Understanding Anxiety And Suicide

[watundah]

I had lunch with a good friend who suffers from anxiety. She takes on the world's problems. I have anxiety, too, but not like she does. She battles with the urge to commit suicide quite often. She is under psychological and psychiatric care but the SI is still there.

As an anxiety sufferer, I never think of suicide. I assumed that she was diagnosed with depression but she said "a little bit". So I am posting to learn the connection between anxiety and want to commit suicide. I assume that it is seen as an escape from anxiety. I'd appreciate any information so I can be more supportive of her. Sometimes it's hard to not simply repeat over and over that she needs to let her adult children clean up their own messes - but I don't because it won't help.
Thanks

 

[Tinyflame]

Idk but there's definitely SI without depression, is anxiety the cause, Idk. I've wondered if it's anxiety + exhaustion? Or anxiety + fear + feeling like a burden for too long? Etc.

 

[Friday]

Depression is a fairly new thing for me. While sure, there are some links there now, both past/present they tend to be linked far harder to other things. One of which is:

What goes up must come down. Whether I'm over the moon happy/excited, or crazy high emotions any other way? Including anxiety running hot as blazes... Guaranteed, unless I gentle that landing* I'm going to crash hard into some suicidal bullshit.

* Deliberately both induce stress (just at lower levels than what had me sky high) -AND- be burning off both that stress, and the initial stress. -OR- Med Cushion.

 

[watundah]

Yup. She said docs are concerned re how drastically she plunges.

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes I get the plunge part too, yet not such cycles, more the anxiety contributing to the cause. Though I had anxiety as a child, but I distinctly recall the moment SI as an option first came to me, & it was following failed coping attempts for the ptsd (& stopping maladaptive coping attempts) many years after the anxiety. So I think it still (for me) goes back to the ptsd & perhaps as @FridayJones said stress. Also perhaps more areas of the brain involved? That would be my possible guess. Like co-stimulating trouble with depression (frontal lobe), anxiety, memory & recall, words too (several areas), impulse control & fight-flight-or-freeze (amygdala & others). There is some other detail I don't understand, because emotional (de)regulation techniques don't work as they should. Then add in beliefs. :rolleyes:

 

[Tinyflame]

Just to add, I started to think of this too after reading an article wherein they said concussions & loss of consciousness (of 4 or 5 minutes I think) was equated to a 3-fold increase in suicide. Worse yet the force of the impact, eg boxers, sports. But it got me thinking, is there a correlation to -> loss of memory issues/ difficulty with executive functions -> anxiety (maybe depression, too-?) -> suicidality?

[It made me feel a little less of a freak, anyway :rolleyes: , re: SI, since I lost consciousness once relatively recently (within 10 years) once for that long, & probably had more than one concussion that I recall. (I can't quite recall- because of my memory!! :rolleyes: ) ]

 

[watundah]

Thanks for sharing this jb!