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Content Warning: Discussions of Suicide

“Suicide prevention” often conjures specific images for people— such as programs like the ones we run here at Crisis Connections, in-patient supports, or mental health professionals. All three of those things are essential for suicide prevention and for supporting mental health—but they are not where suicide prevention stops.  

Oftentimes, suicidality is approached with all the tact of handling a hot potato. The context gets lost when it is hot, and you are the one responsible. You don’t ask where it came from or how it was cooked. Instead, you worry about keeping your hands safe and successfully passing it to someone else.  

We may prevent hot potatoes from touching the ground by directing them to those with gloves or calloused hands, but that does not prevent future hot potatoes from being thrust into the air from person to person. We should know what to do when looking after hot potatoes. But we also need to reassess larger issues if hot potatoes are constantly being thrown around everywhere.  

No one should be treated or thought of as potato, and no one should be defined by the existence or nonexistence of their suicidal thoughts. However, for many people in the mental health system, it might feel like an apt analogy for how they feel: stripped of individuality and unseen in the eyes of others, as if they are just a problem someone needs to hand to the next person.  

It is our belief that people are not burdens. To lean on each other and to be leaned on by others is vital to our collective wellbeing. To connect with others is the core of this belief.  

At Crisis Connections, we put an emphasis on holistic support and understanding the context in which we are supporting people. It is important to us that no issue is too big or small for someone who wants to talk to reach out to us.  

Other ways we ensure our holistic support: 

  • Our diversion program to provide more connections between emergency services (911), resource services (211), and crisis services/emotional services (988)  
  • Our bridger program to help support those struggling with substance use 
  • Training for all our staff and volunteers to examine our biases, the impact of those biases, and many of the factors that contribute to mental health challenges 

As a youth crisis specialist at Teen Link, I have come to expand my understanding of suicide prevention and where we can draw the distinctions between prevention, intervention, and postvention. Suicide intervention and postvention are prevention, but suicide prevention is not limited just to intervention. I tend to think of it like how a square is a rectangle, but vice versa isn’t true. 

Suicide prevention is anything that prevents suicide. Hotlines, mental health professionals, and mental health treatment often act in all three.  

Suicide intervention, on the other hand, refers specifically to when someone is experiencing suicidal ideation or has a plan to die by suicide—this includes most of what people picture when they hear suicide prevention, and we have several programs and trainings that specifically address this step.  

Suicide postvention refers to supporting affected communities after a death by suicide. If you or someone you know has lost someone to suicide, we are here for you and understand how complex that grief is. Our support after suicide program is especially for you, to connect you with community from others who have gone through similar loss. Learn more at Washington Support After Suicide < Crisis Connections.  

When I think of suicide prevention and how it relates to the people I know who have struggled with suicidal thoughts and feelings, I think of how it feels to have everything build until it feels insurmountable. I think of how straining it can be to be in an environment where you don’t feel like you have agency, or you don’t feel recognized as whole. 

Feeling trapped –physically, financially, emotionally, or socially– is overwhelming and exhausting; this can lead to suicidal ideation as people search for a way to get out of the boxes that plague them. Suicide prevention means helping to take apart those boxes, and it needs to happen on several levels.  

Here is an incomplete list of what that element of suicide prevention can look like:  

  • Creating more spaces to foster community 
  • Using someone’s chosen name and pronouns 
  • Respecting people’s identities 
  • Checking in with the people around you 
  • Learning and listening from those with different perspectives 
  • Food programs 
  • Housing resources 
  • Access to healthcare 
  • Awareness of intersectionality 
  • Practicing antiracism 
  • Grief support 
  • Environmental justice 
  • Social justice 
  • Peer support 
  • Funding for library systems 

Suicide prevention is not a game of hot potato, it is about building support systems and striving for equity. You do not need all the answers to be open to learning, as you do not need all the answers to be able to connect.  

If you have not already, it can be very helpful and thought provoking to learn mental health first aid and suicide intervention strategies.  

Posted in Notes