People had a lot to say in response to my recent post Suicidality and Other People’s Perspective, so I thought it would be good to have another down and dirty chat about the reality of dealing with suicidal thinking (and sometimes attempts). In this post, we’ll talk about the tendency to be impulsive and engaging …
For some of us, suicidal thinking and perhaps even a history of attempts are part of the mental illness experience. What I wanted to discuss in this post is how much of that suicidality is focused inward and how much relates to our place in our social world. That’s rather vague, and this post’s title …
I recently came across a CBC News article titled Mental Health Experts Say Canada Needs a 3-digit Suicide Crisis Hotline. The US just implemented its own 988 lifeline on July 16. The article had some things that made me go hmmm, so I thought I’d write about them. As a bit of background, the federal …
What a 988 Suicide Hotline Can (and Can’t) Accomplish Read More »
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 about …
The New York Times’ Take on a Suicide Forum – My Thoughts Read More »
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 …
Failed/Successful Suicide: Do Words Matter? What’s Really Failed? Read More »
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 …
Is Suicide a Choice? (Regardless, It’s Not Selfish) Read More »
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 …
Addressing the Elevated Suicide Risk Among LGBTQ+ Youth Read More »
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 …
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. …
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 …
“Committed Suicide”: Word Policing of Suicide-Related Language Read More »
