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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

If you're in the US, you may also wish to think twice before calling the cops on a loved one, particularly if they're only a danger to themselves (and not you or others). Police in the US rarely receive training[0] in dealing with suicidal individuals, and are instead trained to escalate the situation and or use violence for a resolution[1].

There are numerous examples of the police turning up on a suicide call and killing the individual, even when unarmed[2][3]. They simply aren't qualified to deal with suicidal individuals and should only be used when other's safety is at stake.

[0] http://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/375040-police-need-mor...

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/police-...

[2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/unarmed-teen-killed-by-police-...

[3] https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/02/santa-clara-da-clears...

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I suspect this is a driver of the increased suicide rate. People are afraid to tell others because they don't want to deal with the police/authorities, so they don't get the help they need.

My sister attempted suicide as a teenager and the police that responded spent hours ransacking our home and further tormenting my family for no good reason. Then to think of her being locked up in the hospital (I wasn't able to see her for at least a week).

If I were having such thoughts, I certainly wouldn't tell anyone for this precise reason.

As a person who lives in the US, this isn't something that I would generally think of if I were considering whether to tell someone that I was planning suicide. Reading your account however, maybe it's something I should be worried about.

Telling anybody associated with the government that you're thinking about suicide instantly triggers a type of panic. I think it's very similar to the situation with drug overdoses, where calling for help can often get you into additional trouble. It's very likely, IMO, that there are people who have suicidal ideation but won't talk about it because they don't want to get committed, or worse. Then they don't get any help or advice and feel even more alone and do something that may have been preventable if they'd not been too scared about the consequences of openly talking about it.

There's a lot of issues with this in the US.

When I was a kid my oldest brother enrolled in some free counseling from a church. They had him fill out why he was going to counseling so he honestly wrote down that he had been having suicidal thoughts.

So this church freaked out and sent a pastor and someone else over to force him to promise not to kill himself.

Which as you can imagine was horrible and completely broke his trust in the system.

Also taught me to never ever be honest with people about serious things like suicide unless you've already know how they will react or you think you are a real danger to yourself.

Suicidal thoughts from time to time are fine. The issue is when you start to have real intent to carry them out. That's when you need help.

There also seems to be this weird stigma about admitting that you have ever contemplated suicide. People seem to take that as some sort of signal that you are completely unhinged.

Maybe I'm a nutcase, but I've taken the time to prepare a set of scenarios under which I would no longer want to live, and think about what would need to be taken care of to exit the world without undue burden on those that depend on me. That seems like an eminently rational thing to do.

>> ...but I've taken the time to prepare a set of scenarios under which I would no longer want to live, and think about what would need to be taken care of...

I believe professionals would categorize what you wrote there as "planning suicide". So long as you have not started "taking care of" those things you have not begun executing your plan. Planning is a rather big step beyond contemplating - I hope you're doing better now. You may also want to consider that actually getting your affairs in order could be an enabler.

See, this is exactly what I am talking about.

It's evaluating a set of contingencies. Like, the general staffs of armies make war plans that they will never execute, unless the particular parameters fall in place, all the time. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.

I think what is missing is what set of circumstances would trigger you to execute your plans. If it’s “world wide epidemic which causes extreme pain and suffering with less than 5% chance of survival” that is one thing. However if you are planning your suicide in case you lose your job or your significant other cheats on you then that would be concerning and reason to seek help.

There's no need to imagine such an epidemic. We're all going to die. And sometimes that involves extended periods of pain and suffering, with no chance of survival. In civilized places, voluntary euthanasia is available. Elsewhere, one needs to plan ahead.

We need to decouple the concepts of "assisted suicide in cases of terminal illness" (may not be assisted, may not be terminal) from other types of suicide.

The public health responses to you should be very different to the people who experience rapid onset despair.

It is important to take your mental health seriously before it reaches crisis points. By crisis, I mean where other people make choices for you as a result of your forfeit of authority in the situation.

There was a situation in Canada where police incident reports were shared with the U.S. border authorities under a law enforcement information sharing agreement, and a few people were denied entrance to the U.S. as a result of historic crisis encounters with police. Cops aren't bad, but institutions can be callous. Similarly, the record of a mental health crisis (or failing to disclose it) can have an impact on certain kinds of insurance, security clearances, (as above) travel, custody agreements, and by extension, jobs.

Learn to stay mentally healthy, and realize that it is an investment you make, often at the cost of other immediate things, which pays off as the result of sound decisions compounded over years.

100%. I think the physical “keep your body in shape” movement must be followed by a “keep your mental health/resilience in shape” movement in the coming years.

+1 be careful, even if they don't use violence they tend to go on conservative side and put your loved one in 72h hold and if it's late night or proper mental hospitals are full then they will end up spending those hours with crazy people they pick up on the street. It will be more traumatizing (especially for females since they will be surrounded by crazy males from the streets).

Yep. Back in my student / tutor days at university, I had a student with severe mental health problems. One afternoon, someone at his dorm called the police with the idea of helping him. He died of that day while being restrained by the officers who came to help.

Many officers don't receive sufficient training on how to deal with mental health crises, and sometimes the result of contact is bad.

Just saw on The Intercept:

> Police Broke Into Chelsea Manning’s Home with Guns Drawn — in a "Wellness Check"

She wasn't home. But the surveillance video is frightening. At least, it wasn't a SWAT team. But damn.

https://theintercept.com/2018/06/05/chelsea-manning-video-tw...

Suicide by cop is not uncommon. Even if you're not seriously suicidal, just severely depressed, I suspect that it can be tempting. In my experience, I'm too ineffectual when severely depressed enough to consider suicide. But faced with someone with a gun, all it takes is threatening them. I recall relatively recent video of a young woman who was killed after she charged a cop. At the entrance of a university parking garage.

I would be thinking really fucking carefully about posting this. If a loved one has a specific plan to commit suicide you need to take that really fucking seriously. Death by cop is so much smaller than suicide rate in the US.

I thought the parent was taking it seriously, and I also think that part of taking that seriously is recognizing that someone who is that despondent might attempt suicide-by-cop.

As a person who has been badly affected by the police and the health system because of suicidal thoughts, I think you should think “fucking seriously” before you give advise to people with suicidal thoughts.

You may not like it, but the system utterly sucks and you can be easily, even casually, abused. In fact the likelihood is high this will happen. And the kicker? No one gives a damn if you do get abused, and if you die then your mental illness will be used against you for the reason that some cop killed you.

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