I treat people who are suicidal, as well as survivors of suicide loss. I think part of the difficulty is that people often assume that suicide is the result of “selfish” thinking (“My life is terrible/It will never get better/They’ll miss me when I’m gone”) when it is just as likely to be the result of “burden” thinking (“People would be happier/free/relieved if I was gone”). Both kinds of suicidal thinking are pure garbage. These kinds of thoughts are not exclusive to depression diagnoses. It’s an incredibly complex set of phenomena and if I could magically remove the stigma surrounding talking about suicide, I would. I believe that it would go a long way to helping reduce suicide rates.
