People saved from suicide often say they immediately regretted the choice and very rarely attempt it again. It’s a spontaneous act often driven by mental illness or desperation, it’s not generally a rational decision like physician-assisted suicide is.
You would think so, but the trend seems to hold across methods: you might expect people using “less lethal” methods to report wanting to survive more, than those who used “more lethal” methods. But the rates are similar in those who on the off chance survived a more lethal attempt.
So there’s no confounding “less lethal methods indicate less intent - so more of them survive, and go on to say they didn’t really want to” issue happening here. Occasionally people who use trains or firearms survive - and they also report a similar pattern of regret.
I imagine the trains and firearms regret is more because of the fact they are now likely permanently disabled and have to suffer in agony because their method failed rather than because they want to live.
This probably has more to do with the social result of the attempted suicide.
People usually attempt suicide out of some perceived hopeless social situation. The attempt usually wakes people around them the fuck up.
I’d be willing to bet good money on the likelihood that things get better for people who attempted suicide due to that reason, which then leads to them feeling “regret” for trying.
But the crazy thing is, whose to say any other option would have worked as well? Some people try very hard to make things better, but people either ignore them or don’t pickup on the signals—which drives them eventually to suicidal thoughts. Now suddenly everyone takes them seriously and wants to engage.
It’s a circular thing. Suicide is the result of some very hopeless dark social circumstances. Attempting it and failing might lead to improved social circumstances. Kind of crazy.
Pay attention to your friends and family. Even acquaintances. Some people send signals that they want help for a very long time before they actually become suicidal. We’re all just usually too self-absorbed to notice.
What makes me angry is seeing nothing whatsoever in the statistics to reflect my own experience of being harshly punished by family and abandoned by friends for inconveniencing them by sharing with them how bad things had gotten, with some of my family doing things that sure felt a whole lot like intentionally trying to push me over the edge, and in one case an immediate family member even explicitly encouraged me to kill myself saying that it was my "only remaining option". So to strangers, the fact that that reaction is apparently a statistical outlier means to them that it doesn't happen at all and my own story must be made up and unbelievable. I don't exist because I'm improbable. Meanwhile, I've refused to end my miserable existence not because anyone decided to reach out and lift me up, but because I'd rather suffer in life than give such people exactly what they want by making their lives simpler with my death.
Yea… there is that side of it too. It definitely doesn’t always work out.
Which is where I mentioned people being too self-absorbed to notice; or conversely, like in your case, so self-absorbed that they think your life struggles are an “inconvenience” to them and your confiding in them is a nuisance. That’s when you find out who your real friends are.
It usually all comes down to ignorance and a major lack of empathy (or lack of the ability to even understand empathy in the first place).
I’ve definitely been where you are before. In a twisted way it did kinda help. Similar to what you said, I just didn’t even want to give people some perverted sense of satisfaction by proving themselves right in their minds.
Most people are just clueless and totally oblivious to any perspective but their own. It’s a mad world.
I've never had a serious thought about suicide no matter how much I was struggling because I'm just that stubborn. I might cry and complain so much that everyone is sick of it but ultimately I will never give up, well until any improvement is literally impossible that is.
In many states, it's possible to revoke someone's CCW if they attempt suicide. I heard one case of a court "paper charging" them with some sort of felony with a firearm, so they'd pop up as disqualified if they ever tried to buy again.
As attila_the_huyandi said: that doesn’t explain the fact that they don’t go on to reattempt.
I would imagine the studies are focussing on regretting the choice to end their life, not regretting the consequences - otherwise the researchers would be drawing different conclusions than “most people who survive a suicide attempt don’t want to try again”, about what the “regret” they’re describing means.
However, to check that in the literature would require a couple of hours that I don’t have right now. You’re welcome to check out the literature, and come back to correct me, a good place to start might be Harvard’s “Means Matter” Long Term Survival Bibliography.
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u/Severe-Magician4036 Aug 13 '21
People saved from suicide often say they immediately regretted the choice and very rarely attempt it again. It’s a spontaneous act often driven by mental illness or desperation, it’s not generally a rational decision like physician-assisted suicide is.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/