If you are thinking about ending your life, help is available right now

The next hour

If getting through the next hour is the whole task, that is a legitimate plan. Nobody needs to solve their life tonight.

• Tell one person. Not the full story if you cannot manage it — just that tonight is bad and you do not want to be by yourself. People are usually far better at this than we expect them to be.
• Put distance between you and the method. Give the firearm, the pills, or the keys to someone else, or lock them somewhere that takes effort to reach. This single step saves lives, because suicidal crises frequently pass in hours, and survival often comes down to what was within arm’s reach during them.
• Do not be alone in a room with the decision. Somewhere with other people in it — a friend’s sofa, a waiting room, an all-night place — counts.
• Leave the big decisions until tomorrow. Nothing you are weighing tonight gets worse for being decided in daylight.

What happens if you call 988

A trained person answers and asks what is going on. You do not have to have the words ready. Most calls are a conversation and end there — the great majority do not result in police attendance or an involuntary hospital admission, which is the fear that stops a lot of people dialling. You can say at the start that you want to talk and are not in immediate danger.

You can call about someone else. You can call because you do not know whether it is bad enough to call.

If you are worried about somebody

Ask directly. “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” The fear that asking plants the idea is one of the most persistent myths in this area, and the research does not support it. Asking plainly is generally experienced as a relief.

• Ask, and then be quiet long enough for a real answer.
• Do not argue them out of it, and do not lead with how it would affect you.
• Ask what they have access to, and help make it harder to reach.
• Stay, or find someone who can. Do not extract a promise and then leave.
• Help them make the call. Offer to sit with them while they do it.

A longer piece on how to have that conversation.

When the crisis has passed

Getting through it is not the same as it being over, and the period after a crisis carries real risk. Two things worth doing while you have some momentum: make it lastingly harder to reach whatever you were considering, and get an appointment in the diary with someone who treats what is underneath this.

Suicidal thinking is usually a symptom of something treatable — depression, post-traumatic stress, a situation that has become unbearable. Those respond to treatment, and the feeling that they cannot is part of the condition rather than an accurate reading of your future.

Get started, or call 210-714-3308. Please note again that this practice cannot provide crisis or after-hours cover; 988 can, at any hour.