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How to help a suicidal friend
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One of my best friends has revealed to me that he is feeling suicidal. He has been suffering from depression for as long as I've known him (6 years) and he's begun to say he doesn't know how much longer he can last just about every time I talk to him.
Last night I followed some advice I found online and asked if he had a plan. He does. He wouldn't tell me what it was but he did say he doesn't yet have the means but could easily acquire them. He doesn't have a date but has started drafting a note. I'm scared for him but I'm at a loss for what to do. I was able to get him to promise me that he would make an appointment with his therapist for some time in the next week and that he would be honest with them about everything he's told me. Is there any advice I'm missing? Anything I can do to help him see hope? Has anyone reading this been suicidally depressed and come out of it? What did your friends/family say that was helpful or not, if anything?
Some background: I'm 30, he's 27, and we used to date. We were together for about 5 years and split last summer (over a year ago). No part of me thinks this is a ploy to get me back. We're still very close friends and know that the breakup was for the best. As far as I know, I'm the only one he's told any of this to.
Last night I followed some advice I found online and asked if he had a plan. He does. He wouldn't tell me what it was but he did say he doesn't yet have the means but could easily acquire them. He doesn't have a date but has started drafting a note. I'm scared for him but I'm at a loss for what to do. I was able to get him to promise me that he would make an appointment with his therapist for some time in the next week and that he would be honest with them about everything he's told me. Is there any advice I'm missing? Anything I can do to help him see hope? Has anyone reading this been suicidally depressed and come out of it? What did your friends/family say that was helpful or not, if anything?
Some background: I'm 30, he's 27, and we used to date. We were together for about 5 years and split last summer (over a year ago). No part of me thinks this is a ploy to get me back. We're still very close friends and know that the breakup was for the best. As far as I know, I'm the only one he's told any of this to.
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Suicidal ideation though is serious stuff. If it gets worse do not rule out having him committed. Understand that this might lead to a permanent rift in your friendship or even end it depending on how he handles it all. It is still worth it. This is an extreme measure but thats what it takes to save lives at times.
The fact that he's openly talking to you about this means something. I'm not sure exactly what, but I lean towards it being a good sign in that he's probably not immediately suicidal. I've been in a similar place many years ago, I had everything planned out (and it was a ridiculously stupid and failure-prone plan, when I think about it now), but it was my most closely guarded secret. Only the very closest people around me even knew I was depressed at all, and nobody knew how bad it was.
The best you can do for him is to be there and listen, if it doesn't weigh too heavily on you. Try to get him to do stuff, especially something he doesn't normally do, even if it's just going for a walk in an unfamiliar park (something low-effort, depressed people don't go for ambitious plans). Don't go overboard with offering advice, or looking for ways to cheer him up. Chances are that'll just exhaust and annoy him. Be careful to look after your own mental state too, because this can get exhausting. And realize that you can't pour happiness into people; ultimately he'll have to find his way back himself.
So this is going to come from my personal experience, and might not apply to all depressed people, but in my case what worked best for me were a number of activities and thought exercises that made my brain think it was feeling better. The most important one was externalizing the depression. My recovery really began when I stopped thinking of myself as depressed, but instead imagined depression as a foreign object, a cancer of the mind. This gave me something concrete to fight and helped me learn to recognize the tricks depression was playing on my mind. When you no longer see depression as an emotional state, but a rational problem, you're much better equipped to fight it.
I also looked for, not sure what to call them, helpful "mantras" in works of fiction (poetry, books, movies). I guess everybody must find the right ones for themselves, but here's an example. I had the lovely depression+anxiety combo, and this is going to sound silly, but for anxiety attacks I recited the Litany Against Fear from Dune in my mind. It stopped the cycle of harmful thoughts going on in my head, and it took my mind out of my current miserable situation and into a safe, fictional place that I loved. It worked so well that even today when I feel anxious I only need to think of the first lines of the litany, my mind goes through the rest on its own, and I'm calm again.
Once you find something that works, it gives you a lot of hope and courage to look for other things. The way back can go surprisingly quickly once you find the steps.
I hadn't considered how good a sign it is that he's actually talking to me about this rather than keeping it secret. Now that I think about it, I'm taking it as a concrete sign that he's looking for a reason to keep going. I talked to him a bit last night and he still seems really, really low. We're both musicians and have played together in the past so I suggested we start doing that again. Nothing too hard, just playing because it's something he has been passionate about in the past.
It's funny, I'm actually in training to be a music therapist (please note that I do not plan to use any actual therapeutic interventions with him, that would be highly unethical even if I were fully qualified) so I know how much just playing can help. It's been a strange feeling to have all this knowledge from books and classes about depression and treatments and how very manageable it can be for so many people and feel completely unhelped by any of it. My friend has been going to therapy for months now and recently started taking antidepressants and says nothing is feeling any better. I'm trying to find ways to tell him that for the vast majority of people, there is a treatment that works, it just takes time. He always responds that he doesn't think he'll last long enough to find it. I am aware that the suicide risk can actually increase in the initial months of medication so I'm being extra watchful but there's only so much I can do.
Edit: missed the last post where you contacted them already. So there ya go.