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  1. I often wondered—and still do wonder …

I often wondered—and still do wonder …

I often wondered—and still do wonder—what I could have done to prevent Claire’s death. Feeling like you may have caused someone to harm themselves by not doing enough to prevent them from doing so is a hard feeling to shake, even when you fully realize a text or a phone call or a visit won’t be a pivotal healing moment precisely because a text or phone call or visit didn’t and couldn’t lift me out of my despair when I was actively suicidal. Depression is so often described as a pit for a reason. A text or phone call or visit may be a thread in the rope that pulls you out, but it’s only a thread. And, again, I found a twitter thread that illuminated what I couldn’t put into words:

@garrcie I love all the suicide prevention posts, but to me the “check in with your friends” language isn’t helpful. People don’t die because no-one checked in on them, and its [sic] not fair to their family members or friends to imply they could’ve been saved with a texr [sic]

@garrcie Its’ [sic] also not fair to people who are suicidal to increase the helpless victim based language around mental illness. many [sic] of them are deeply loved, and acting like a check in [sic] would save them really minimizes a condition that is real, and multifactorial

@garrcie the narrative blames people who are suicidal “how are you feeling this way when you are loved and supported?” and it blames their loved ones because “you could’ve [sic]/shouldve [sic] done more to prevent this”

@garrcie suicide prevention is about a lot more than hotlines and check ins [sic]. Suicide prevention is about access to quality mental health care for everyone, affordable housing, culturally competent providers, LGBTQ resources,

@garrcie de stigmatizing seeking care for mental illness, destigmatizing men’s mental health, harm reduction for substance misuse, parenting classes, and more

@garrcie ultimately suicide prevention is about creating a world where people don’t need to rely on 1 am phone calls to stay alive

@garrcie i obviously don’t mean to minimize the importance of social factors and support, of course humans need love to survive. but [sic] we need to think about and talk about suicidality as a [sic] institutional problem not just a personal one

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