Many people desperately want to know what to say – and what not to say – to someone who is thinking of suicide. The article 10 Things Not to Say to a Suicidal Person is one of Speaking of Suicide’s most popular post. Almost a half-million people have viewed it in the last 2½ years. Several hundred have left comments.
Sometimes people complain to me that the post describes what not to say, but it doesn’t say enough about what to say. They’re right. So in this post, I provide 10 things to say to a suicidal person.
First, Some Caveats about What to Say to a Suicidal Person
Before starting, I want to make some things clear: I came up with this list based on my conversations with suicidal individuals in my work as a clinical social worker, my readings of both clinical literature and accounts by individuals who experienced suicidal crises, and my own past experiences with suicidal thoughts. Nobody has actually researched systematically the most effective things for friends or family to say to a suicidal person, so opinion and experience are the best we’ve got for now. Results will vary according to different people’s needs and personalities.
I also want to make clear that this list of things to say is not intended to be a script. Instead, I illustrate ways that you can help a suicidal person continue to open up, rather than shutting the person down with a comment that minimizes, invalidates, or even denigrates the person’s experience.
And I want to add that what to say often isn’t nearly as important as how to listen. As I explain in my post “How Would You Listen to a Person on the Roof?”, someone who is thinking of suicide needs to feel understood. Let the person tell their story. Refrain from immediately trying to fix the situation or make the person feel better. These immediate efforts to get the person to stop thinking of suicide, however well intended, can halt the conversation.
So, with all that said, here are 10 things you can say to someone who tells you that they are considering suicide.
1. “I’m so glad you told me that you’re thinking of suicide.”
When someone discloses suicidal thoughts, some parents, partners, friends and others react with anger (“Don’t be stupid!”), pain (“How could you think of hurting me like that?”), or disbelief (“You can’t be serious.”) Some “freak out.” A suicidal person might then feel a need to comfort the hurt person, provide a defense to the angry person, or retreat internally from the disbelieving person. The person might regret ever having shared in the first place that they were thinking of suicide.
By saying “I’m glad you told me” – or something similar – you convey that you welcome and encourage disclosure of suicidal thoughts, and that you can handle it.
2. “It’s sad you’re hurting like this.”
This simple expression of empathy can go a long way toward validating the person’s pain and soothing a sense of aloneness. There’s no “Oh it’s not so bad,” no “You don’t really mean that,” no “But you have so much going for you,” no other statement denying or minimizing the person’s pain.
3. “What’s going on that makes you want to die?”
This invitation to the suicidal person to tell their story can provide validation, engender a sense of connection, and show that you really want to understand. Ask the person to tell their story. And then, listen. Really listen. To deepen your understanding, follow up with more invitations to share, like “Tell me more.” Show empathy and understanding, too: “That sounds awful” or “I can see why that’s painful.”
4. “When do you think you’ll act on your suicidal thoughts?”
Even if you’re not a mental health professional, you still can ask some basic questions to help understand the person’s risk for suicide. Asking about timing will make the difference between whether you need to call someone immediately for help (for example, if the person says, “I have a gun in my backpack and I’m going to shoot myself during lunch”) or whether you can continue to have leisurely conversation with the person.
5. “What ways do you think of killing yourself?”
This is another risk-assessment question. The answer can help reveal the gravity of the situation. A person who has put a lot of time and thought into suicide methods might be in more danger than someone with a vague wish to be dead, for example.
Understanding the suicide methods that the person has considered also will help you in your efforts to keep the person safe. For example, if you’re a parent and your teenage child discloses suicidal thoughts, knowing that your teenager is considering overdosing on a painkiller alerts you to the need to lock up or throw away all potentially dangerous medications. (See this information from the Center for Youth for ways to make your home safer.)
6. “Do you have access to a gun?”
Even if you think the person doesn’t own a gun or can’t get a hold of one, this information is always important. If the answer is yes, ask the person to consider giving the gun (or a key piece of the gun) to someone, locking the gun up and giving someone the key, or doing something else to make the home gun-free until the danger of suicide goes down. For more information about firearm safety related to suicide risk, also see this gun safety fact sheet.
7. “Help is available.”
By telling the person about help that’s available, you can help them to not feel so alone, helpless, or hopeless. If you are in the U.S., you can give them the number to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (988, or 800.273.8255) or the Crisis Text Line (741741). You also can show them the SpeakingOfSuicide.com Resources page, which lists other resources in the U.S. and worldwide to receive help by phone, email, text, or online chat. If the person who reveals suicidal thoughts to you is your child, take them to a mental health professional or an emergency room for an evaluation.
8. “What can I do to help?”
Definitely tell the person about resources for help, but also make clear that you are available, too, if you’re able to do so. That said, there’s only so much you can do, so if you are feeling solely responsible for keeping the person alive, it’s best to involve others, too.
9. “I care about you, and I hope you stay.”
Be careful here. In my earlier post, one of the 10 things not to say is, “Don’t you know I would be devastated if you killed yourself? How could you think of hurting me like that?” As I note in that post, “Your loved one already feels awful. Heaping guilt on top of that is not going to help them feel soothed, understood, or welcome to tell you more.”
At the same time, a simple statement of how much you care about or love the person can help nurture a sense of connection, if your statement isn’t an attempt to stop the person from talking further about suicide.
10. “I hope you’ll keep talking to me about your thoughts of suicide.”
Just as you want the person to feel welcome for having shared their suicidal thoughts to you, it’s good to make clear that you would welcome further disclosures, as well. Often, someone who has suicidal thoughts senses from others an expectation to “get over it already.” By inviting the person to come to you again about their suicidal thoughts, you can help prevent isolation and secrecy.
What Are Your Ideas about What to Say to a Suicidal Person?
There are many other helpful responses besides those listed here. If you have thoughts of suicide, what do you wish someone would say to you if you told them? If you have ever helped a suicidal friend or family member, what responses from you seemed to foster sharing, connection, and safety? Please feel free to leave a comment below.
Copyright 2017 by Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW. Written for SpeakingOfSuicide. All Rights Reserved.
Edited 9/2/22
All horrible suggestions.
The only help I want is killing myself. Stop promoting dbt or the “crisis” hotline. Why can’t people understand and respect that some people genuinely want to be dead? I dont want advice or therapy or a compassionate ear .. this is not temporary. I want my family to see me dead. Always have, always will. Am so sick of people trying to give advice or therapy, or living a life I never asked for, of living an existence I hate.
Let people die in peace with dignity instead of prolonging lifelong suffering.
[This comment was edited to abide by the Comments Policy. — SF]
Anonymous,
The pain and anger in your words are palpable. I’m sorry you’re suffering so badly and that living feels unbearable to you.
I understand that suggestions like therapy, DBT, crisis lines, or compassionate listening can feel useless — even infuriating — when what you want is not help living, but help dying. I don’t want to argue with your pain or pretend that a few words from me can change what you’re experiencing.
At the same time, this site exists for people who may be helped by those suggestions. You’re not required to read or accept what I’ve written. Just as smokers can choose not to read anti-smoking warnings, and atheists can choose not to read religious tracts, people who don’t want suicide-prevention messages are free to turn away from them.
But others do want help. Some are children or adolescents. Some are in a crisis that will pass. Some have treatable conditions. Some are ambivalent. Some are desperate for even one reason to stay alive a little longer. And some — many, even — go on to find meaning, purpose, relief, love, or peace that they could not imagine in their darkest moments.
Every year in the U.S., about 15 million people seriously consider suicide, and almost 50,000 die by suicide. I grieve for those 50,000. I also find great hope in the many millions who survive despite suicidal wishes. They’re a big reason why I created and maintain this site. So are the many people who have shared testimony to their own recovery, including some guest authors here.
I know my words can’t reach everyone. I wish they could. But if this site helps even one person feel less alone, less trapped, or more able to keep going, then the work is worthwhile to me.
Thank you for sharing here. I’m certain many others can relate to your anger and pain, and reading words like yours may help them feel less alone.
Dr. Freedenthal – Thank you for that perfect response to the anger in the post by Anonymous. I considered answering myself but decided not to because I couldn’t think of a tactful way to tell them that, despite their own angry dismissal, that some people can be helped and demanding that you stop trying to help them is unacceptable. You found the right words and I’m glad you did. Thank you.
Linda S.,
Thank you, I appreciate your supportive words! I’ll be honest, that wasn’t my first draft. Sometimes it frustrates me that people can react so hostilely to my simply trying to help. But then I have to remind myself that their anger is a reflection of their despair. They’re mad because what I wrote didn’t help them. I wish it did help everybody! But I’m also not going to stop trying to help just because I don’t — and can’t — have a 100% success rate with the site’s readers (or even close to that, probably).
Many angry comments don’t get published, because they’re curse- or insult-laden personal attacks. That makes the supportive comments, like yours, all the more precious. Thanks again.❤️
Funnily enough the best response I’ve ever received was from a friend looking me dead in the eyes and asking “did it work?” While I was standing right in front of them
Maybe it was just the seriousness in the way it was phrased but I’ve never laughed so hard in my life, I didn’t even think about doing it again after that lol
Anonymous,
That’s so interesting! It speaks to what the psychologist Marsha Linehan says it’s necessary sometimes: irreverence. That plainspoken question sort of jolted you out of your way of looking at things, didn’t it? Playfulness and irreverence can do that. But, too, the same question that helped you could strike someone else as insensitive or harmful. Nothing works for everyone, sadly, but I’m glad the question worked for you. Thanks for sharing here!
As someone currently going through a severe situation, all of this is fantastic and I wish I could just send this list to my family. But they’d just get mad at me and say im trying to weaponize my emotions. Using my life as a threat to them. Every time I bring it up. Some of the risk assessment on here however might be pushing a little much. When dealing with someone in my position I feel its best to not make them feel cornered and asking these risk evaluating questions might make them feel like you aren’t there because you care, more so because you want to stop it from happening. Preventing suicide isnt always because someone cares and its generally for selfish reasons. Be the one who doesnt come off as selfish to someone who’s thinking about taking the most selfish action they ever could.
Anonymous,
Those are excellent points, and I appreciate your sharing. Risk assessment questions can come off as meeting the questioner’s needs, rather than the needs of the person who’s hurting. That’s unfortunate, because both can be true — someone could ask you questions about risk because they don’t want someone dying on their watch, yes, but also because they care deeply about you and want you to feel better.
I’m sorry your family responds antagonistically so your disclosures. That must hurt terribly. I can only hope they’re reacting out of fear and love. Of course that might be Pollyannish of me, but I do sometimes see people practice denial and minimization because it hurts too much to realize that the person they love is hurting so badly that they want to die.
Thank you again for sharing here. I hope you’re able to find people you can confide in safely, and I especially hope things get better for you.
I wasn’t close to suicide. I just talked about it. This led to the calling of police and a crisis team. That led to me going to an emergency room, where I spent 36 hellacious hours.
Next, was the psychiatric hospital which I reference as “Living in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ “. It was the worst 2 weeks of my life. It was all that was mentioned here and then some: patients in worse condition, mean staff members, medical staff barely handling what was thrown at them, noise, yelling, containment, lack of privacy, inability to have quiet moments to myself. It was unbearable. It made me worse. It got so overwhelming at times that it led me to do things I not only never did before, but never even thought of doing. It scarred me for life, yet I still have suicidal thoughts.
I never want to end up in a psychiatric hospital again.
Chief,
Your experience is heartbreaking, both because of the pain you experienced at a time you needed help, but also because of the fear it’s instilled in you for the future. I hope that you’ll seek help again if you need it, despite those fears, and I hope you actually receive help, not more trauma. I’m sorry you were hurt so badly.
Thanks for sharing your experiences here.
Chief, I know exactly what you speak of. My 22 year old daughter just got out the day after Easter.
This isn’t the first time but it is the first time in adult unit. We’ve been dealing with this since she’s 12.
New thing is when you piss off your friends while venting they call 911 for a wellness check. Then you go back to hospital.
Small town here doctors/therapists come and go without even telling the patients. New doctor/therapists means back to square one and picking those scabs reliving why you’re there in the first place.
While in there , no counseling was done.
This is where it all began for me. I had to break an entire room at 15 to be let out. My parents almost sued because of how bad it was for me. But where still going strong with the same reaction every time I reach out…
What if the suicidal person has really been suffering from a psychiatric condition too much, for too long, continues to deteriorate. They really want to be understood in their decision to end their suffering , and are basically asking for a blessing to end their life.
HEllo, I am so sorry your suffering. But there is help out there
I get this one from my partner a lot. She’s even asked me to help her look for places where it is legal for assisted suicide. It’s truly an awful place to be as a partner, but I just sat with her in her pain. I’m so sorry you dealt with that.
Anonymous,
That’s an excellent, and poignant, question. I’ve definitely encountered people who looking for that blessing. The thing is, who is to say that someone’s psychiatric condition is so hopeless that they’ll never again want to live?
I know in some European countries there are panels that evaluate requests for medical assistance in dying for people with psychiatric suffering. And there are some advantages to dying that way, to be sure: the person can say goodbye to family, explain their reasoning, protect them from the trauma of unexpectedly discovering their body, and protect themselves from a suicide attempt that leaves them with permanent, incapacitating injuries if they survive.
Those advantages are real, but what I constantly return to in these scenarios is the people for whom life can get better. The 10 year olds. The teenagers. The adults going through a temporary crisis. The people with lifelong mental illness who still find meaning and purpose in life, even after they were convinced it was impossible to do so. I don’t want to send a message to those people — and others who can be hurt — that their death is warranted. That suicide is the answer. That there is no hope.
Granted, sometimes for some people there is no hope, especially those with a terminal illness (which is why I support medical aid in dying in that context). But for people without a terminal diagnosis — and no mental health condition is indisputably terminal — it can do harm to facilitate their death, or to not do anything to stop it, in my opinion.
I’m sorry. I know my position is imperfect. But it’s the less flawed option, to me, among other options that also are deeply problematic.