A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
artbykleiton/Pixabay The New York Times recently ran an investigative piece titled Where the Despairing Log On, and Learn Ways to Die. It discussed a particular suicide forum, and the reactions I came across on Twitter expressed outrage that such a thing could exist. I had a different take on it, so I thought I'd write… Continue reading The New York Times’ Take on a Suicide Forum – My Thoughts
I've written before about the issues with language policing, but this is probably one of the more controversial areas where I believe that words matter less than people might think. We aren't "supposed to" talk about successful suicide or failed suicide attempts. Sara of Surviving Sara brought this up recently, and I told her it's… Continue reading Failed/Successful Suicide: Do Words Matter? What’s the Real Failure?
This post isn't about saying that suicide is something people should choose, or that it's a good choice, or that it's a choice that they want to have on the menu. I'm writing this because, while it's much more complicated to get into the element of choice, I believe that it's inaccurate to say that… Continue reading Is Suicide a Choice? (Regardless, It’s Not Selfish)
For Pride Month, I wanted to talk about an important mental health issue facing LGBTQ+ youth. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among North American youth, and the level of risk is even higher in LGBTQ+ youth. That's not good. Stats Here are a few stats for LGBT youth: LGB youth attempt suicide 5x… Continue reading Suicide Risk Among LGBTQ+ Youth – A Pride Month Post
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. It's also National Suicide Prevention Week and National Suicide Prevention Month (that's a lot of awareness!). I thought it would be a good time to talk about suicide attempt survivors. The term "suicide survivor" isn't generally used for people who've lived through suicide attempts. Rather, it's the term used… Continue reading Suicide Attempt Survivors: Yes, We Do Exist
I recently wrote about whether the wording "committed suicide" was likely to be an effective target for anti-stigma messaging. A commenter mentioned that in their home country, suicide was a crime up until quite recently. That got me curious, so I did some digging to find out where attempting suicide is illegal to this day.… Continue reading Where Is Attempting Suicide Illegal?
I saw a post recently by another blogger about stigmatizing language that people should avoid. One of the things he mentioned was "committed suicide," which is something that comes up regularly in discussions of language use related to suicide. I'm not convinced that it needs to be as big an issue as people make it… Continue reading “Committed Suicide”: Suicide-Related Language and Word Policing
The Balance Between Life and Death is a novella by Elizabeth Holland, who you may know from her blog Anxiety and Liz. The intro says "This novella focuses on the importance of putting your mental health first. A reminder that you never know what someone is hiding beneath their smile." The protagonist is a young… Continue reading Book Review: The Balance Between Life and Death
Let's say you're scrolling through your Twitter feed. You see a tweet that makes it seem like that person intends to imminently act on suicidal thoughts. What do you do? Unfortunately, there isn't really a good answer. I've been on the reporting side on one occasion. Someone had posted on their blog, which was shared… Continue reading Suicidal Posts on Social Media: What Should Platforms Do?
A blogger I knew died by suicide yesterday. She scheduled a blog post and a Twitter share of the post to go live after the fact. One of the things mentioned in her post was that her plan was to be struck by a train. Today I was looking at the Twitter comments in response… Continue reading Guilt Is Not a Suicide Prevention Strategy