A lemon person sits in a meditative pose on a bright background, surrounded by smaller lemons. Block text above them reads "What will happen next?" The lemon person has pursed lips and says in a speech bubble "wait... There's more?!" Beneath the lemon person's foot a small line of text reads "I wonder how I wonder why"
To end this thread, for now, please know you do not need to be in an active crisis to reach out for help if you are the one feeling suicidal (or even just feeling really really bad). There are people who want you around, I'm one of them.
It's really hard to condense suicide prevention into a thread format, so consider this an "intro to" and look more into things like QPR and other resources that may help you practice these dialogues. It's uncomfortable! But maybe you can plant a seed of hope for someone.
If you are helping someone in crisis please be mindful and respectful of their wishes regarding reaching out to hotlines (some of which notify police). This was not part of the training, this is me saying that.
At the end of the day, you cannot necessarily stop someone from dying by suicide. However, you can help alleviate some of the risk factors that lead to suicide, such as feelings of not belonging and of being a burden. If there are people you are worried about, reach out and tell them they matter.
So what do you do to help your suicidal friend after you have determined they are suicidal? You offer the support you can, you connect them with the support you can find, you check in on them and allow them to speak freely without value judgement on their emotions.
The training I attended was QPR, (Question, Persuade, Refer). Free trainings are available for Oregon residents online through lines for life.
Unfortunately, the lacking part to me is "refer" which instructs you to sort of hand off the person to professionals (who may not be available).
#4 Understand what has kept the person alive until this point and help make a short term plan based off of that.
Most of suicide prevention is "buying time" for the hardest part of the crisis to pass.
"What can we do to keep you safe for now?" "Will you let me help you get help?"
#3 How you ask someone if they are suicidal when showing signs is less important than that you ask.
Avoid using judgemental language (such as "you wouldn't do anything stupid, would you?")
Be prepared to listen. Express appreciation for the person talking to you. Ask follow up information.
#2 a
This might sound corny, I thought it was at first, but joking about suicide is pretty common but not necessarily safe to ignore. If you hear someone say "I wish I was dead" or "if x happens, I will kill myself" it's okay to (privately) ask "I heard you say _____, what did you mean by that?"
#2 Take all clues and warning signs seriously.
These can include:
Giving away personal items
Withdrawing
Isolation
Sudden interest or disinterest in religion & afterlife
Expressing intent (either directly or indirectly)
Putting affairs in order
Any sudden changes
#1 Asking someone if they are suicidal LOWERS the risk of them dying by suicide. You WILL NOT "put the idea in someone's head" by asking about it.
I'm working on a short zine about suicide prevention and wanted to share some of the bullet points and notes I have from a training I attended a few months ago.
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I wanted to share something that made me smile today and after posting I realize this is a bizarre post without context. The context is our cat has an ongoing feud with Kirk. I do believe it is one sided.
Went to feed the cat and noticed the tupperware in the fridge had a label with "captain Kirk" crossed out and "Princess Admiral food" scrawled beneath. Not sure if it's funnier that the cat stole Kirk's lunch, or that Kirk ALSO eats overcooked chicken, squash and rice mash.
I haven't seen anyone with mercury, my discover feed on here is all people fixing computers and people with seemingly poor relationships to food counting calories. I was wondering yesterday what I did to deserve that...
Local free cycle groups are great! I actually "replaced" this copier years ago with a combo laser printer I got used for dirt cheap. Hung onto the little guy for weird experiments and it just kept chugging! I might already like the new shelf space more than extra scanner.
We all need to say "I love you" to our friends more. I just got on my phone for the first time in a couple days and the kind but vague messages told me there was Bad News before the news did. I do not want to immediately associate "I love you" with "things are bad"!
I read a lot of Adam's books at my old night job (most his novels fit in a pocket). This one I remember volunteering to babysit the wash (a hot, humid, labor intensive and LOUD job) because while the machine was running I had 26 minutes to read. Absolutely worth it. Go read it somewhere more comfy.
My audio book label released this Laurence Lillvik @skullhum.bsky.social poem today along with translations in eight additional languages.
helloamerica.bandcamp.com/album/a-poem...
It's fun how we have no control over what meaning readers/viewers find in our work. The best interpretation of any of my art I've ever seen was that: "he clearly hates himself, see how his hair is a red scribble? That's his self-loathing." I thought it meant I was too lazy to mix orange but okay.
Photograph of Erik's hand holding the insert for his tape "I hope this finds you well". The artwork features various objects on a black background, similar to an i-spy image. The objects include a clay figure of Erik, rose quartz prayer beads, embroidery scissors, dice, small beads, bones and shells, a gingko leaf and shed from a praying mantis. The contact information for Hello America Stereo Cassette is printed in orange.
The j-card art for "I hope this finds you well" is one of many pieces that little scanner facilitated. May the scanner go where all good machines go, wherever that is.
My crappy little scanner I used for most of my scanner art finally gave up the ghost! It scanned so many things it wasn't made for. I will miss it.
Sometimes I just wanna write! And make art that is far too costly, colorful and complicated to xerox!
I thought of illustrating it, but I'm swamped with more recent projects. I get exhausted feeling like I have to make art for everything I write. It's why I've made fewer zines the last few years.
white sheet of paper with "Weiner Wednesdays where we put the T in TMI" written in all caps. Beneath the title is smaller text reading "vlogs from my first 18 weeks on T"
Printing out copies of a zine I made several years ago and agonized over. It's text only, which I've never done in a zine before!
