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MYTHS ABOUT SUICIDE

Myth: Talking about suicide or asking someone if they feel suicidal will encourage suicide attempts.
Serious talk about suicide does not create or increase risk; it reduces it. The best way to identify the possibility of suicide is to ask directly. Openly discussing someone's thoughts of suicide can be a source of relief for them and can be key to preventing the immediate danger of suicide.

Myth: People who talk about suicide never attempt or complete suicide.
People who feel suicidal often talk about their feelings and plans to friends or others. Listening to, validating, and acting to support a person in this circumstance, can save lives.

Myth: Suicide is illegal
Suicide is not illegal. Even so, there are still legal questions in the UK, where suicidal individuals have been charged with Breach of the Peace, and even been made the subject of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. "A woman who has attempted suicide four times has been banned from jumping into rivers, canals or onto railway lines." (BBC, February 2005)

Myth: The only effective ways to help suicidal people come from professional therapists with extensive experience in this area. You can help by identifying the potentially suicidal person and talking to them about it. Preventing suicide is everyone's business.

Myth: If somebody wants to take their life, they will, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Most people contemplating suicide do not want to die; they just want to stop the pain and difficulties they are experiencing. Although there are some occasions when nobody could have predicted a suicide, or intervened, in most cases there will have been a point in the process where a timely intervention might have averted the tragic outcome.

Myth: People who try to kill themselves must be mentally ill.
Most people have clear reasons for their suicidal feelings. Most people have thought of suicide from time to time. Though suicide is a tragic consequence of some mental health
problems, around 3 out of 4 people who take their own lives have not been in contact with mental health services in the year before their death.

Myth: Some people are always suicidal.
Some groups, sub-cultures or ages are particularly associated with suicide. Whilst some groups, such as young men, seem to be at risk, suicide can affect anybody. Many people think about suicide in passing at some time or another. There isn't a "type" for suicide, and whilst there are warning signs, they aren't always there. Whilst there is a risk of further suicide attempts, people who have had suicidal feelings or have made an attempt on their life move on.

Myth: Suicide is painless.
Most methods of suicide are extremely unpleasant. Some methods are violent, and catastrophic. Others are physically painful, and drawn out.

Myth: A suicide in the elderly is less of a tragedy that the suicide of a teenager.
Any suicide is a tragedy for the individual, and the people around them. Saying "at least they had had a good life" marginalises the grief of those left behind after a suicide in later life.

Myth: When a suicidal person begins to feel better, the danger is over.
Often the risk of suicide can be greatest as depression lifts, or after a person appears to calm after a period of turmoil. This can be because once a decision to attempt suicide is made people may feel they have a solution; however desperate it might be.

Myth: People who attempt suicide are merely looking for attention.
Often people who attempt suicide do not want to die. When a person decides to make an attempt on their life, it is often because all other options, including the means to communicate with other people more conventionally, are obscured by the pain the person feels.