 20 and I don’t drink).

Financial pressures and strain on mental health services has an impact too.
Personally though I see a lot of funds being raised for mental health charities, especially in my local area & there are good resources. A MIND centre open most hours every day. Professionally, those that need crisis team & immediate interventions get them also. Again, this could be just locally, I do see that elsewhere in the UK are under pressure.

My ex died by suicide relatively recently. The guilt, pain and confusion will never leave me. My children’s lives came to a standstill, they were traumatised and their lives will never be what they would have been.

I swing between anger and sadness, between thinking he was completely selfish to my heart breaking for his pain. There is very little support for the people left behind.

Have you spoken to SOBS (survivors of bereavement by suicide), they’re great

Peak years for suicide in this country were 1905 and 1934 so to say that it's about modern weakness etc is plain wrong.

We were getting increasingly good at suicide prevention in the UK but it's stalled a bit in recent years. My dh took his own life 6 years ago (can't believe it's that long). Services were noticeably threadbare compared to the most recent crisus before that, and I do believe it makes a difference. But there are some good services out there, and there's even a local crisis centre now which might have allowed him to survive.

Suicide is awful. So destructive. I would like to see child and adult MH services prioritised by a new government.

I've lost someone to this which was devastating. After many years I now have come to terms with it, and I actually think if you want to do it it should be your choice. Why should you have to be miserable each day. I appreciate the saying it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but I don't think this is always accurate as some people suffer from depression and bad luck and there doesn't ever seem to be a light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel

Yes mental health services are shite, they don't work for the majority of people & honestly there's a real need for more targeted support which isn't over managed & focussed on moving people on like a conveyor belt.
*From someone who has been trying to get a family member some help for years

Strangely I was just talking about how it seems like there's definitely less suicide around now compared to when I was growing up, and yet much worse mental health now.

My extended family (great grandparents, great aunts etc) had quite a few suicides in the 20th century, but none since then.

I agree with PPs, Coroners spared family feelings by returning 'open' or accidental death verdicts. Families didn't want the stigma.

It took years for me to realise that a childhood friend who'd had an 'accidental death' at 17 was actually suicide.

I am so sorry for everyone else on this thread who has been affected by suicide 💐 my heart breaks for you all.

Regardless of whether suicides are increasing or not, what is clear to me is the painful impact of each and every one.

But as much as I was devastated by my friend’s death, I don’t think he was selfish for it. He was in pain, and couldn’t find any other way out of it (even having undergone suicide prevention training as part of his job). I wish he could have found a way, I wish he’d asked for help from anyone, and I still miss him, but I don’t blame him. Depression and other mental health issues are just insidious and difficult to treat, especially since they often make it hard to seek help in the first place.

Please tell me you don't work in mental healthcare?

Many, many people have no services because they ask and beg and reach out and there is nothing there except for a crisis line telling you to make a cup of tea or call Samaritans.

Many, many people have 'care' which is so appalling it is actively abusive.

The problem with suicide prevention is that it focuses almost exclusively on preventing access to options that would allow suffering people to choose a humane death, but does fuck all to alleviate their suffering or address why their life is so unbearable as to be unliveable.

So people are forced into terrible barbaric methods that could in some cases harm others.

Ethical suicide prevention would be focused on reducing the pain and prolonged suffering that leads to suicide. Not just blocking all the exits and driving people into such a state of desperation they die alone in terrible ways.

Or sectioning people and inflicting so much additional trauma on them that they will at best never recover, at worst end their life the first chance they get.

Ethics are largely missing from our response to suicide prevention.

As a side note, I think it's the height of selfishness to expect someone to live in unbearable pain and distress for decades just to save you grieving.

Suicide numbers have not increased. It may be the case that people are more willing to discuss suicide, which can only be a good thing. It is not something to be spoken if in hushed voices and most of us will probably have suicidal feelings at some point, even if we don't act upon them.

Of course it's not an "unforgivable" act - it's entirely understandable and one would hope that we could all learn to be far less judgemental.

I’ll be 74 next month. I’ll just give up now.

🙄

@Riverlee

in the nicest possible way. The title is a warning.

Absolutely! And there is still, you can see it on this thread, a habit of blaming people. So, they had all the support and they did it anyway so their choice. Not, well perhaps what we are offering is unhelpful or counterproductive or we're not attuning to this person (the amount of mental HCPs who seem incapable of listening is awful). Or they were offered help but refused to accept it and 'put the work in' (one of my most hated therapy phrases). It's like people can't understand that there are rarely any services and what services there are are one-size fits all and move you along as quickly as possible. Some of the services I have engaged with have been laughable if it wasn't so terrifying how so lacking in basic awareness of trauma and effects of early sexual abuse they were.

I've done 20 years of 'putting in the work' and if I finally say I've had enough and people want to call me selfish then that just shows up their ignorance.

🤍

https://www.spuk.org.uk/

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/helping-someone-else/supporting-someone-who-feels-suicidal/useful-contacts/

https://www.samaritans.org/

While rates have gone up slightly recently, possibly due to the isolation and lack of MH support due to Covid, plus the economic crisis, rates were higher in the past. As PP have said, there was more of a stigma in the past, and suicides were reported as 'accidents' if at all possible. Until 1961, attempted suicide was treated as a criminal offence in the UK. So people often didn't talk about it.

Two of my mother's relatives took their own lives in separate incidents in the 1950s. At least one of my schoolmates died by suicide as a teenager in the 1970s. So did a close friend's father, also in the 70s. Three people whom I knew died by suicide in the 90s. And far more people whom I know tried unsuccessfully - most of them not that recently.

That's anecdote- but there is a lot of evidence that suicide rates are lower than a few decades ago. By far the highest rates in the last 100 years were during the Great Depression.

I haven’t read all comments due to some personal triggers, I put a comment without going through the thread.

I just wanted to say though that my thoughts go out to anyone who’s been impacted by suicide

When I was at high school, in the early 70s, a boy in my class took his life - we all knew. My aunt did the same thing in the 80s, once again it was not hidden, and all throughout my life I've heard of people who died by suicide. I don't recall a time in my lifetime (I'm 64) that it was considered shameful.

I feel exactly the same.

Ex mental health nurse here, when I first started working we had big asylums where people could stay and be monitored and supported, the stigma of the 'bins' was undeserved, many people found them a place to recover their sanity and move on .

However, we were well staffed and motivated, but still patients ended their lives when they went home or wandered off to a quiet corner somewhere, and it was always heartbreaking for us as well as families and friends.

Sometimes no intervention works , as often the patients mood would lift and as no clinical reasons we're left to detain them , they'd be discharged and a few days after would be found dead.

A colleague went to a patients home for after care, had a good and positive appointment, half an hour after leaving the client hung himself in his garage . The nurse was devastated and left nursing soon after.

I often think it's something that there aren't more people killing themselves, as for many life is pretty relentlessly rotten , and human resilience can be a powerful thing, but sometimes it just runs out .

@gonetogreece

are you serious or taking the pee?

wasn't the title enough of a warning?

I often think it's something that there aren't more people killing themselves, as for many life is pretty relentlessly rotten

It's actually really hard to do with any guarantee of success and without horrific suffering.

It is heartbreaking to read that in this day and age and all that we know about mental health, people on here have said it’s selfish to commit suicide. You really have no idea.