“She is not really suicidal. She just wants attention.”
“He did not really attempt suicide. It was just a cry for help.”
“If she had really wanted to die, she’d be dead.”
These are often the reactions of friends and family to a suicidal person. Sometimes, it is true that a person who made what appeared to be a suicide attempt did not really want to die. In one large study, nearly half of people who reported that they’d attempted suicide endorsed the following survey item : “My attempt was a cry for help. I did not intend to die.”
The flip side of those study results is that more than half of people who reported a suicide attempt did intend to die. They endorsed one of two survey items: “I made a serious attempt to kill myself and it was only luck that I did not succeed” or “I tried to kill myself, but knew that the method was not fool-proof.” (On a side note, I take issue with the wording of these items, as no method is fool-proof. People have survived gunshot wounds to the head, falls from great heights, and more.)
When Suicidal Behavior Really Is a Cry for Help
Even among those who reported a suicide attempt but didn’t actually intend to die, there still are serious problems for which these people deserve compassion and concern – certainly not derision – from others.
First, people who hurt themselves in an apparent suicide attempt do so because of great pain, desperation, or other distressing emotions. If they’re crying out for help, there’s usually a good reason for them to do so – and a good reason for others to listen. After all, if you were drowning in a lake and people were standing on shore, what would you do? Most likely, you’d cry out for help.
Second, it’s normal for people to need and want attention. Everybody has a need for attention; what differs among people is how they go about getting it. Threatening or attempting suicide is a very unhealthy, not to mention dangerous, way to get attention or communicate distress to others. It’s a sign that something is wrong. Even if the person doesn’t really plan to die by suicide, they do need help. There are other, more healthy ways for people to let others know that they are suffering, angry, depressed, or otherwise struggling.
Third, even people who threaten or attempt suicide to get other people’s attention can still die. Mistakes happen. A study of teens found that half overestimated the amount of Tylenol needed to cause death. So, a teen could overdose on Tylenol in the hopes of showing others how much they need help, without realizing the overdose will be fatal. Who knows how many suicides every year are a cry for help gone awry?
Take All Suicidal (or Potentially Suicidal) Behavior Seriously
In short, suicidal behavior is a serious, potentially fatal problem. This applies to suicidal thoughts as well as attempts. If someone you know is saying they really want to die by suicide – or has already tried – take them very seriously. They deserve empathy, compassion, and assistance, whether from you or professionals (or both).
Which would be worse – to presume that somebody really is suicidal when they are not, or to presume that somebody is not suicidal when they really are? Although both situations are complicated, the second scenario can result in death. It’s better to err on the side of safety.
Copyright 2013 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, All rights Reserved. Written For: Speaking of Suicide. Photo purchased from Fotolia.com.
Updated October 2024
I tried talking to close friends I trusted when I felt depressed or anxious but they never really seemed to take it seriously or they did not know how to react to my depression. I am/was almost constantly anxious and or depressed and I tried asking my mother and my friends for help but nobody ever believed that I was really in great distress. After trying to talk to them and hoping for even a bit of concern and failing to receive anything but “You can choose to be happy”, “Stop being depressed”. I stopped talking to my closest friend, My boyfriend and my mother. I felt abandoned by them in a way and horribly misunderstood. I felt that the only way I could make anyone take me seriously or understand that the way I was feeling wasn’t something small was if I did something drastic like Cut myself, Drink alcohol or even attempt suicide and sometimes I wanted help and other times I really did want to die and sometimes I the thought of dying didn’t scare me at all.
“Depression Point of View,” your comment profoundly portrays the struggles that many people with depression face. Not only must they suffer from the depression itself, but also from the pain and isolation of not being heard or understood by others. Statements like “You can choose to be happy” and “Stop being depressed” blame the victim. As if it were so easy to just choose to be happy! If it were, then surely everyone would happily make the choice.
I am sorry that you are experiencing this type of emotional abandonment. And you make the important point that self harming behavior like cutting or a suicide attempt can get people’s attention.
My hope for you is that you have found someone who can give you the empathy, understanding, and support that can help you heal. That person might be friend or family, or they might be a professional or volunteer. And if you haven’t yet found that person (or persons), maybe the resources here will be a good place to look: https://speakingofsuicide.mystagingwebsite.com/resources/#immediatehelp.
I know this article was posted over a year ago, but I felt the need to post a personal experience. In the summer of 2012, I started hanging out with another high school kid. He was from a different school than me, so meeting up was hard. One of the times we hung out, I saw scars all over his lower back. I asked him about them, and although he didn’t tell me how he managed to do them, he did admit that he was suicidal. Later that evening, we were watching a movie and I noticed that he had something tiny in his hand and he was pushing it into his chest. He surrendered it to me when I asked for it. Jump two months forward, and he and I were in a relationship. I was a volleyball manager and a few hours away on the night he FaceTimed me and almost took his life. He didn’t, but that’s because he realized that I cared about him, that I loved him.
….he had been abused and bullied as a kid, then as a teen he finally wanted out. If I hadn’t come along when I did, he would be dead right now. I probably wouldn’t even have known him beyond “the kid that played with my little brother one time at our parents’ work party”.
I take some issue with “If someone you know is saying they really want to die by suicide – or has already tried – take them very seriously. They deserve empathy, compassion, and assistance, whether from you or professionals (or both).”
As one who certainly does not intend to live out another decade and who does not look for anyone’s empathy or compassion, I take issue with the underlying assumption: that more years of life is good. For everyone. No exceptions.
There are. Exceptions.
Hi Roger, thanks for writing. Your comment touches on one of life’s fundamental philosophical debates: Is suicide rational? Must it always be prevented? Are, as you put it, “more years of life” always good?
In the suicide prevention community, the fundamental assumption is that, yes, suicide should be prevented, although some would say otherwise if terminal illness is present. And I know that there are many, like you, who disagree with the premise that life should be preserved in the suicidal, in all of the suicidal, that is.
If only people who say that a suicidal individual “didn’t really mean it” or ” didn’t want to die; it was a cry for help,” could see the irony in their dismissal. It’s that insensitivity and lack of compassion that drives us to want to escape this world in the first place. We are tired of being told we are just weak and just want to be victims. That we need to just buck up and be positive. People who view us as a burden, a social outcast while we are alive and avoid us are the very ones who after we do kill ourselves are crying on our coffins claiming they wish they “knew” and are so distraught.
Make no mistake, people who attempt suicide want to die. We are in unbearable pain caused by mental illness — we are not just weak. We often haven’t had regular success with treatment and have encountered the same judgement and callousness ironically from so called mental health professionals.
When someone has cancer, friends and family rally around them with support. But when someone has clinical depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, etc, people see it not as a disease deserving of the same compassion and support but as a character flaw and flee. We deal with it alone and ashamed. I actually had a “friend” say to my face that suicide is an evolutionary solution, because people “like that” shouldn’t keep polluting the gene pool. I imagine a similar comment about cancer patients might have drawn some angry responses.
It starts with ending the stigma associated with mental illness. Until that happens this sad story will continue to repeat itself.
Beautifully said. I can only hope that other friends, parents, siblings, spouses, etc. of suicidal people read your words and fully receive their meaning. Because depression, overwhelm, and other stresses are invisible, friends and family often misunderstand. They may think that the suicidal wish emanates from the person’s personality, rather than from the stress or the illness. And so they blame the suicidal person, when in fact suicidal people and their loved ones share a common enemy: the forces of suicide.
The tricky thing about mental illnesses – and extreme stress and trauma, too, which can also lead to suicidal thoughts and behavior – is that they are invisible. There are no X rays, blood tests, or brain scans that can confirm that somebody has a mental illness. There is nothing growing inside their body, no fracture of a body part, nothing to blame except this invisible strain that turns thoughts inside out and makes death seem like the solution, when in a healthy person, the mind views survival as the utmost goal.
People who experience mental illness, trauma, and other stresses that can provoke intense suicidal thoughts (and suicide itself) are the victim of these forces, not the cause. Until people fully appreciate that, you are correct – many people with suicidal thoughts will continue to feel stigmatized and alone. Posts like yours, above, can have tremendous impact on whoever reads them. Even if just one person reads your words and is touched by them (and I have no doubt that there will be more than one), you have made a huge contribution. Thinking of your comment on another post, my hope is that somebody can do that for you, as well.
It isn’t a cry for help. It is a way out. It doesn’t say ‘please, won’t you help me get a handle on things’, it says ‘I want out’. Suicide is a way to make it all stop, to quit doing anything. Suicide says ‘I QUIT…I refuse…I’m out’.
Suicide is a statement of a direct desire to not participate.