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Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

current.fas.harvard.edu

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Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#61

Post by layla5alive »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #18

> 90 percent of people who survived a suicide attempt reported that they had been feeling an urge to alleviate psychological agitation and pain that turned out to be temporal — like “being in a burning room” or wanting to “shut everything off for a couple of days,” Nock said. I moved to Austin last week, away from my wife and 3yo daughter. It’s been torture. Today was the first time I could FaceTime with her without…

Hug.

That sounds awful - sometimes pain is unbearable, and moreso because other people are so blind to it.

And the fear of things being worse if I try but fail to end it..

Often times, for me, it feels like surviving more than living let alone thriving.

I miss having good pain free uninterrupted full nights sleep.

What you feel is valid. And going through it in a new place, with no local support, makes it that much harder. I think most people would feel the same pain you feel, if they were in your shoes. I think most people would want someone to listen/care, too. But the burden of sitting with what you're going through is too much/too heavy, so people reflexively protect themselves from really seeing it..

It sucks, and I'm sorry.

Sometimes animals make better companions than humans through thick and thin... fostering comes to mind as a possible productive distraction from the pain, if that's something you might be compatible with. Though you didn't ask for advice (sorry)

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#62

Post by emerongi »

willsmith72 wrote: post #51
mlazos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you realize how often depressed people say they will but don’t commit suicide, and also being able to know when is quite remarkable - I think this study is pretty interesting, and not as obvious as you think it is.

yeah but look how much overhead this is > They were sent brief (20-item) smartphone-based surveys 6 times/day for 3 months Is that in any way realistic? 120 answers/day??

Assessing my mental state that often could lead to a crisis, if I’m already a bit unstable.

A dark take: “We can predict suicides by driving people to commit them”.

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#63

Post by bilegeek »

Vishal_Max wrote: post #55
Pannoniae wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're so close to getting it. If you could somehow shelter people from the idea of ending it, you'd have created the torment nexus. People who do so usually do it because they see negative things coming up and they're too tired to continue. What you're advocating for is everyone to run an endless marathon where if you fall behind or stop, you'd get endlessly whipped to continue no matter how much your wounds are ble…

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm advocating for. I'm not saying people should be forced to run an endless marathon regardless of how badly they're suffering. I'm saying that when someone is suffering that badly, we should help them rather than let suicide become the way they escape from it. I'm not blaming people for the circumstances they're in or saying their suffering isn't real. I'm questioning the enviro…

> we should help them rather than let suicide become the way they escape from it.

> the answer should be to help them, change their circumstances where possible, and help them find another way through it.

You left that part out originally. You meant it implicitly, so I may seem pedantic, but this kind of thing must be said explicitly.

For example: the asylum system. Abolishing it's ubiquity was unarguably good, but then they just... stopped there, leaving many people in the lurch.[1] To paraphrase and oversimplify MLK, "presence of justice is much harder than absence of tension."

[1]https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/how-defunding-abusive-in...

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#64

Post by Vishal_Max »

epestr wrote: post #59
Pannoniae wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're so close to getting it. If you could somehow shelter people from the idea of ending it, you'd have created the torment nexus. People who do so usually do it because they see negative things coming up and they're too tired to continue. What you're advocating for is everyone to run an endless marathon where if you fall behind or stop, you'd get endlessly whipped to continue no matter how much your wounds are ble…

Torment run would be becoming a masochist to cope. The comment likely refers to the ability in being able to identify the alternatives, and being flexible. Torment run would be slogging under the student's adviser, the other option being reporting him, or switching advisers, or any other option life presents.

Yes, you are right. If someone reaches a point where they feel that their situation is so bad that they have to die because of it, then reporting the adviser, switching advisers, escaping to another place, completely starting a new life, or whatever other option life presents could potentially make their life much better, and in some cases even be life-changing. I mean, what worse could happen by trying these options than ending your life? If someone has the courage to make such a drastic decision as ending their life, you could also help them muster the courage to completely restart their life instead.

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#65

Post by emerongi »

Vishal_Max wrote: post #45

Just my perspective on this: A PhD student at my university recently died by suicide, and it made me realize that the way most of us cope or escape from difficult situations is shaped by what we consume, what we experience, and what we constantly see others doing. For most of us, that escape mechanism can be something else instead of taking such a drastic decision. If we can make sure people don’t grow up believing t…

> If we can make sure people don’t grow up believing that suicide is even a way to cope with what has happened to them, we could significantly reduce the number of suicides.

The fact that there is a plan B (suicide) keeps me going.

I was actively (almost daily) considering suicide around ages 13-16. I made a decision to postpone it every day I thought of it because I believed I had seen too little of life by that point to make a decision to end it. But it being available as an option made things easier. There was a “backup plan” and I could always use it, which made it possible to endure another day.

I’m in my 30s today. I have used the same strategy in some other complicated life situations since my teenage years, although only a few times and very briefly. Knowing that you can just end it and that it’s available to you not just today, but also tomorrow and the day after that, is so unbelievably useful in my opinion that I’d personally like to see it normalized, rather than the opposite.

For example, when I was in enormous physical pain, my thinking was: “If there are no other options left, I can always just end it. But there are other options, so let’s try those first.” Reminding myself that I am working on solutions, and that if I run out of them, there is still one final option, took all the edge off the pain. It lost its power over me. I was fully in control of how this issue was going to be resolved. And it takes the edge off suicide itself - it’s just one of the solutions, nothing special. Compared to other solutions it has one terrible drawback: you can’t try any of the other solutions once you’ve tried this one.

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#66

Post by someguynamedq »

Pannoniae wrote: post #49
Vishal_Max wrote: post #45

Just my perspective on this: A PhD student at my university recently died by suicide, and it made me realize that the way most of us cope or escape from difficult situations is shaped by what we consume, what we experience, and what we constantly see others doing. For most of us, that escape mechanism can be something else instead of taking such a drastic decision. If we can make sure people don’t grow up believing t…

You're so close to getting it. If you could somehow shelter people from the idea of ending it, you'd have created the torment nexus. People who do so usually do it because they see negative things coming up and they're too tired to continue. What you're advocating for is everyone to run an endless marathon where if you fall behind or stop, you'd get endlessly whipped to continue no matter how much your wounds are ble…

No, and frankly this is a pro-suicidal framework of thinking.

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#67

Post by bluefirebrand »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #44

They asked people who survived jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge what they were thinking on the way down. They all said they felt instant regret the moment they let go of the rail.

I believe this, and it mirrors what I have heard from suicide attempt survivors in my personal life too.

I do wonder what the story would be if we could somehow ask the people who didn't survive. Likely a purely philosophical question with no answer, but I wonder how many of the people who do end their own lives don't regret it at all.

Most likely the dead are not capable of regret, but if there is some manner of afterlife where people can contemplate their actions, I do wonder how many of them would regret their suicides

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#68

Post by epestr »

Vishal_Max wrote: post #55
Pannoniae wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're so close to getting it. If you could somehow shelter people from the idea of ending it, you'd have created the torment nexus. People who do so usually do it because they see negative things coming up and they're too tired to continue. What you're advocating for is everyone to run an endless marathon where if you fall behind or stop, you'd get endlessly whipped to continue no matter how much your wounds are ble…

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm advocating for. I'm not saying people should be forced to run an endless marathon regardless of how badly they're suffering. I'm saying that when someone is suffering that badly, we should help them rather than let suicide become the way they escape from it. I'm not blaming people for the circumstances they're in or saying their suffering isn't real. I'm questioning the enviro…

I'll go ahead and assume you are from India. While all suicides do carry certain commanalities, the academic ones seem much more Indian. The meritocratic view perpetuated has caused generations of kids who's belief becomes that being academically well-off leads to better life outcomes.

The shame, and to a lesser extent guilt, associated with a possibility of not acheiving this goal is often too hard to handle that they give up. 4 kids dead this way last year in my school, 2 more so far.

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#69

Post by ThrowawayP »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #44

They asked people who survived jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge what they were thinking on the way down. They all said they felt instant regret the moment they let go of the rail.

About 30% of survivors try again and ~7% eventually succeed according to https://hsph.harvard.edu/research/means-matter/means-matter-... , "Nine out of ten people who attempt suicide and survive will not go on to die by suicide at a later date. This has been well-established in the suicidology literature. A literature review (Owens 2002) summarized 90 studies that have followed over time people who have made suicide attempts that resulted in medical care. Approximately 7% (range: 5-11%) of attempters eventually died by suicide, approximately 23% reattempted non-fatally, and 70% had no further attempts."

Re: Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

#70

Post by sph »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #18

> 90 percent of people who survived a suicide attempt reported that they had been feeling an urge to alleviate psychological agitation and pain that turned out to be temporal — like “being in a burning room” or wanting to “shut everything off for a couple of days,” Nock said. I moved to Austin last week, away from my wife and 3yo daughter. It’s been torture. Today was the first time I could FaceTime with her without…

I’m having a time parsing your comment: you’d consider suicide because you are far away from the people you love? (i.e. you have something to look forward to)

The times I have felt suicidal were when I had nothing to look forward to. Having a little person to care about that I miss so much to break down crying just thinking about them is motive enough to go through hell twice just to reunite with them.

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