The biggest problem with suicide prevention is that almost all of it is superficial bullshit. Before people tell someone to reach out and “get help”, I wish they would actually take a minute to think about what that even means. A lot of people who are suicidal are socially isolated and literally don’t have anybody to reach out to. No family or friends.

Many people can’t afford to pay a therapist $60 an hour because that’s half their grocery budget for an entire month. And even if they could, the therapist is more likely than not to be just as superficial of a waste of time. Someone that’s suicidal because their life sucks due to things like poverty, racism, or a shitty job that they’re trapped in doesn’t need a therapist to give hollow platitudes or shitty guided meditations and breathing exercises.

Suicide hotlines are staffed by volunteers with limited training who do nothing but read more hollow platitudes and sympathy statements off a piece of paper. Again, nice sentiment but functionally worthless for most people.

And inpatient programs are the absolute worst. Every single person I know who was put in one, either voluntarily or not, said it was one of the most traumatic experiences of their life and they only pretended to get better out of desperation to get out from the prison-like conditions.

Instead of pushing this bullshit on people, we need to think about the serious structural problems in our society that are causing people to feel depressed in the first place, and fix them.