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There are specialists in this field, namely suicide hotlines, suicide crisis centers, etc. who are prepared to help your friends at a moment's notice.
I'd love to redirect everyone in my blast radius who's ever mentioned suicide to a hotline, but somehow I think that's the first thing just about anyone says when someone mentions suicide... to the point when "get professional help" is synonymous with "I don't want to deal with this personally."
In a similar vein, do suicide hotlines actually work? I'm reading up on them right now, and found this alarming article, that basically says that sometimes the call centers screw up, but overall they work sort of well, and that lapses need to be fixed with better training. I can't find any specifics about what that training entails; I'd love to read about what those hotline volunteers actually say to the strangers who call in.
I once actually tried calling one of those hotlines to see what they were like; I waited on hold for a while and then gave up.
If you had to wait on hold, then it's a damn good thing you gave up because otherwise you'd have been taking up the time of their people "to see what they were like" when instead they could have been, y'know, trying to help someone who was suicidal.
(Assuming for the sake of argument that they actually are helpful on balance, which seems likely.)
Well, I was also feeling pretty down at the time, but sometime between deciding "maybe I should try calling" and getting frustrated with being on hold, I started feeling better.
This suggests a novel sort of therapy for depression...
They appear (from the experience of friends who have brains such that they have had to frequently resort to them) to be a vast improvement over not having them. The volunteers are imperfect humans, but actually care about what they're doing, which seems to help.