A few disclaimers. I am not a mental health professional, as is probably more than apparent. I have some experience dealing with both ostensibly and explicitly suicidal friends. My personal history also includes periods of depression and bouts of suicidal intentions of varying degrees of intensity. In addition, have an intellectual interest in the subject. If anyone with better experience, knowledge or training in this area wants to correct me, I implore you to do so. Dealing with a suicidal friend or loved one is one situation where you definitely do not want wrong information in your head.
With that out of the way...
It is my belief that if someone has a genuine, premeditated and well-thought-out intention to end their life, you won't find out about it until they've already done it. It will be planned in such a way that they won't be disturbed, and won't fail on the basis of conviction. They'll do it 'properly'. As a result, this advice applies to the more melodramatic 'cry for help' expression of suicidal intent.
People don't just suddenly decide that it's a good idea to kill themselves. It usually isn't a very good idea. It's usually the result of a sequence of events which points to threatening suicide as an appropriate outcome of the situation. The old saw of not being able to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into is quite true in this case. Don't try and engage in rational argument about why they shouldn't kill themselves.
Your goal is to try and steer their mood to a point where they think "gee, wasn't I silly for thinking about killing myself?" I find the most straightforward way of doing this is focussing their attention on near-future events. People they want to see, places they want to go, upcoming social engagements, even something as mundane movies or books they expressed an interest in. Planning for the future and contemplating suicide are fundamentally at odds with each other. In Robin Hanson jargon, suicide is Far, and becomes appealing through a lack of Near consequences for carrying it out. Even something as trivial as missing the next Batman movie can be enough of a Near consequence for someone to feel silly about the whole wanting-to-kill-themselves thing.
Another important element is to try and keep the tone and content of the conversation as normal as possible. There's a fairly well-established cultural narrative for how these sorts of exchanges are supposed to go, and steering away from that narrative will make their actions seem more and more silly in context.
I... don't see how making someone feel silly is going to help in the long run? If it really is a problem for them, then wouldn't they have a harder time bouncing back from thinking they've said something silly/stupid, not to mention feel alienated and alone, possibly discouraging them from talking about it again instead of doing the deed? It seems to me that an expression of suicidal intent as a cry for help doesn't necessarily make it insincere. It doesn't sound unlikely to me that someone could say they've the intent to do it, because their view of how t...
Last month, two people far at the periphery of my social circles have threatened suicide. Seems like a sign for me to learn some ledge-fu.
I reviewed the stuff I'd learned back in high school ("Listen." "Be supportive." "Don't argue." "Etc etc etc.") I have trouble believing that this would work outside of movieland, especially on strangers. More so, in person I'm an awkward, fidgeting introvert---the impact of everything I say is thus diminished, and I sound very insincere or clinical, like I'm following a bad movie script, when I say anything like, "You are not alone in this. I’m here for you." or "How can I best support you right now?" I doubt that this would sound any better in writing.
I suppose I could split my question into two related ones: what would you say to a person threatening to commit suicide, 1. in person, and 2. in an email?
I'm looking for out-of-the-box ideas that don't rely on charisma or compassion shining through. Personally, if I ever need to talk myself out of suicidal thoughts, I apply the "bum comparison principle": if my life is so crummy that I'm willing to commit suicide, then I should be willing to just walk out on everything I value and drift off in a random direction, survive by dine-and-dashing out of cheap restaurants and wash dishes if I get caught, maybe take odd jobs or hitchhike or gather roots and berries or blog from public libraries. I don't see this possibility in a negative light, and yet I still haven't done it. To me, it means that however bad my life may seem, I'm still too attached to it to walk out; therefore, suicide isn't on the menu.
People have different reasons to want suicide, and I understand that what works for me with my first world problems probably won't work for a person who is in too much physical pain from an incurable disease. To the best of my knowledge, the two people I mentioned earlier are both unskilled laborers who had lost their jobs, one of them so long ago that he's no longer eligible for unemployment benefits. I don't think I'll meet these particular people again, but I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts on what I could've said if my brain hadn't frozen.