at it again

Most healthcare institutions will resort to physical force, restraint, drugs, guilt, theft of personal property, forced nudity, and denial of privacy in the pursuit of prolonging a life. This despite the heaps of scientific evidence showing involuntary hospitalization increases distress and the desire for suicide. Being held in a psychiatric institution has been shown to raise a person’s risk of suicide by 100 fold — including among patients who weren’t suicidal before they got locked up. That’s largely because of the trauma of losing one’s freedom.

Suicidal intention is at its root a longing for escape — and you don’t ease that longing by giving a person more to escape from. 

But there are alternatives. It actually is possible to respect the bodily freedom of a suicidal person while still providing them comfort and aid that could prolong their life. We can make peace with our inability to control another person’s destiny and mourn the potential loss of them while sitting with them in their suffering. 

We don’t have to run away from our own hopelessness and thoughts of suicide while we do this. either. And we may find that frank, accepting, and even mundane discussions of suicide will do both us and our suicidal friends a whole lot of good. 

For this piece, I spoke to dozens of suicidal people, read harm reductionist guides on supporting the suicidal, examined the psychological research literature on the subject, and mined my own life experiences for any wisdom I could find. Based on all these resources, here is my advice for supporting people who are suicidal — no matter what. 

James Ensor (1860–1949) - Skeletons warming themselves, 1895