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Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

@Historylover, right on the money as usual, my friend.👍🤗

 

The flawed foundation of the article is nothing new. "We have to stop suicides, because suicides are the problem." That article was just the just the latest manifestation I'd spotted of that idea. But over the years, I've seen so many reports, ect. touting the merits of building obstructions between suicidal people and the means of them ending their lives (I doubt I'm aloud to mention specifics on here), and felt distraught at those report authors' ignorance of the true problems behind those would-be suicides. As I said in my original post, it's difficult to not feel like a pawn being pushed around at times like this.

 

What you say harkens back to my earlier response to @Zoe7 ; we need a shift in the quality of the mental health system far more then we need an increase in quantity. The visionaries for the future typically speak in very vague terms. That's probably as much down to the media - who always want to edit everything down to a punchy 2-second soundbite - as it is to the leaders themselves. They all speak about increasing services; but former patients like yourself and I are rightly anxious about the idea of the type of "service" we recieved being multiplied many times over.

 

How much of the need to "increase services" is born from the poor quality of the service as it is? If we could raise the standard of service, would it be possible to serve everybody in a timely fashion with comparable staff numbers to what we have today? Are these throngs of people cueing up for therapy largely people who have been let down or harmed by previous therapists?

 

As you say, my experiance of the system was that it is nothing more then a money pit. Time wasted, a small fortune poured in - half of it taxpayer money; all for nothing. And the whole time, I am tying up part of the "service"; denying another would-be patient access, and thereby increasing wait times. If I'd had a decent therapist, I'm certain my problems could've been satisfactorilly resolved within a few months, at most. Instead, I was fruitlessly tying up the system for 8 years! And I'm no better off then when I started! But the system did very well, financially speaking, out of all that wasted time and effort on my part.

 

It's hard not to get cynical when you look at things in that light, isn't it? Maybe there's a rhyme and reason to increasing services without any considderation of service quality. It makes for good business, after all, to have a system that accomplishes very little for the patient. Cause they'll keep paying as long as their still stuck in their nightmares.

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

@OtterOne of the huge problems - which nobody ever warns you about unless you just happen to stumble on to this little detail - is the so-called "golden rule of therapy": in that therapists are essentially forbidden from offering actual help, or real, meaningful advice to their patients.

 

So it's not just a question of plucking up the courage to go racing into a minefield filled with terrible therapists among rumoured good ones. It's a question as to whether there is any actual prospect of reward in taking that dire risk. And when you discover that the industry is governed by an instruction not to help patients, the answer to that question becomes a very blunt "no", for those among us who need practical help with our life's woes.

 

And just to give the dead horse one final wallop, I truly cannot overstate the hazards of racing into that minefield, even if there was a genuine, likely prospect of meaningful help waiting at the end of it. The dammage that my therapists did to me - and that so many other therapists have done to their vulnerable patients - is not something you can just "shake off" and try again tomorrow. They break you. The disfigure you. They amputate parts of your spirit that do not grow back.

 

It is no small thing to ask a victim of therapy to turn back to the mental health system.

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

@chibam I'm going to ask you to take a step back and consider the impacts of what your saying. This is me the survivor talking. If we're going to have this conversation, I need you to tone back talks of giving up on people. That means people at any stage of ideation pipelines. Advocate for more than life-saving intervention. Please don't advocate for less. I would feel a lot safer in this space if you could do that.

 

We can do this. We can make the system/world better. Survival is good for that outcome. Especially the survival of people that can do good in this world. I need those people to get every chance they can get. Not because that's a victory in itself but because that's what people deserve every chance they can get.

 

I challenge that part of your sentiment not to add guilt but too remind you, me and everyone struggling out there that, yes, your struggle and life matters. It matters a lot. It matters in ways that a suicidal mind isn't currently able to understand. But in all the realest ways.

 

I say with love and I hope you know that.

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

@chibam You are right in saying we need quality services ...but we also need quantity - the two should not be exclusive. We have so many here that cannot find anyone to see or have to wait months to see someone ....and that can often be too late. As consumers, we should also have a voice into what is required as well as helping to weed out those that fall below the standard required to deliver those services. We have inquiries, royal commisions, political rhetoric - all saying there is a need for change and a need for better delivery of such services but those words are rarely actioned. When are the consumers asked what is needed - rarely. Even organisations that supposedly advocate on behalf of consumers rarely consult with those consumers.

 

@Otter There are indeed cases of people having both 'good' and 'bad' experiences with health care professionals - that is always going to happen as it is the nature of humans to have differing views and opinions. However the experiences of some here have been far beyond a simple difference of opinion - what some have described in the 'care' given them would no doubt deter many from seeking further support from anyone. Unfortunately, like any trauma, it leaves a massive mark. To undo that trauma is not as simple as seeking another opinion or finding another 'therapist' - especially when that trauma has occurred because of a 'therapist'. This is certainly not the case in all instances (and my view is that the vast majority of therapists/professionals are indeed good at their job) but it needs to be acknowledged that it does/has happened for some and that makes it extremely difficult for those in that position to trust anyone in the health related professions.

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

Hi @chibam ,

 

We likely have to agree to disagree on this particular matter. I completely sympathize with your experiences, it sounds like it has been a heavily invalidating, difficult, counterproductive and harmful journey at times.

 

I myself luckily, and many others, have had highly positive experiences engaging in clinical help and professional therapy over many years, with compassionate, dedicated, empathetic, skilled and understanding health professionals, through continuing to seek help through various barriers, obstacles and disappointing interactions at times.

 

I just want to offer my personal experience as a means of keeping the conversation balanced enough that people feel they can still access quality help and that there is hope if they choose to continue in their help-seeking journeys.

 

I think it's important to keep a level of balance and offer differing experiences when discussing help-seeking to ensure all are able to make decisions that are best for each individual and that there are some good options available through clinical services.

 

It's great to see your passion in advocating for more empathetic, professional and accessible care in the mental health space, I think you make some excellent points and these conversations about how we can make mental health care more accessible and helpful will always be important. I'm glad to see you are reaching out here and wish you the very best in continuing to reach out.

 

Much care and gratitude,


Otter

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

Thank you for not having @chibam's post deleted or censored, @wellwellwellnez

 

That said, what do the powers that be think we should do with our concerns? Keep them to ourselves? Turn a blind eye? The subject here is suicide, and that action is too often the result of people needing help who simply aren't getting it.

 

Reform is put forward as more of the same.

 

How can anyone turn a blind eye to what is going on in these fields? And then, agitate for more! And that is what is being put forward as the remedy to these escalating ills. More and more of it. More reports, more money spent, more medication, more hospitalizations, more treatments that have undesired consequences...

 

I'm doing a psychology course and what is being taught is frightening. There is no questioning of what is taught, as it's in the DSM-V and we have to consider that to be the font of all knowledge. I wouldn't give it a second look myself and consider it a seriously misleading menace to mental health. 

 

I'd like to say much more as it needs to be said, but I run the risk of being censored. 

 

I never advise a poster that they need to talk to a psychiatrist or psychologist. I wouldn't take responsibility for the outcome. I'd tell them that they need to find someone they can talk to–and many of us have no-one. 

 

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

I've read the article now. @Historylover  and @chibam  Kinda like, I was saying before, if anything the problem isn't that the title goes to far. It's that it could go a lot further. Targets are good for linking evidence to practice. That's pretty key to being outcome-based. The issue is the need to look deeper into all the outcomes, including the unintended.

 

That guilt-trip @chibam 's therapist did is already classed as a rookie move (apparently one of that "therapist's" many). The current training manuals already say to avoid that. But, if you ask little old me, the current literature misses the whole story. Telling people they'd make people sad is a guilt-trip. The reason why people would be sad (AKA love, compassion, mattering) is as important as it ever is.

 

I love all of you all so much. I don't care if ya'll are strangers. If one suffers, we all suffer. That's what makes us, us. I wouldn't give up that pain for anything and I don't like not sharing it. That's my issue.

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

@chibam My take on it all is to quote your point .... MH services should "start paying attention to the numbers of people living in anguish". 

 

I get your issue with the focus being too quantitative.

 

I found the Wildflower Alliance has some different tacks ... regarding suicidality ... 

 

Its an important but not easy conversation to have.  So good to see it, even if it is difficult.  Thats kind of the way I see @wellwellwellnez point.  

 

Maybe I would rather not have it, but cos its one of the big FACTS of my life, escaping the truths and denying the various facets, is UNHELPFUL.  SO this discussion is helpful for me, as it brings the discussion out of the closet, so to speak.  We cant keep sweeping it under the carpet.

 

There is also ... the issue ... of others taking public credit ... for solving pain and suffering ... I guess ... weary sigh ... there will always be politicking.

 

@Zoe7 @Historylover I have been disappointed with my recent dip into the Diploma and Masters level of teaching in the field.  Regurgitating DSM or other theories and constructs as facts.  Nah.  Not on.

 

Yes I understand Sane's sense of responsibility to the broader community, and am still grateful for the forums, as a vehicle for robust debate.

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

@chibam @Historylover @Appleblossom @Otter @Zoe7 

 

I hope the author of the article reviews this response. It would certainly inform their practice by seeing how statisticizing people can be a trigger.

 

To be clear what I'm asking for is a similar level of consideration. I respect both of your positions @chibam and @Historylover , but when you argue them in such a general sense, you're not just talking about your experience. You're talking about mine. I don't know how to justify my life of anguish right now. I just wish I didn't feel like a had to, within this community.

 

I'm not justifying the system. I'm not made that way. I'm standing up for human life. Quality and number. If that means I have to advocate to the system and to each individual one by one, then that's what I'm going to do. A real conversation was invited, so that's my truth.

Re: My Response To "Why Do Targets Matter In Suicide Prevention?" (TW: Suicide)

I hope this discussion hasn't put too much stress on our relationship (if I can be so bold as to call it that) @chibam . I've been reflecting on it a lot.

 

I think I could have taken a less adversarial approach, addressing my concerns over some of you wording. That's really the only thing I was (tying to be) saying. The irony is, part of the reason harm minimizes prioritizes "immediate harm" is to minimize "social anguish". I'm just gonna say it. I miss my friend. Not sure what grieving stage I'm on. (Bargaining maybe (hence me trying to redeem myself)).

 

I do agree whole-heart-like in your overall observations. The real problems are further up the pipeline or down the river or those sorts of things. Makes navigating the solutions a lot harder than they should be. Sorry if I made it harder.

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