Do you have any examples of this strategy ever working?
If you know the person you're dealing with well, you can employ strategies that you wouldn't use with most people. For example, I promised one person that if I ever really believed that she were better off dead than alive, I'd assist her suicide, and she found this very comforting. This is not something I would ever recommend saying to a stranger or an acquaintance with whom you are not close.
And James Miller doesn't sound predatory in that comment to me (and didn't before editing either,) but the issue isn't whether you or I would find it predatory, the issue is whether a person who is in a highly emotional state of mind, far from their most rational, and whose familiarity with the ideas being presented most likely rests entirely on Hollywood movies, would find it predatory.
You can provide all the explanations you want for why this is a good argument, but the fact is that people do not consistently operate on strength-of-argument, especially when they're suicidally depressed.
Sometimes, having your seatbelt unbuckled can save your life, because you can get thrown to safety from the wreckage of the car. Sometimes, having an airbag deploy can kill you. But if you're not in a position to predict specific cases in advance, you always want to take the options that maximize your chances. As See said elsewhere in this disccusion, the advice MoreOn received in high school is distilled professional expertise, and you'd better have some damned strong evidence before setting it aside.
One case were I'm pretty sure it "worked" and a few with positive feedback but not sure they were real risks.
"For example, I promised one person that if I ever really believed that she were better off dead than alive, I'd assist her suicide, and she found this very comforting. This is not something I would ever recommend saying to a stranger or an acquaintance with whom you are not close."
Now that would be wierd.
"who is in a highly emotional state of mind, far from their most rational" Where is this coming from? As far as I ca...
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.