Someone cares.

[majordave]

I've personally talked a good friend of mine out of suicide a couple times and I can honestly say it's one of the most delicate and fragile situations I've ever dealt with. It's not worth it.

It's never worth it.

Yeah, I've done that a few times myself. One girl seemed ok afterwards, but a couple years later, she ended up committing suicide anyway. Oh, and she had wonderful parents who cared and were very concerned about her and she knew that. It just wasn't enough.

If someone is depressed, over a number of years, there really isn't any way to just "talk them out of it." With the right therapy and/or medication, many recover and others at least are able to live a relatively normal life, but there's others still who fall through the cracks.

Trying to tell someone who's thinking of committing suicide that "things will get better?" Yeah, ok. Several years ago I was watching a furniture for a few days while the owners went on vacation. A woman came in looking for a bed, and extremely distressed told me her husband had just left her and had taken their bed with him. I stopped working, sat down and spent the entire afternoon listening to her story, attempting to comfort her by saying, "things will get better, I promise" to which she repeatedly replied, "No they won't! I know they won't!" She was so upset and depressed that when it was time to close the shop, I spent a good hour trying to talk her into coming to my house for dinner, and maybe spend the night or a few days because I didn't think she should go home alone, but I just couldn't talk her into it. So I gave her my phone number and begged her to call me if she got depressed, along with making her promise to come back the next morning to the store. As she drove away, her last words to me were "It's not going to get better, and that's all there is to it." She went home and committed suicide that same night.

The old saying "that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger?" Well, the the other side to that saying "that which doesn't make us stronger, can kill us instead."

Saying that someone died of a broken heart? That's not always JUST a figure of speech. There are those who have greived in such excruciating pain, that upon autopsy, it was determined that their heart literally ripped apart.

It's extemely important when someone tells you that they're comptemplating suicide that you try to get them to seek professional help. If you can't convince them to do so on their own, speak to their family, a school counselor, or call the police department -- but let SOMEONE know, who can get them some help.