Suicide is Not a Dirty Word

I need to get myself back into treatment, but it’s so overwhelming and intimidating. Often, people who don’t have mental illness do not understand why so many of us are resistant. They think it’s like going to the doctor for the flu. It’s nothing like that. I know it can help, but only if I’m lucky enough to find the right people. If it’s your first time seeking help I don't want to discourage you. However, I think it’s important to know that mental health really is still in the dark ages. There are some great things, but the road is covered in mines. Today I want to explore some of these problems, because if we can go searching for help knowing how to spot signs of less-than-stellar care, hopefully we can get ourselves out of bad situations.  1. People or clinics promising to cure you Anyone who promises they can fix you should not be trusted.  Our goal is improvement and management. Some depression will fade over time, but there’s no way to tell who has chronic ...

The most fearsome thing you can say about a warrior is that he has no fear of death. Self-preservation is our strongest instinct; a person who overcomes it is free to do anything. He or she is freed from the prison of consequences society builds to control our behavior. We usually forget this when we are suicidal, but the people around us don’t. When we start demanding reasons to live from the people in our lives, they can’t possibly give us a sufficient answer. Unless you’ve broken your self-preservation instinct you don’t need a reason to live. You live to live. You live to see what the future is. You live because typically we’re programmed to believe the future will be better than the present. That seems to be part of the ruminative apparatus. Society rests on a few unspoken assumptions. The most important assumption is that people want to keep living. Humans are typically driven by self-preservation and self-improvement, and our social systems reflect that. However, i...

Mandatory reporting is an excellent example of how tone-deaf and confusing mental health policy can be. Mandatory reporting laws require health professionals, including therapists and psychologists, to report certain things to higher authorities, even if they were revealed during an otherwise confidential session. Depending on were you live different things are reportable, but “danger to self” is virtually universal. Most people see this as a way to intervene during crisis, and they may be right. There really aren’t numbers about the efficacy of this policy. Like most things in mental health, it just “feels right” to the legislators who passed it. Therapists and other health providers may support mandatory reporting, since it gets them off the hook for difficult patients. But no one ever asks the clients what’s up. I was explaining mandatory reporting to my mom the other evening. Here in Texas, if you are involuntarily hospitalized (a common result of mandatory reporting)...