If someone you care about has suicidal thoughts, there are many things you can do to help besides telling them about the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, advising them to get professional help, or calling the authorities. (In fact, please don’t call the authorities unless someone’s life is truly in immediate danger.)
It’s ideal for someone with suicidal thoughts to get professional help, but not everybody can. (Or wants to.) Fortunately, you don’t have to be a therapist or psychiatrist to help. You, just you – whether you’re a friend, a parent, a partner, another family member, even a co-worker or a fellow member of a church or other group – can help someone to stay safe, to feel supported, and to get through their ordeal.
But helping the person with suicidal thoughts isn’t your only challenge. Living with the constant possibility of suicide can stir up tremendous stress, angst, fear, and pain. You might feel responsible for the person’s safety – for their life, actually. You might sacrifice your own needs because you fear the person will die if you don’t. You might feel manipulated even if the person isn’t actually being manipulative.
There are ways you can manage your fears and stress while also being present and helpful to the person you’re concerned about. I go into all of these possibilities in my new book Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts: What Family, Friends, and Partners Can Say and Do.
The book officially was released today, Jan. 2, 2023, although Amazon started selling copies a couple weeks ago. I’m thrilled that Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts was named one of the best mental health books of 2022, by Mashable.
If you want to learn more about the book, you can “look inside” it here on Amazon.
Also, here are some places where I talk about the book or the issues it covers:
- Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts: Interview with Stacey Freedenthal, PhD (30 minutes). In this Social Work Podcast interview, host Jonathan Singer, PhD, and I talk about many challenges people face when someone they love has suicidal thoughts: feeling manipulated by the person (even if the person’s not actually being manipulated), navigating secrecy and stigma, getting support, listening bravely to what’s hard to hear, and maintaining hope without invalidating or minimizing the person’s feelings.
- Stacey Freedenthal on Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts: Exclusive Interview (6 minute read). This Q and A focuses not only on the book and topics it covers, but on me – my interests, my life, etc. It gave me a chance to talk, if briefly, about one of my most favorite topics in the world: Cats!
- Interview by KATU in Portland (5 minutes). True confession: I need to learn to be more parsimonious in live TV interviews (I was nervous!). Still, I do my best here to explain the reasons why someone with suicidal thoughts might not get help, and how friends and family can ask about suicidal thoughts.
Something that excites me about the book is its affordability. Right now the electronic version is listed for only $9.99 at the publisher’s site and on Amazon. My first book, Helping the Suicidal Person: Tips and Techniques for Professionals, is priced at $32-$45, which limits its accessibility to many people, unfortunately. (No, I don’t have any control over the price a publisher sets.)
Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts is available at many public libraries, and it’s for sale on all the major bookselling sites, like Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Wal-Mart. You also can purchase it directly from the publisher, New Harbinger Publications.
May Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts be a help to you and to the people you care about, too. ❤️
What Do You Think about Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts?
If you read Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts or just have some ideas about this painful topic, I’d love to know your thoughts! Please feel free to leave a comment below. If for any reason you don’t want me to publish your submission, please say so in your comment, and I’ll be the only one who reads it.
The Black Box project is a joke. The means exist already for every single node on the entire internet to capture “signals” from suicidal people. I’m no computer wizard, but I would bet my god damned bottom dollar that some 6 million “signals” drove people to Speaking of Suicide.
3 million dollars for a non-profit organization to try and suss out signals by taking the personal computers of veterans who committed suicide? Why not just give the contract to Google? Or Facebook? Maybe even use the Google analytics that this very website uses to figure out how to invade peoples privacy to keep them safe.
I’d bet my second bottom dollar that if you’ve thought about suicide at all, you’ve probably been curious to know how Reddit, Yelp, Facebook, Google, X, Snapchat, et Al. handle the request for “I simply don’t want to be here anymore” or “I want to die” are handled by (whatever) platform it is?
Google now has better intuition than our mothers.
These people getting 3 million dollars to data mine the suicidal thoughts of veterans? Nearly every school in America now has Go Guardian. Every kid has a cradle-to-grave dossier from where they sat in class to what URL they looked up in real time. This “problem” has been solved.
This manner of “help” is part and parcel for some of the angst suicidal people feel in the first place.
There is a deep crisis of meaning going on in this country. Suicide is already a solid 10% cause without having to develop spyware for the deceased. Enough is a god-damned nough!
Our cars track us with astonishing behavioral insight. So do our phones. Do they record the disenfranchised grief? Your car was one of the last places you could bawl your eyes out. Now your car could possibly know you’re upset?
This is absolute madness. We send people to technology that’s betraying us to find the answers to our sadness?
Some of us are sad and the signals are off the scales! We don’t need grifters getting funded to figure this out in the most horrifying ways.
We have become nihilists when it comes to our sense of privacy. We are trained that it’s not of value. It is, and it’s now data points for scientists in the business of suicide.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/nonprofit-seeks-insight-devices-left-veterans-died-suicide/story?id=103506378
Thank you for all your suggestions in this and other posts I have read. I am trying to support my adult son who has struggled since middle school with mental health/SUD and has been in treatment hospitals for both SUD and mental health issues for quite a while before and after a suicide attempt. As a mom who tries to fix everything I have lots of learning on how to best support him. I have made so many mistakes ugh!! However, I want to learn and do better. It is hard when the person shuts down/shuts you out and holds it inside cause you don’t know they are struggling and then when I hear they are I am surprised every time. I am trying to take care of myself and I think that is where the surprise comes – I feel good all is good and then boop, I get wind knocked out of me. So, I need to work on the panic aspect. It is hard but I understand that it is harder for him!! I hope I can learn to better listen without judgement so he feels heard. I feel like I put my foot in the mouth (making suggestions etc) despite knowing better. Wish there was a way I could apologize for it/ my transgressions. If that is even a good idea?
Mama Diane,
Your son’s lucky to have a mom who’s so supportive and wants to help the most possible. There’s another post on this site, 10 Things Not to Say to a Suicidal Person, and a number of people have told me that after reading the post, they apologized to their loved one for all the things on the list they themselves had said. And the apology seemed to help forge a better connection, though the ones who have had bad experiences might not be telling me about them. 😉
Really, people with the best of intentions can end up saying something invalidating, minimizing, or otherwise not so helpful. We naturally want to help someone who’s hurting to feel better, so we offer reassurance, advice, affirmations, etc. Listening — really listening — is often hard.
It’s also very hard when you’re on the outside and can only wonder what’s going on inside. I hope your son’s SUD and mental health issues improve, and I also hope the emotional roller coaster you sometimes find yourself on slows down and evens out over time.
Thanks for sharing here! You can also call 988 or text 741741 to talk with someone about the best ways to support your son, your own frustrations and pain, and other questions you might have.
thank you for the suggestion of apologizing – and the calling of 988 for advice on helping him!! I did call 988 and the person who helped me was great help. Your list is great and helpful. I will definitely address any issues I may have caused when I communicate with my son. My husband ended up buying your kindle book. We now at least feel like we are better equipped to help him (listen) than we were before. And on the same page. We have so many books re SUD, this is the first time we thought to learn about supporting him with suicidal ideation. Sometimes it seems more sud, sometimes it seems like a mental health issue. The SUD has always caused the huge plunge to the depths of despair as well as contortion of reality and we observe it and it is so hard not to try to help him see/make the correlation with “advice”. Cause, he does not make the connection when he is under the influence. He thinks this is “him” all the time and that is scary and, truly because he started abusing so young, it really is all he has known 🙁 he has really truly never had a break from substance use. Thanks for your response I appreciate it!
Like many (most?) of the people who comment here, I am a suicidal person, although there is little chance of me acting on it these days. Back when suicide was a pressing concern, I believed that my family would “get a little sad, but move on when they realized how much easier their lives would be”. After I attempted, I learned otherwise. My parents and my brother would be traumatized if I killed myself. The least and only thing I can do is stay.
My mother lives nearby, and I try to help her in any way I can, but she helps me more than I her. I can only imagine that it must be hard work loving me, but that’s not something she’d ever admit.
She is also blessed to love you. I know how much had I died, it would have hurt those who love me. Sometimes that was reason enough to stay, other times, not. You add to her life – even as it’s tough.
Sending love and sparkles from an Internet stranger who like you, isn’t at imminent risk of death by suicide.
Thank you. And right back atcha.
My first suicide attempt was nearly my last. My (now ‘ex’ ) wife came home an hour early and they still almost lost me. 2 attempts later i was in a coma for 4 days…..My last attempt was 4 years ago.I talk about it because no one else will, if I lose some friends ,so be it….. someone has to. It might as well be me. 5 attempts so far (thank GOD that I am afraid of guns, or there would have been only 1 attempt) PEACE & LOVE
Jack,
Thank you so much for sharing. I’m open about my having attempted suicide, too, though it took me 25 years to get to that openness! I admire your openness so soon, and I think such openness does a lot to help erode stigma and misunderstanding. If people who have survived suicidal thoughts and attempts hide their experiences, then others are deprived of seeing that people can get through it. We can’t let the only known experiences be of those who die.
I’m grateful you’re still here! And yes, a firearm is almost always lethal, so the best thing someone can do to help keep a suicidal person safe is to keep firearms out of their hands, if possible.
Can you write an article (or book) that advocates for radical changes to society (especially economy and health care), so that there will be fewer people living in misery who want to commit suicide in the first place? We need leading voices to spread awareness that a broken society ruins lives and makes a higher rate of people want to die. If our only approach to suicide is to wait until people are already suicidal and then try to talk them out if it, isn’t that a little like going sailing in a broken boat and trying to plug thousands of little leaks every time they appear? Why not just repair the hull so leaks are less likely to occur in the first place?
As long as our leading voices on this issue advocate a ‘plug-the-leaks’ (or ‘whack-a-mole?) solution to suicide, surely we are only saving a small fraction of the people we could be saving?
Jack; you are far from alone sir. We have a couple of things in common. More than one *incomplete attempt to end the game, and an inherent aversion to firearms in general.
Otherwise I (too) would not be sharing this bit of personal trivia.
This was yet another occasion when the strategy of “5 more minutes” was a literal life-saver.
Best wishes to you from ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ Jack.
#OnlyKindnessMatters
Thank you for that. I AM/WAS WATCHING the “Bills” game. I am so familiar with death. I am having trouble stopping crying.
Dave,
Are you getting help from anybody? If you need to talk with someone now, I hope you’ll consider calling 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Hotlines often get a bad rap, but research shows they usually do help people, at least a little. The Resources page lists other places to get help by phone, email, text, or chat.
And please feel free to keep posting in the comments, too. I just want to be sure you have resources in case you need help, because I’m not able to reply to all comments, and sometimes others don’t reply, either. Take care!
Thank you for that. No. I am NOT getting the help I believe I need. Outpatient therapy might work. I have been in the nut house 3 times in Boston. I DIDN’T LIKE IT!
Dave,
OMG, when I first read your comment the other day, I hadn’t learned yet of Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest on the field. So I thought your comment referred to free-floating sadness and tearfulness you experience. Then when I learned what had happened, I didn’t put it together with your comment. Someone just now pointed out to me the connection, and I apologize! My reply must have seemed a bit out of left field to you. (Or maybe not? It’s natural to want to offer someone resources for help. But…) I hadn’t even acknowledged why you were crying about the game, because I didn’t know.
It really is terrible what happened. A physician posted on Twitter that watching someone receive CPR is traumatic, and counseling is provided to families in the ICU who witness it being applied to a loved one. Watching it on TV, too, is tough, and it reminds us all of the fragility of life. I hope he will recover. And I hope you’re taking good care. ❤️
Understood Dave. A lot of folks get rather uncomfortable when faced with a 6’3″ biker crying in public for no outwardly discernable reason, but it happens.
Far too often.
Not that anybody else really cares, C’est la vie…
Being a paramedic in the Dallas Fort Worth area for more than 10 years, I have been around so many people either doa or die in front of me. Very many.
I have bipolar disorder and c-ptsd. I struggle with chronic suicidality. I have done some courses in self-compassion and DBT and I get weekly therapy–all of which are very helpful. I wonder if your book would help me. (I bought your first book and found it VERY helpful.) I just wonder if I couldn’t translate the title into Loving Someone [Myself!] with Suicidal Thoughts? I wonder if I couldn’t use the practical principles you write about as ways to take care of myself?
You can use my question and my initials publicly–I think other people would be interested too.
TD,
This is a fantastic question. It’s funny, my last book was written for professionals, but a lot of people who weren’t professionals told me it helped them, too. This book is written for friends and family, but maybe it’ll also be helpful to people, like you, who want to have more compassion for themselves in relation to their suicidality. I can see how it would be helpful that way, both in terms of helping you to frame things more compassionately toward yourself, and also (perhaps) helping you to help others help you. I’m thinking of the endorsement by Kevin Berthia, who has survived multiple suicide attempts and who wrote, “…having a book that helps describe the emotions that I’ve always wanted to share with the people who love me the most is phenomenal.”
Your comment also reinforces my desire — and plan — to write a book specifically for people with suicidal thoughts, not only for those who help them. 🙂
Thanks for sharing!
TD, Yes, I think Dr. Freedenthal’s second book definitely has enabled me to move forward in my recovery journey. I am a survivor of multiple suicide attempts and like you was helped by Dr. Freedenthal’s first book. In addition to reading both of her books, I would encourage you to read, You are Not Alone : the NAMI guide to Navigating Mental Health by Ken Duckworth M.D. I am excited to hear that Dr. Freedenthal plans to write a book specifically for people with suicidal thoughts. I look forward to reading that as well. – Shannon Heath Parkin – NAMI volunteer and author of Learning to Hope after 30 years of depression and a suicide attempt, and recipient of Transforming Lived Experience award from the American Association of Suicidology 2022
Shannon,
Thank you for sharing your opinion about my book! I so appreciate your support, including the review you posted on Amazon of Loving Someone with Suicidal Thoughts. Most important, I’m delighted that my words have helped you in some way.
Thanks, too, for directing readers to Dr. Ken Duckworth’s book. Here’s the Amazon link for people who want to know more: You Are Not Alone: The NAMI Guide to Navigating Mental Health — With Advice from Experts and Wisdom from Real People and Families.
I too found Stacey’s first book helpful TD – for myself. I definitely think the new one can be applied to oneself, although I haven’t yet read it. I’m only hearing about it now!
Dr Kathryn Gordon’s book – The suicidal thoughts workbook is also on my list.
E,
I’m so glad you found my first book helpful to you. Thanks for sharing here!
Dr. Gordon’s book is excellent. I’m hoping to write a review of it at some point. Another good self-help book is How I Stayed Alive While My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me, by Susan Rose Blauner.
I have a variety of mental and physical problems. MDD ,psi, ptsd, adhd,and bi-polar.
Dave, those are all big challenges (though I’m not familiar with psi??) and I hope you find things on this site that are helpful to you. Welcome!