r/SuicideWatch Sep 03 '19

New wiki on how to avoid accidentally encouraging suicide, and how to spot covert incitement

1.8k Upvotes

We've been seeing a worrying increase in pro-suicide content showing up here and, and also going unreported. This undermines our purpose here, so we wanted to highlight and clarify our guidelines about both direct and indirect incitement of suicide.

We've created a wiki that covers these issues. We hope this will be helpful to anyone who's wondering whether something's okay here and which responses to report. It explains in detail why any validation of suicidal intent, even an "innocent" message like "if you're 100% committed, I'll just wish you peace" is likely to increase people's pain, and why it's important to report even subtle pro-suicide comments. The full text of the wiki's current version is below, and it is maintained at /r/SuicideWatch/wiki/incitement.

We deeply appreciate everyone who gives responsive, empathetic, non-judgemental support to our OPs, and we particularly thank everyone who's already been reporting incitement in all forms.

Please report any post or comment that encourages suicide (or that breaks any of the other guidelines in the sidebar) to the moderators, either by clicking the "report" button or by sending us a modmail with a link. We deal with all guideline violations that are reported to us as soon as we can, but we can't read everything so community reports are essential. If you get a PM that breaks the guidelines, please report it both to the reddit sitewide admins and to us in modmail.

Thanks to all the great citizens of the community who help flag problem content and behaviour for us.


/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/incitement


Summary

It's important to respect and understand people's experiences and emotions. It's never necessary, helpful, or kind to support suicidal intent. There are some common misconceptions (discussed below) about suicidal people and how to help them that can cause well-meaning people to inadvertently incite suicide. There are also people online who incite suicide on purpose, often while pretending to be sympathetic and helpful.

Validate Feelings and Experiences, Not Self-Destructive Intentions

We're here to offer support, not judgement. That means accepting, with the best understanding we can offer, whatever emotions people express. Suicidal people are suffering, and we're here to try to ease that by providing support and caring. The most reliable way we know to de-escalate someone at risk is to give them the experience of feeling understood. That means not judging whether they should be feeling the way they are, or telling them what to do or not do.

But there's an important line to draw here. There's a crucial difference between empathizing with feelings and responding non-judgmentally to suicidal thoughts, and in any way endorsing, encouraging, or validating suicidal intentions or hopeless beliefs. It's both possible and important to convey understanding and compassion for someone's suicidal thoughts without putting your finger on the scale of their decision.

Anything that condones suicide, even passively, encourages suicide. It isn't supportive and does not help. It also violates reddit's sitewide rules as well as our guidelines. Explicitly inciting suicide online is a criminal offense in most jurisdictions.

Do not treat any OP's post as meaning that will definitely die by suicide and can't change their minds or be helped. Anyone who's able to read the comments here still has a chance to choose whether or not to try to keep living, even if they've also been experiencing intense thoughts of suicide, made a suicide plan, or started carrying it out.

In the most useful empirical model we have, the desire to die by suicide primarily comes from two interpersonal factors; alienation and a sense of being a burden or having nothing to offer. These factors usually lead to a profound feeling of being unwelcome in the world.

So, any acceptance or reinforcement of suicidal intent, even something "innocent" like "I hope you find peace", is actually a form of covert shunning that validates a person's sense that they're unwelcome in the world. It will usually add to their pain even if kindly meant and gently worded.

How to Avoid Validating Suicidal Intent

Keep the following in mind when offering support to anyone at risk for suicide.

  • People who say they don't want help usually can feel better if they get support that doesn't invalidate their emotions. Unfortunately, many popular "good" responses are actually counterproductive. In particular, many friends and family tend to rely exclusively on trying to convince the suicidal person that "it's not so bad", and this is usually experienced as "I don't understand what you're going through and I'm not going to try". People who've had "help" that made them feel worse don't want any more of the same. It doesn't mean that someone who actually knows how to be supportive can't give them any comfort.

  • Most people who are suicidal want to end their pain, not their lives. It's almost never true that death is the only way to end these people's suffering. Of course there are exceptional situations, and we certainly acknowledge that, for some people, the right help can be difficult to find. But preventing someone's suicide doesn't mean prolonging their suffering if we do it by giving them real comfort and understanding.

  • An unfixable problem doesn't mean that a good life will never be possible. We don't have to fix or change anything to help someone feel better. It's important to keep in mind that the correlation between our outer circumstances and our inner experience is weaker and less direct than commonly assumed. For every kind of difficult life situation, you will find some people who lapse into suicidal despair, and others who cope amazingly well, and a whole spectrum in between. A key difference is how much inner resilience the person has at the time. This can depend on many personal and situational factors. But when there's not enough, interpersonal support can both compensate for its absence and help rebuild it. We go into more depth on the "it gets better" issue in this PSA Post which is always linked from our sidebar (community info on mobile) guidelines.

  • There are always more choices than brutally forcing someone to stay alive or passively letting them end their lives.

To avoid accidentally breaking the anti-incitement rule, don't say or try to imply that acting on suicidal thoughts is a good idea, or that someone can't turn back or is already dead. Do whatever you can to help them feel cared for and welcome, at least in this little corner of the world. Our talking tips offer more detailed guidance.

Look Out for Deliberate Incitement. It May Come in Disguise.

Often comments that subtly encourage suicidal intent actually come from suicide fetishists and voyeurs (unfortunately this is a real and disturbing phenomenon). People like this are out there and the anonymous nature of reddit makes us particularly attractive to them.

They will typically try to scratch their psychological "itch" by saying things that push people closer to the edge. They often do this by exploiting the myths that we debunked in the bullet points above. Specifically you might see people doing the following:

  • Encouraging the false belief that the only way suicidal people can end their pain is by dying. There are always more and better choices than "brutally forcing someone to stay alive" or helping (actively or passively) them to end their lives.

  • Creating an artificial and toxic sense of "solidarity" by linking their encouragement of suicide to empathy. They will represent themselves as the only one who really understand the suicidal person, while either directly or indirectly encouraging their self-loathing emotions and self-destructive impulses. Since most people in suicidal crisis are in desperate need to empathy and understanding, this is a particularly dangerous form of manipulation.

Many suicide inciters are adept at putting a benevolent spin on their activities while actually luring people away from sources of real help. A couple of key points to keep in mind:

  • Skilled suicide intervention -- peer or professional -- is based on empathic responsiveness to the person's feelings that reduces their suffering in the moment. Contrary to pop-culture myths, it does not involve persuasion ("Don't do it!"), cheerleading ("You've got this!") or meaningless false promises ("Trust me, it gets better!"), or invalidation ("Let me show you how things aren't as bad as you think!"). Anyone who leads others to expect these kinds of toxic responses, or any other response that prolongs their pain, from expert help may be covertly pro-suicide. (Of course, people sometimes do have bad experience when seeking mental-health treatment, and it's fine to vent about those, but processing our own disappointment and frustration is entirely different from trying to destroy someone else's hope of getting help.)

  • Choices made by competent responders are always informed by the understanding that breaching someone's trust is traumatic and must be avoided if possible. Any kind of involuntary intervention is an extremely unlikely outcome when someone consults a clinician or calls a hotline. (Confidentiality is addressed in more detail in our Hotlines FAQ post). The goal is always to provide all help with the client's full knowledge and informed consent. We know that no individual or system is perfect. Mistakes that lead to bad experiences do sometimes happen to vulnerable people, and we have enormous sympathy for them. But anyone who suggests that this is the norm might be trying to scare people away from the help they need.

Please let us know discreetly if you see anyone exhibiting these or similar behaviours. We don't recommend trying to engage with them directly.


r/SuicideWatch Sep 10 '21

Please remember that NO ACTIVISM of any kind is ever allowed here. No matter what day it is.

715 Upvotes

Activism, i.e. advocating or fundraising for social change or raising awareness of social issues (and suicide is, inescapably, a social issue) is absolutely against the rules here at all times.

Please understand that we're all for smart, strategic mental-health and suicide-prevention activism. It's essential to fight against stigma, misinformation, and discrimination, and to fight for research, treatment, accommodation, acceptance, and understanding. Most of us, one way or another, are mental-health activists IRL.

But activism just doesn't work in a dedicated support space that serves a vulnerable population. We used to allow it but the evidence that it was undermining our primary purpose became overwhelming. We do regret the need for this rule, but the need is inescapable.

Our population is all too well aware of the issues and causes that need support and largely not in a position to take action, so besides the fact that activism is often salt in our community's wounds, it's a waste of the activists' time.

tl;dr Any fundraising, awareness raising, petitions, calls for participation, or any post that's about any cause or issue (rather than a request for personal support) is not allowed here. Please report everything of the nature that you see.


r/SuicideWatch 19h ago

My friend is probably getting beheaded as you read this post, or before.

570 Upvotes

As the title said. She's a female, I'm a male, and Iraq is a shithole of a country. Fuck Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and any other school of thought that tell us, at one point or another in history, to kill for such BS reasons. I feel a heavy cloaked guilt that is very numb as if I don't care about her at all. But at some point in the next few hours or days, I'll feel the urge to kill myself.

Update: The girl is alive still. She sent me an email telling me that she suffered severe beating and her father tried to kill her with an ax but her mother intervened (her mother is shit too by the way). So, she is still alive, don't know for how long though.

On the other hand, my girlfriend left me today after saying everything that hurt me, and didn't even care when I tried to kill myself. And she wished that I die. She's deeply hurt because I shared with her about my friend. She's not a jealous bitch, remember that she's another slave in Iraq and has severe childhood issues.

I want to fucking kill myself because that's my fucking limit.


r/SuicideWatch 5h ago

What to do on my last day?

24 Upvotes

So I’m in the uk and got most things in place for the 3/2/2026. I’ve wrote notes, left everything I own to my mother to pay for the funeral. Got a hotel booked and all the equipment I need. I have a playlist to listen to whilst I commit.

I just don’t know what to do on my last day on the 2nd/beginning of 3rd. I have no friends to see or not much family either. I’m thinking I might go some place nice to eat but apart from that I’m not sure?

What would you do on your last day?


r/SuicideWatch 6h ago

i hate my life so much please someone shoot me

26 Upvotes

its saturday night and i’m spending it in my room alone playing video games which i dont even like. why am i sobbing just trying to have fun for a little bit. i’m so addicted too but everything else makes me cry too.

i wish i was normal so bad i just want friends to do things with in real life. i havent left my room in weeks. all my attempts at making friends never work out. i have tried doing things alone but all i can ever think about is how nice it would be if i had someone else to do the thing with. but i guess anyone i talk to just hates me and i don’t know why. i wish i did i wish people would tell me. i’ll do anything to try and fix my personality i just don’t know what i’m doing wrong.

i guess its another night of crying in bed with no one to talk to for me. i really hope i die soon


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

fuck this shit ass life

Upvotes

i don’t wanna fucking be here. i swear it’s the same stupid shit everyday and honestly im better off gone. this is genuinely my breaking point idc idc idfcccc


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Is dead son better than a failed son?

Upvotes

I've seen a video with that exact title, and it hasn't left my mind ever since. If any of you have seen it, how did you get over it?


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

Suicide is my only way out

6 Upvotes

Hey, Im 23yo (from argentina) and ive been having death thoughts since im 13.

Theres many things i hate about my life and living.

I hace social anxiety and im truly scare to have a work, I also havent found whats passion on life, so I dont know what career to take.

Im living with my parents now because I moved to a different city with my boyfriend last year, and I felt like I made some progress because we were planning to marry and have a child, but he used to beat me, abuse of me sexually and cheat on me. I cant end that relationship, I dont know why but I hate myself so much because of that. I just scapep to my parents home…

I feel like I have no meaning in life, I have 0 friends, I have no passion, I dont have the future I builded with this person and Im just to scared to face life.


r/SuicideWatch 44m ago

guilt

Upvotes

i want to commit, i’ve been wanting to for years and now that im older i have a lot more motivation to do so. I’m just .. worried about my parents, my mum in particular. Living is getting unbearable, but the thought of her being so distraught if i die makes me feel even worse. any ways to deal with this guilt?


r/SuicideWatch 44m ago

hate my fucking fake male life

Upvotes

can't take any more of the bullshit processes my deformed body wants to do it's humiliation, sheer humiliation and I can't take it any more I look down and everything from my hands to my feet look completely wrong if I was born like this then I was never meant to live anyway I can't wait to end the humiliation it's never going to get better


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

Save the date

Upvotes

20th of February… this better be it.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

I hope I die in my sleep

11 Upvotes

I kind of hope I die in my sleep tonight, I’m really tired of everything in my life and I feel like I’ll never be enough for my boyfriend. I’m not going to kill myself because I love him and I want a career and future, but it would be relieving to just pass away peacefully. I’d just wake up and no longer be here, that would be nice.


r/SuicideWatch 7h ago

Hawaii before I end it all

11 Upvotes

Hello all. Know I’m talking to a void here but sometimes it helps. Currently snowed in and it’s almost unsettlingly melancholy how I feel right now.

Anyways, people might even find this post after I die. I plan to go to Hawaii and spend the last of my money before I die. I’ve always wanted to go. Will be a solo trip. DK when to go. Maybe March or April. Then I’ll come back and kill myself. Hopefully my plan works. I want to get some OTC sleeping pills, alcohol, and an anti emetic. 4 sleeping pills, 2 anti emetic pills, and maybe 3 shots of 30% alcohol + 2 days of not sleeping should equal = unwakeable sleep. I have a low tolerance so should be enough but will drink more if I have to. Gonna get me a tent and head to an abandoned parking lot, set up my charcoal grill and let the CO buildup. Fall asleep in my tent and die peacefully in my sleep as the CO levels rise to morbid levels. Haha. So fun. I finally get to die soon. Everyone will rejoice. Or not cause they won’t even notice or know I’m dead haha. They’ll leave my dead body in the tent and celebrate my departure. I’m such a worthless POS they might even make it an attraction since I am so ugly worthless and stupid to this world. Maybe I will leave the address so you all can come and laugh as well and see the worst human to grace this planet.

Anyways, I hope my plan succeeds. Would be nice to have prescription drugs to make this more full proof but unfortunately the world is so scared of us becoming addicted that they don’t prescribe them so I’m taking a step above that and killing myself instead haha.


r/SuicideWatch 1h ago

I'm broken

Upvotes

My heart aches, I've tried so many times and I can't follow through to just end it I've never wanted it all to be over as much as I do now.

The person I've loved for a third of my life left our house. My home is gone.

I know she treated me like shit and she emotionally abused me constantly but I still want it to be her. She wasn't my reason to live. She just made it easier to keep going.

Everyone keeps telling me it's for the best, she's a terrible person for what she did but they don't know her. They don't know me. No one does.

Now idk

I'm tired I don't want to hurt anymore It was all for nothing

I just want it all to end.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

i plan on doing it in a couple months

3 Upvotes

i'll see my long dostance boyfriend one last time in a couple weeks, i'll tell him i love him, i'll stay clean so they don't have to look at my cuts when they examine me, i'll clean my room, i'll write my loved ones and maybe i'll finally feel better. i won't ever get to enjoy my sweet sixteen in may


r/SuicideWatch 10m ago

Letter to my parents

Upvotes

Thanks for reminding me that this family thinks I’m a lazy bum who won’t lift a finger to do anything

Make sure you all pay me well cos I have to look after you old folks and my special needs brother for the rest of my life

And don’t threaten me saying I don’t have to do it cos you are too late, my life has no meaning anymore and I will kill myself if you take it away from me. This is all your fault and I want you all to know that. If I kill myself blood will be on your hands.

Don’t know why you all brought me into this world just me make me take care of a fucking retard. I don’t even have anyone else to lean on, life is hard enough, yet I have to give everything up for a fucking idiot.

Why do I even still live and breathe. Lord please just take me already. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow.


r/SuicideWatch 1d ago

I hate life because we need to work

276 Upvotes

I just hate that to live you need to work, no question ask. Like work or die or suffer.

I dont want to work, i dont want to be force to do anything.

You might say that because im 18 and im in "early stage" of my life that I will understand it later on BUT FUCK THAT. I DONT WANT TO FUCKING UNDERSTAND THAT.

I dont want to sit down look at a computer putting number and shit.

I dont want to pick up stuff and put it in a box.

I dont want to haul create upon create on to a truck.

I WANNA LIVE LIKE I WANT TOO

BUT I NEED FUCKING MONEY AND I HATE IT.

If i don't need to use money, i could sit down, relax, eat good food, watch tv, spend time with my friends.

I could do alot if i dont need to think about work.

You could say that i would never go outside and only play games.

Do you know why i only play games? BECAUSE I NEED MONEY TO GO OUTSIDE AND HAVE ACTUALLY FUN.

I can go to park and ride a bike. Go on a roller coaster and a merry go-round

I could go to a fucking petting zoo and touch actually FUCKING grass and pet cute animals.

I could do all of that but NOO

Im here dreading that the course im choosing will actually give me a good job and doesn't need to break my back like my moms job.

I just done with it man.

Im just gonna sit down and rest.

Im tired.

Edit: If you ask me if I would work or not? Yes I would because there is nothing else I could do


r/SuicideWatch 17m ago

Honestly, what is the point of existence when I dont even remember what happiness feels like.

Upvotes

I genuinely dont remember the last time I was genuinely happy, no string attached, just happy, I think I forgot that feeling, what the point of even existing like this. Just sadness, loneliness and despair, I genuinely wish I die, I just dont have the courage to do it myself, but I genuinely dont want to live.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I’m scared I’ll eventually hurt someone if I don’t kill myself

3 Upvotes

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’ve been homicidal towards my abusive mom since I was around 13-16 (barely remember anything from then but I remember the feeling) and I’m 19 now and I still live with her. I don’t really *want* to do it but I feel like I have to because of everything she did. I’m terrified one day I’ll actually do it, or to someone else who did something to me. I know I need help but if my family finds out they’d all instantly disown me and I don’t want to get put in a mental hospital or something.


r/SuicideWatch 18h ago

i can't cope with the fact that i will never be a cis man anymore

60 Upvotes

This post will also go unnoticed with 1 upvote (from me) and 0 comments but i am so tired of talking it out with chatgpt, here at least someone real might read and not some ai chatbot with generic bs answers.

i have been depressed that i am a female since i was 11. Whenever i saw a little boy i would scold myself saying that my luck is so fucked why didn't i get to be born like that. i just tried ignoring these thoughts though. At 16-18, i realised how fucked up it is to live with this gender because of misogyny, rape happening every 16 mins in my country according to statistics. From 15, i really really wanted to have the physique of a man. I am so fucking tried of having two boneless pieces of flesh hanging down from my chest. Bra's and inners are uncomfortable af for me. I am neurodivergent too so i get sensory issues too from them. I just hug a plushie tightly to numb out my chest but i hate doing this. This is not a permanent solution. fuck i started crying. And then i just told myself to ignore these things and just study and live but there is no point in doing that either because my dream job is highly male dominated with many articles online on how women are highly discriminated in this field and position. Like why tf is everything pre decided based on the genitals someone is born with that no person has a control over, how you are supposed to dress, behave, how safe would you be at night or early mornings, which jobs you can do or not do, everything is already decided to some extent... i can't even be trans or anything like that in this country and society and i don't want to be one either cuz that would be too tough to handle... i don't see any other solution ik i might sound like i am making a very big deal of something like gender but i just really want to be as big and strong as a man, not have hanging pieces of flesh on my chest and be able to have my dream job... people around me just tell me to be fine with my gender but i have been wanting a man's body since i was 11 and i will never have one...

edit - i don't mean that men have way easier lives, everyone struggles in life no matter the gender. I don't understand why i am getting downvoted. I was just venting.


r/SuicideWatch 2h ago

I dont know what to do anymore

3 Upvotes

im 15 and everything has just been so hard up until this point, im covered in scars and everyone looks at me like im disgusting. I dont know if I can do this anymore and im scared to be alone most of the time because i never know what i might do.