That’s a very good question to ask. It’s very important to talk about the alternatives. Here’s what I think we need. Sorry, it’s a bit long:
1. Non-coercive psychological first aid, targeted at acknowledging the immediate mental health crisis and helping the person hang on a little longer. People are way more likely to accept this kind of help when they know they’re not going to be institutionalized. Basic psychological first aid techniques require limited training so a neighborhood first responder without institutional power could do this.
2. A support community that addresses the emotional and material needs behind the mental health crisis. Things like poverty, unsafe housing conditions, the stress of an abusive workplace, ableism and other -isms, lack of community connection, etc all rob someone of the foundations of good mental health.
3. Access to non-coercive non-hierarchical mental health support. That may be peer-to-peer conversations with a trained survivor, it may be a support group, or it may be a therapist who has committed their practice to egalitarian non-coercive, non-pathologizing support. Or all those things. Offered on a free and voluntary basis, with conditions like travel expenses covered.
4. Accepting that staying alive doesn’t always look the way we’d like it to. On the way to staying alive someone might move from suicidal to addicted, or some other way of staying alive that we as outsiders do not recognize as healthy. We have to accept that every step, no matter the direction, which makes life feel a little more worth living, is one worth taking.
5. Consistency. Both the support community and the mental health support have to be in it for the long run. To be able to do this, the support-givers need to have their own support system.
6. Prevention. We need way more and way more accessible non-coercive and non-hierarchical mental health support for everyone and we need to recognize and fight the conditions that create a mental health crisis. Fighting poverty is suicide prevention. Fighting ableism is suicide prevention. Fighting transphobia is is suicide prevention. Fighting capitalism is suicide prevention. And so on.
We may lose some people to suicide by not coercing them into staying alive, but we lose way more people because the threat of institutionalization prevents them from seeking help.
At the end of it all, someone’s life is their own and that forcing someone to stay in it when they are suffering unbearably is abusive and cruel. As difficult as it is for us to accept, we are not saviors when we force someone to stay alive, we are their tormentors. And when we stop being their tormentors are start being their support system, we have a way better chance of helping them towards a life that’s worth living.
