Husbands and suicide threats

[Fadeaway]

People need to realize there is a huge difference between expressing suicidal idealization and threatening actually suicide. That is why they ask you of you have a plan.

I think about suicide a lot and express my desire to die but in a more generic way than if I was actively suicidal. I am the child of a suicide victim and have poured endless hours into analyzing suicide in general. My conclusion is most people are misinterpreting cries for help as manipulative behaviors. I also think calling 911 should be the last resort because that could be enough to push someone over the edge who wasn't 100% suicidal but was reaching out for emotional support in the only way they knew how.

I have found a lot of times no one listens unless you say you are thinking about suicide.

 

[joeylittle]

That is why they ask you of you have a plan.

True. When someone has a plan, access to means, and a timeline - things move closer to real danger. When the plan is realistic, the means are statistically lethal, and the timeline is "now", that's when you can't try and handle it all on your own.

I also think calling 911 should be the last resort because that could be enough to push someone over the edge who wasn't 100% suicidal but was reaching out for emotional support in the only way they knew how.

Assessing suicidal risk is difficult, even for professionals. It's not realistic for a non-professional to determine whether or not someone is 100% suicidal. That's why it's ultimately better to get help.

When you are living with someone (or engaged in regular contact with someone) who is chronically suicidal, it's useful to have a few more tools in the toolbelt, both for assessing the danger and for enlisting help. It all starts with making sure there's conversation about the suicidality and how you as a partner or friend can/should relate to it. Of course, it's much easier to talk about it during the times it's not as active.

My conclusion is most people are misinterpreting cries for help as manipulative behaviors.

I sort-of agree. My opinion is, a cry for help is always just that - a cry for help. And crying for help is not inherently manipulative, or 'false'. I think it's a real shame that people use "cry for help" to mean "faking it". A person is always under some extreme emotional duress, if they are saying that their only option is to end their life.

But - that doesn't mean that they are actually in a position to follow through with ending their life, nor does it mean that it's healthy for anyone to get into the pattern of threatening crisis in order to be heard/get help. (I know you're not saying that, @Fadeaway). When someone 'learns' that threatening suicide will get them something that alleviates their emotional distress, they'll be more prone to repeat the behavior. And that is when it becomes manipulation - it doesn't matter if the individual is conscious of being manipulative or not: what they are doing is forcing someone else into a corner.

So, to me, that's how repeated threats of suicide are both manipulative and a genuine sign that someone is in need of real intervention. When there's not any option for the person receiving the threat except calling emergency services, or the police, then that's the option they have to take.

It's hard all around. Dealing with suicidal thinking, ideation, threats - the whole topic - is very, very hard on people. On all sides.

 

[Abstract]

@Fadeaway I also think a lot of it is down to how it is expressed. I know you from here and can't imagine you ever doing it but some people genuinely do use it as a weapon. To cause pain for others. To get their own way. To control. I know people like this. There are varying degrees of it. I do agree with you that people who are not intending to end things and are "attempting" may often not be malicious or actively mean to manipulate and rather desperately be trying to get help. It is something people need to be actively discouraged from doing though as it isn't healthy for all involved. Agreed with Joeylittle that conscious intent doesn't change the nature of a behaviour or how it feels to those on the receiving end. Or that it isn't healthy for the person longer term. But people often misunderstand attempts, don't they? Not realising that people can be almost there and be compelled to express their pain.

I also think it can be impossible for those around someone to evaluate how serious the threat is and what the best action is to take when threats are made. It is best for it to be handed over to professionals and not doing so could have lethal results.

 

[Ahhlia]

Some I agree and some I disagree. Sometime one could mistake that their partner is serious or trying to gain attention.
For instance David on new years Eve, we went to the party store for silly string. What I didn't know that he bought one
of those blood tabs. We stayed home for the Eve so David can do his drinking safe. At midnight we shot each other with the silly string and laughed. Then he got up found his big knife and pretended he stabbed himself and fell, biting the blood tablet. I thought he did it for real till he lifted his head and laughed and told me to take a picture for his mom. I refused but he was insisted. I took pictures of laying with the blood coming out of his mouth and the knife blade with fake blood lying next to him. I never sent his mother the pictures even after he died 5 months later. I could go on with his attention-getting pranks. It was hard to say if he was planning it longer than that. But he never said, "I am going to kill myself" or anything like that. There was no threat except when he had the gun in his hand pointing at me and saying he was going to kill me and then himself.

Besides that, I had been having suicidal thoughts (and plans and research on the best way and took a poll what methods they would use.
Have I ever told anyone I would kill myself other than the psychologist and my current mate? No. I know there is a number to call, I even have the txt number to use to get help. But I am afraid of phone calls and I don't trust telling someone like I don't want to be held in the mental ward for observations.

The moments in the past two years when I hit lows and think of suicide, close people ask how I am .. I say OK. Sometime in the middle of my depression is like I am standing in the eye of the storm, where I find peace because I know what, when how and the cost. I have prepared a music tape, a briefcase of important papers including a living will and a regular will. Nobody knows I gone this far. My mate knows I am capable and sometimes when he leaves he asks if I will be ok and I say yes. I won't do anything stupid.

So you can't really say that he or she will kill themselves, even if they joke about it or say nothing and everything is OK. As far as the Crisis line, if the suicidal person is serious in doing it or just does not like phones and especially you have some 15 year old trying to tell me about life (I was a suicide counselor as a teen for a counseling center) they are not going to call most the time. They just want to be left alone

 

[Abstract]

I would say for me that having a conversation that I am having those feelings isn't the same as threatening suicide. Its a little how this and other sites work. Where they allow discussion but threats get locked down as then the person needs real life immediate care. If that makes any sense at all. Its really important to be able to talk about it if possible if having those thoughts. Ideally to a mental health professional who knows how to deal with it. They don't throw people in mental wards for nothing. Many people struggle with chronic suicidal thoughts and that isn't what they need or would find helpful. I know for myself that they have been an almost constant for large sections of my life.

 

[Sweetleaf]

My abuser often used suicidal threats (and homicidal threats) to control me. I wish he had actually killed himself. It really pisses me off that he's still alive, when he threatened suicide so much.

Never tolerate suicidal threats. IMO best thing to do when someone threatens suicide, is to call the police and cut all contact with them. No use drowning yourself to save a sick drowning puppy.

 

[Sideways]

best thing to do when someone threatens suicide, is to call the police and cut all contact with them. No use drowning yourself to save a sick drowning puppy.

Definitely if it’s a pattern in an overall abusive relationship.

But sometimes (talking from experience), you talk to a person about suicide because that’s a person you trust, and you think maybe they can help, or at least make you feel less isolated.

Suicide can be used as a threat. But, too often, it’s actually the person saying “I’m suicidal”...because they are. Helping someone who is suicidal (whether it be by keeping hem company for a night, or calling the police) doesn’t have to mean ‘drowning yourself’.

Depression is a real thing for a lot of people. And suicide? Happens. A lot.

 

[Sweetleaf]

@Sideways I've been depressed and suicidal myself - I imagine a lot of us here on this site have been in that place.

There is a big difference between going to someone for help and manipulating someone with threats of suicide. I could have been more clear - by threats of suicide I mean outright going to someone and threatening to kill yourself - not talking to them about how you feel like killing yourself, but outright putting pressure on them by telling them you are going to do it. It's pretty much a hostage situation at that point - they're holding themselves hostage and trying to put the responsibility onto you to keep them alive.

 

[Ronin]

@Tibergrace, while I understand and agree with your general point - that can touch on a much larger thing of communication, and communication in emergencies, though.

I know for one I'm not able to ask for help - in emergencies - in a normal way. I've been raised in a world of threats and demands and ultimatums. My talking of feeling that way may come well across as more urgent even without meaning to, if I share at all, just because of how the usual talk rolled around me (and, yeah, I give that background to people before we get into any serious relationship, plain because I need to know if they're willing to consider quite a different background.)

So I don't think every manipulative sounding communication may be meant as one; and the talking about how you're feeling may be -used- as more manipulative than the outright 'I'm going to do X'. I think it varies person to person, relationship to relationship.