Injustice for all

A story that doesn't seem to be hitting the headlines is the possible dissolution of the civil legal aid system.

The cdhange sto UK legal aid have threatened legal aid firms. Many have already already gone bust. These firms provided the highest quality access to justice for the most disadvantaged people. The solicitors in these firms could be earning a lot more working in the commercial sector but instead they work to ensure the most important thing: everyone has equal rights and equal access to justice.

What's sad is many organisations can't see the implications of the cut backs to legal aid and the threat to the civil legal aid system. Benefits appeals are covered by civil legal aid. Many poor and disabled people access justice to ensure they get their right to the benefits they're entitled to through community solicitors. Asylum seekers also get legal advice to help them appeal their claims. Those in debt get support through the civil legal aid syatem and they get the best support from the solicitors that people with more money can employ to resolve their debt problems.

The is a cost cutting exercise but the cuts mean the worse access to high quality legal help for the worst off. This is like cutting NHS healthcare and farming the work out to unskilled call centre operators. Manypeople won't get the full legal support they're entitled to. These cuts will affect the mental ill and the physically disabled because they're the people currently using the services provided by social justice firms.

What's so painful is seeing the poor media coverage. I wanted to find an article to link to that explained what's going on with the legal system to a lay person but I can't find anything upon a cursory search. There are important theoretical legal reasons why the civil legal aid system must remain well funded and these are what the lawyers seem to be talking about but these mean nothing to the public.

My own experience is getting help from a legal aid firm for my debts after a suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalisation. I was in no fit state to deal with any of it and my ardent desire was that I would have died in the failed attempt. Thankfully with the help of a dear friend I got to see a solicitor who helped me out with my debt problems and made it not seem like the end of the world.. I think they help many people in dire straits.

A quote that's hard to live by

‎"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way."
- Martin Luther King Jr


I'm trying to piece together what happened last night. I got drunk when I shouldn't have. I ended up going food shopping after getting really drunk. There was a guy who started a fight. The staff had called the police. I tried to calm him down and calm down the staff as well. He was angry and upset about something. I hadn't seen what happened but was told he punched one of the staff who thought he was stealing stuff which it turns out he wasn't. The accusation had set him off.


It turned out his wife had left him that week. I'm not sure if it was true or not. The police arrived and I hung around just in case they were going to arrest him or take him to a psychiatric ward. I have no idea why. I was really drunk and hungry too.


In the end they let him go. It surprised me but I hope the officers understood that the guy was just having a day night. I'd spoken to one of the officers briefly before they escorted the guy into a room in the store to speak to him. They may already have been mental health aware.


I walked him back to his house or what he told me was his house. He brought me in the back way which was odd. He broke a window at the back to get in. At that point I went to leave because I thought we were breaking into a place. He then took me round the front. The front door had already been broken through. He kicked the front door in. At that point I should have thought this is really fucked up but I wasn't really thinking. This is very stupid of me. I've never broken into a house apart from my own.


I wonder if he was going through a divorce and it was his old house or something?


Anyway, he poured a  glass of good wine for me and we shared a spliff. He needed to clam down and the weed I'm smoking is high in cannabinoids (the antipsychotic comoponenet of cannabis). The emotional onslaught he had that evening mixed with the alcohol and cannabis knocked him out pretty quickly. I hope he slept well and felt a bit better in the morning.


I trusted him when he told me it was his house and that he'd lost his wife or they'd gotten divorced. I should have used my better judgement and never gotten involved in the first place but I perceived someone who was going through something shit and it was externalising in unacceptable ways. I wasn't trying to live to that quote. Just trying to help someone out like I was helped out last Friday night by a random stranger who chatted to me about life.  He treated me like a human being and that's more than I can say for some of the mental health professionals I've met in my time.


I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that I'm not gutless. The value it has for my soul can cost a high price through society's punishments.

An emoticon for the mask

:'-)

Do I cut myself, drink or get high?

I haven't had a drink for 4 days now. I've been picking bits of twigs and putting them in my rollups because I've got very little herb left. I haven't cut myself in a long time but it has started again over the past
few weeks. It's ok though. I'm just cutting on top of scars.

I don't usually cut for relief. I cut to fight the controlling force in my life but I had to hit my head against a wall a couple of times just now to get some relief. No bruises though so don't worry.

What is the right thing to say?

I am desperate to know the right to thing to say to these words.

"i wonder why no matter what i do, i don't get any better."

I ended up giving the individual a lengthy response that they'd probably already heard with little or no empathy. The lack of empathy is part of my state at the moment. I'm very sad inside. But even if my heart wasn't stone cold I still wouldn't know what to say.

This is a friend of mine and I'd like to have been able to apply Schneidman's techniques to apply what I knew of their life history to see where they were and what was up. They won't talk to me nor will they answer my questions.

I want to be able to give them five words that will salve their psychache. Instead they got one of my length essays that cover every possibility which I know was the last thing they wanted but I just didn't know what to do.

I explained a little about my life and how I went through hell and came back, but they know that I went through hell again and haven't returned yet.

I have fought and fought to keep my head above water and now I'm drowning. It is at this time that it is hardest to help another.

Do I say, "It gets better and worse" or "this is life little youngster." "You know not hell yet" is perhaps a closer truth but none are what a suffering person wants to hear.

My relationships in helping people depend on my honesty and I can't tell this person honestly that "It gets better so chill" but the bleakness of truth at the wrong time can break a person.

"seek wisdom from the veterans" is true, perhaps. "Listen to your loved one" is true, perhaps. Yet this individual is smart enough to know that. It's why I didn't say, "buck up and keep trying."

But I think that's all I have left for me. That's all I can say to myself I mean. I'd not say it to someone else when they needed help but I think that's come from my upbringing. It's how I treat myself. Like shit.

Untreated depression seen through my self-harm scars

There's a really big scar from one of my self-harm attempts while I was going through hellish psychosis. It's a really big one that's described in an earlier blog post.

The scar is huge because it was untreated. I didn't know how to stitch it myself. I could have worked it out and done it but I'm not Rambo. I didn't think to take a needle and thread and DIY it.

There's an old study that shows that 85% of people recover from depression in a year without treatment. The study didn't really say enough about the actual outcomes.

Has my lack of treatment created a huge scar that will heal but leaves a big and permanent gash on my psyche and life? Yeah. Probably. C'est la vie.

Lived experience of life

From

http://www.psychminded.co.uk/news/news2009/march09/oliver-james-cbt003.htm

It's one of the comments at the bottom. I know it's just one person's experience but...well...in my opinion that counts for a lot.

This is not to be taken as something that means you shouldn't feel like you don't suffer. The complexity of pain and it's externalisation is something I've got a fair amount of experience with, enough to tell you never weigh up is my pain lesser or greater than the next man or woman.

(Sadly if you ever meet me and I'm campaigning for something I will totally sell out on that when there's a point to be made.).

"

Better off talking to dead grandmother

From: Mark Suckling, unemployed, England, UK

Date: May 8, 2009

I have just started cognitive therapy. And if I had to be honest it has made me more depressed. Being unemployed you begin to concentrate on the minutest detail of everything. For instance an item of food has gone up 30p. This has a knock-on effect all the way down the line as you are fixed to an income.

My therapist had no idea how much unemployment benefit was. She thought my wife and I were both receivng £94 a week. Instead of just £94 for both. I told her that I was concerned that I wasn't getting enough nourishment as I only could afford £20 a week for food. She then told me she spends £120 a week on her shopping. I have to walk everywhere because I can't afford bus fare. I have had problems with my knees for years. And after walking three miles to the session and three miles back. They hurt. And without missing a beat she suggested maybe jogging would help my depression.

Try as you may, empathy is no substitute for walking in another person's shoes. Only then can you truly understand depression.

I dread going back to these sessions. Basically the ethos is a buck-up and pull yourself together philosophy. I would have been better off talking to my dead grandmother. At least I respected her.

"

The difference between Employment Support Allowance (formerly Incapcity Benefit) and Job Seeker's Allowance is the difference between the poverty line and extreme poverty.

When I was on IB there would be some weeks when all I would spend on food was £10 a week. I spent the rest of my money on alcohol and cannabis (yeah, I'm a cunt. Get over it). I used to explain my shopping habits as "yellow sticker shopping". I never bought anything I wanted. I just got what was on offer. I still do but I go for nicer things. In those days the nice things would be the items of food that were so off that they'd be re-reduced in price. I calorie counted to make sure I got enough to eat and made a 1,000-1,500 calorie meal that was £1 or £2 (a 3-pack of value mince pies covered in value meatballs).

I survived on what are know as "inferior goods." I learned the term from a friend of mine who worked at Goldman Sachs. It's sadly the range of food that far too many people are forced to buy. My friend explained them to me as things you would only buy if you had no choice. They're the no frills, value or whatever - the cheapest products. They're the most mass produced and worst made.

They're the products that some people might feel embarassed bringing to the counter because they carry the stigmata of poverty and cheapness. They're also the products that have the highest number of chemicals, are the least healthy and the most likely to contribute to illness.

It's the lot of the poor: eat shit and die younger. There's huge reports that make that point more lucidly and with references to other big reports. Think of that the next time you see someone reaching for those products, especially if you're a shareholder in one of the supermarket oligopoly.

Or just find your own happiness in realising just how good non-inferior goods are.

So I rang services on Saturday morning

It was something of a mistake. It was alcohol depression that made me desperate and I stupidly revealed myself as suicidal, self-harming and paranoid (or not).

The saddest thing is that I can't kill myself.

I've been reading some things this evening by Schneidman to try and help me.

He says that there are two questions to ask people who are suicidal (from this blog).

• Where do you hurt?
• How may I help you?

I don't know the answer to the first question. I just want consciousness to end. It's not about the fight for the greater good or whatever bullshit I use to justify my existence. It's not about my broken heart. It's not even about contemplating losing that which I really love: skunk. Or the feeling that I have no friends. Really. I'm so used to those. Betrayal is the hardest thing but I suspect that I deserve it for having done it to someone else.

"All I do is suffer"

It's the text from someone else's suicide note (from the book linked to below). It resonates with me though it's not truly how I feel. I have thought those words before and recovered.

"I beg you to celebrate for me that I can be free of pain." is a plea for understanding and forgiveness I hope the reader remembers when my time comes. "don't feel you've failed" is the absolution I'd offer.

The second one question about what help I want is much easier to answer though. Kill me, please. I can't do it myself or it's going to take a lot more effort to do which I just don't have. My pathetic half-arsed attempts just make me look more the pathetic loser.

I think there might be some people who would like me to die because in my bad phases, when I get socially destructive and self-destructive, I turn into a monster (or reveal my true being).

There's a part of me that sees what I did as a self-death anyway. I've opened myself up for forced medication and not the fun drugs like antidepressants. I would guess that antipsychotics are on the cards if I'm not careful but I really don't care anymore. I'm so useless because of what or who I am and how I behave. Those along with my "self", psyche and personality could all be changed. I could no longer be and the "dead man walking" (as I felt like when I was on medication) can return. That thing at least was useful for work. The deranged, demented psycho isn't.

I've slept all day yesterday after that or as much as I could, and last night and a lot of today too. In the last few hours I've eaten something and I've started using my mum's laptop to read up on Shneidman's works to see if he can at least offer something and in one of what may be his last books I'm finding a sense of normality in his case study of Arthur. (Please don't follow the link if you don't have resilience to academic language).

Yeah. I know this is depression. I haven't even reached for St John's Wort or omega-3 fish oils. I took 1 vitamin pill on Friday because I wanted to feel better. I'd even showered two days in a row on Friday.

I don't know what tomorrow brings but I don't care.

I'm not planning to kill myself. Don't worry about that. I've not been successful in killing myself on so many of the weak, pathetic attempts I've made. The scars on my arm are minor and it's just something for people to tell each other about to show just how much of a freak I am (don't worry...I forgive those people who revealed my darkest secret to other people in the office and in the pub). I can handle the paranoia though this week has cost me my laptop and, I think, wrecked all my camera equipment. More for people to laugh at me about.

Ever the freak. Ever the failure. And, worst of all, still alive.

Why did I smash my laptop

Paranoia or truth. I can not tell. Either someone was genuinely causing problems with my laptop like making the wireless disconnected unpredictably but with the intention of causing me discomfort and pain or through god/the other consciousness/non-corporeal entity that I fight with. The former is not so impossible but I can not discount the latter.

I also broke my 400mm lens in Friday and it was a similar cause. I think it was my own foolishness on that account. My camera and 70-200mm may also be broken in the self-destructive, self-harming drunken rampage that was triggered on Friday. It was all on a long walk from Holborn to East London.

I should have broken myself. I'm very close.

Why do suicidal thoughts happen?

In the last few months I've had one person open up about suicidal thoughts and one person who won't tell me if they're experiencing suicidal thoughts. The first seemed to be toying with the idea as much as they didn't want to do anything about it. The second person has been
harder to get them to open up again. I've met someone else who's been suicidal for a long time like me. And another person who accidentally mentioned she'd felt suicidal in the past.

Between the four of them and me there's a range of experiences of suicidal thoughts. One person described theirs as though separate from themselves, as though they had no control over them. They seemed almost surprised at the question as to why they felt suicidal. Another seemed
to be trapped in an internal reality where ideals and philosophical thought seemed to be creating some sort of existentialist crisis and it seemed like there was little joy they took from their lives.

I've had suicidal thoughts on a regular basis. "I wish I was dead" and other phrases I can think and then move on from now I've had them appear so many times. These can be irrespective of mood, moment and events. At other times they can come through looking at life and seeing it lacking or seeing my life as a failure. I'm sure its a feeling many people experience.

Usually I can deal with those thoughts and feelings by either looking at the positive or accepting the truth of my life: it gets better, and we just keep surviving. At other times it was a way to deal with a life crisis like getting into what I thought was an irrecoverable financial situation or after the end of a relationship. Both those experiences were about the castle in the sky that is status (in all its forms), respect and self-respect (and others) collapsing or being percieved to
collapse. And now I've learnt that these things are simply constructs, fluid and intangible - they're very far from real and to be clung to like life should be. Those are also experiences other people have had though perhaps they reacted better than I.

Then there was the parasuicidal behaviour that was the war against the entity - the noncorporeal force or whatever that I feel in my life and in my heads. My sense of "I" discovered it wasn't in control of me, i.e. my sense of self came to be aware that it was not alone nor in control of my mind and body. I'm sure many a reader has a thought popping into their head at this moment like "schizophrenia" or "psycho" or "psychosis". Maybe those who read this who have understanding of this experience can sympathise and perhaps even empathise. This was a force I couldn't control so I fought with the only thing I thought I could control: my life. There were many recent attempts and prolific self-harm as a bizarre way to fight back and take
control. I'm out of that phase now and me and my entity are in a period of peace.

The point of this is there are many reasons why people kill themselves. There are also many experiences of suicidal thoughts. Another person I've met has told me they experience their suicidal thoughts as coming from the voice inside their head. It seems the opposite of my experience in the sense that I attempted to regain control or die trying as my will, whereas it seemed their path was for their "I" to fight against the command to kill themself. Perhaps it was the same experience however one person experienced themselves as one of the selves while my experience was the experience of the other self (this makes no sense without having experienced what I'm talking about or having a good understanding of madness).

There are lots of reasons why suicidal thoughts happen and why people kill themselves.

A little on the biopsychosocial model

Unhappiness has many causes. The biopsychosocial model explains them in their entirety.

It seems pretty easy to do on the biological side of things. Eat little, move little, stay indoors and drink a lot. Its a sure fire way to prepare for another trigger. The psychosocial ones are used the most powerful but it varies from person to person. Its lucky that life's hard and cruel. There's lots of triggers to choose from.

The variance of the significance of the factors of the biopsychosocial model amongst individuals is high and I think changes with individuals over time. Biological factors may not cause depression in me like they would in other people but thats because I've become resilient to them through many years of living with poor eating habits, addictions and never going to the gym. I don't think that's the same for everyone though. I think I've been like that for a long time. When I took psychiatric medication I needed very high levels - the pharmacists would ask if I was sure these were for me because the doses were enough for two people.

The biopsychosocial model is the start of a truly scientific understanding of the mind though it may in truth be the spiritual-biopsychosocial model. Both of these are concepts far in advance of the current consensus work of psychiatry which focuses on diagnosis and treatment based on operational definitions. It ends up with a system that understands all the materials in the world as they are and not as combinations of indivisibile elements. The mental health periodic table o elements is so far in the future its hardly worth conceiving however it will be the leap the Humane Genome Project or the Mendeleev and Meyer periodic tables were in other sciences.

What's love like for a mad person?

My head is heavy tonight. Its been one of those four seasons in one week weeks. Highs, lows, brutal crashes. My heart now feels torn asunder but the drink will salve that pain like it salves so many others. The medication of the hypocritical.

Last night someone asked me if I loved someone I shouldn't and I answered truthfully. It really hurt. The reason for the hurt is simply a realisation of what I already knew though, manifest through other people's paranoia.

What is love is something for another post. Its an interesting topic debated by many philosophers and fools. I know its feeling and I think many people never do. I allow it to happen because it is a wonderful and painful feeling that makes life worth living and losing. Its part of life and misconstructed social norms mean the most beautiful of emotions is fettered by outmoded ideas of morality.

Love has a purpose. To bring two people together. To lay the foundations for a relationship. To unite two souls that once drifted endlessly alone through the ether.

It has no purpose to me other than the feeling itself. What point is there when when I fall in love I value that person and as soon as I do I know there's no point. When I fall in love I know that nothing can come of it because I know I'm not good for them. Only in moments of irrationality or mania do I make the mistake of having a relationship.

Some idiot counsellor would try and tell me that that's not true but I know better. I know I'm not a good person. I know that when I'm a mess I can be a real mess. I go through times where I lose the plot entirely, where my madness overtakes and there's nothing anyone can do. I have nothing to offer anyone in terms of the constructs of long term relationships. I fit few of the 'essential criteria' that people use to judge a person worth of a relationship. Self harm scars seem to only be attractive to a very small minority of people. And while I'm not suicidal now nor have been actively so in some time I live with the knowledge that I will take my own life.

My life is a total mess but its my life. I'd never inflict it on a person I love. I ask for no sympathy because I do ok without that hope. I survive and I thrive without that thing that others have and consider an essential part of existence, and I survive with a smile on my face.

But being accused by someone who barely knows me about something that is a silent burden for me is heartbreaking. Thank fuck for my true lover, my companion, my only friend in this sick twisted thing called life. Oh alcohol, I love you.

Doctor's mental health and how to help them

I'm having a frustrating situation. A friend and extended family member is in hospital. She's not talking to me but she's responding to my texts. I want to go see her.

What I'd like to do is phone the hospital where she is and find out what happened, then try and persuade her to let me see her. I can't do that though because I assume the staff would respect her confidentiality.

I think the reason why she has only told me last night is because she doesn't want the rest of the family to know. She's told me stuff before she's never told anyone else so I think I'm in the right zone to help her through this but at the moment she's shutting me out.

She's a doctor too so she may not be in her local hospital where I'd expect her to be. NHS staff are usually hospitalised at a different PCT.

Yep. That's how prevalent the stigma is amongst doctors. Mental ill health is something to be hidden from colleagues even outside the workplace. Its still fundamentally seen differently to physical illness by doctors outside (and perhaps even inside) psychiatry.

So I'm facing a struggle. At the moment she's responding to some of my texts. Any text that has an important question she doesn't respond to. So I'm just nattering with her about my life in the hope that it'll distract her for a moment, give her something else to think about, maybe say something that will make things a little bit better and maintain human contact. At the moment it feels very much like a waiting game and in the meantime I'm having a quick look to see if I can find something that will help me.

She's also a tough case. Tougher than me perhaps. The self-stigma is probably quite high but she knows me and I think she respects so I hope that my destigmatising, mad pride arguments might work and they'd be based on the evidence of my life. But she's a doctor and she's seen more than me, and she's a good scientists so she knows one single example (apart from in her own life) is not a truth.

She's exceptionally intelligent and driven when she's on form. She may easily have a genius level IQ and behaviour. Her capability at philosophical thought is far beyond most philosophy professors and she knows the material too. That makes it very difficult to argue with her rationally but I'm quite good at that.

But I'm not sure its worked for me in the past though because rational arguments not well communicated can mean a person gets defensive and builds walls around whatever they rationalise. I've had some very expensive therapy before from and had the problem that my intellect meant even the smartest doctor hit a wall with my counterarguments.

I feel stuck as what to do. I sadly see it as something of an intellectual challenge as well as helping out another soul. I've looked for some research and found a useless paper. (Doctors who kill themselves: a study of the methods used for suicide - http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/93/6/351).

Grr. Quantitative without decent qualitative stuff. Another US paper is also useless. (Suicide in Male and Female Physicians - http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/228/3/323) except for one useful bit. Young, trainee, female doctors have a significantly high suicide rate. But the stupid paper doesn't go into any detail as to why and what to do. Thankfully there's a reference....but the fucking paper is pay-for access. (SUICIDE IN PROFESSIONALS: A STUDYOF MALE AND FEMALEPSYCHOLOGISTS - http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/98/6/436)

I hope what's the abstract includes is useful though.

"Losses in ascertainment may contribute to the apparent deficit in males. The excess of suicide in females was consonant with the results of a similar studycarried out in physicians. Marginality, role conflict, and ambivalence about theachievement of success were discussed as possible factors contributing tosuicide in female professionals."

Sadly the paper is on data from the 60's but its all I've got to go on at the moment. Its a useful example of when research is useless I guess. That small gem is all I've got to work on at the moment.

Its very difficult dealing with doctors because they're arrogant and have something of an ego problem, much like myself. Sadly they often know their stuff too.

They seem to have a totally different culture to 'normal' and perhaps something akin to soldiers. This is where lived experience helps. She knows about my own deep, dark psychiatric past. She knows a little about my unshared perceptions as well. I think that's the tool that's most going to work to get her to at least talk about what's been going on.

The research has provided useful though. Its identified something I already knew. Doctors' mental health is usually pretty poor. Its so sad. My family and extended family are daily examples for me. Had I become a doctor I'm sure I'd be no different.

They're the arbiters of mental health and they're the healers given the highest respect, but underneath their professional exterior I know they're often miserable. I know the public wouldn't want that if they knew.

I feel they're the hardest to help and I'm totally stuck for ideas on what to do. There is one hope. Dr Liz Miller and the Doctor's Support Network. They may be my next port of call.

Its a shame no one read this blog yet. I could really do with some comments to help me out today.

A little bit of perspective on psychosis

I wish it would go away, for me and for others. But I know that's not an answer. I know the pain will always be part of my life as it is for others. I hate it but that doesn't change the fact that I must accept it. Its something that will kill me one day and that day will be a good day. In the meantime the struggle through it all is almost purpose in itself.

The struggleis with 'god' or whatever name people give to the entity and experience. The knowledge that there is a controlling, noncorporeal force or being in my life causing the harm and upset, controlling and manipulating everything, toying and playing with me and my life and my senses and my reality was a brutal awakening. The conventional view that this entity is responsible for the good only is incorrect. It saves the lives of people after the tsunami but also caused the tsunami.

Facing it alone was very hard. There was no one I could talk to about this experience. There was no one to help me cope. I couldn't open up while I was going through it because I didn't have the strength or resolve. I was afraid of being thought of as a psycho or a schizo. I didn't want people to think I was mad.

That's changed though. I now know I am mad. It makes me sad because I know the negative meaning of that term. I know the expectation is that I will become a social pariah looked after by the mental health system but I don't expect that to be true in my case. I know that expectation is only caused by stigma and society's maladaption to the full spectrum of the human experience. I know mad is just a word and the concept is only half the picture.

I know I am not alone in my madness. There are other people who go through the awakening or whatever it is called but are never seen by the mental health system or never reveal their true experience so never get the social label of weirdo or mad. My choice is to become more open about my madness and take the stigma of madness by the horns because there is nothing wrong nor ill about psychosis except that it is a distressing experience that is intensely, deeply stigmatised.

My hope is that through more openess from me there will be more openess. I see that as the way the stigma will change. Perhaps the fact that I can do it without (I hope) becoming a social pariah is a sign that the stigma is already changing. 40 years ago I'd have been immediately hospitalised were I to tell a psychiatrist that I have an unusual experience of consciousness.

It is an ill in society that can not be seen: the perscution, false pathologisation and stigmatisation of the same experiences that created the idea of god. It is an ill that creates the ill of psychosis. Post-Industrial Revolution society has forgotten what to do when psychosis happens. Less developed countries have better outcomes for schizophrenia because of their cultural alternative nonpsychatric explanations and perhaps also because of their lack of treatment with psychopharmaceuticals.

Friends and family are likely to tell a person to see a doctor because they have no idea what to do (a result of the 'great confinement' where the mad were housed in the asylums and removed from view (and this, again, was done for compassionate reasons)). Doctors are tell the person there is something wrong with them. They explain it as a problem with the person's brain and treat it with avolition and sedation-inducing medication that slowly kills the patient.

Few understand the sheer misery of the experience. Its not surprising the completed suicide rate is estimated at up to 10% of people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Depression is a walk in the park in comparison. Its not surprising people want to kill themselves when they go through this because the often face it alone and have no way to attempt to understand it other than as a malfunction of the brain.

I know it will change. I know it will get better. I know it takes time to shift this immense wrong that few can even see. I hope I can make that happen faster. There's purpose enough in that to keep me going.

What to do if someone is suicidal?

This is an extremely difficult piece to write for many reasons, not least because of my own views. This is an area where no one is an expert and the text below is less a guide and more of a thought process.

Many people have no idea what to do if someone is suicidal. Its rare that people talk about suicide though its not rare to want to die or think how to kill themself.

I'm lucky because I've been through a few suicide attempts over the years (that must be one of the strangest sentences I've ever written...). Wanting to die is normal for me and has been for the majority of the past few years. I have the lived experience of the things that have worked and the huge barriers.

For me the first thing for someone who is suicidal to know that they shouldn't go through it alone. I'm not sure I can think of a greater hell except psychosis/ego death itself. Ensuring they have someone they can always go to no matter what is vital because often its those closest to the person that the person will not talk about their deathwishes to, for obvious reasons.

My personal view is that I won't directly talk someone out of doing anything. I won't criticise their desire to die. I won't help them but I won't condone them and I'll allow them to speak about it as if it was the weather. That's really important I feel because many people won't talk about it for many reasons and those that do really don't want to be told not to do it. That's the natural reaction though and its one that I've always listen to with a polite smile and ignored. Its what I expect that person's friends and loved ones to say like a mental health key message so I don't need to say and frankly I think I'd be a liar if I said it.

My amorality aside, it means a suicidal person will keep talking to me when they won't talk to anyone else about it. It means that person always has someone they can talk to no matter how bad the situation, no matter how worthless or hopeless they feel, no matter what they're thinking of doing. This is absolutely essential because I've noticed in my own life the pattern where the reduction in social contact can quickly lead to thinking about suicide to planning or actual attempts. There are many examples of people being saved from suicide by the random kindness or interaction of strangers or friends. I'll admit that to some people I have explicitly said, "if you're going to do it please give me a call and I'll join you." which sounds horrific but I can say it with a degree of honesty and it means that, perhaps, they maybe they'll take up that offer of a last contact before they go.

The value of my personal experience of the hells of life and my openness means that I have a certain credibility or authority that might make the words, "it'll get better" or "its not always like this" have a fractionally chance of actually getting through to a person who can't see that to be possibly true. Getting a chink of hope into a person's mind is vital. Often its unending and pure hopelessness that drives people to kill themselves. Its not easy though and done badly it may distance the suicidal person from talking about it again with that person.

In my personal experience many people feel like they want to die on a regular basis but never, ever mention it and they can be the happiest person on the outside. This state can change and become a very, very dark place and this can happen without warning. In this dark place the nature of the individual's relationship with those suicidal thoughts is different. In the mild state it can be a useful coping mechanism to dispel life's problems and it a thought that can be pushed away. In the dark place its not so simple. It can be all pervading and the solution of ending things becomes a reasonable, practical way to end the hopelessness. (Even as I write now I can feel the tug of desire for the peacefulness of eternal slumber.) They can rationalise the social effect of suicide or simply hate themselves more to get past the effects on friends and family, or it may be something they don't consider because their minds have become inward focused.

Herein lies the value of trying to get the that tiny, teeny sense of hope. In my mind I see it as a thin, barely perceptible ray of light breaking into a darkened room. But it is the tiny difference between the pitch black that the mind can not handle and the black it can see. The pitch black analogy is experienced by people who use a photographic darkroom for the first time as their mind tries to adjust to the total blackness they have never experienced before even on the darkest, cloudiest nights. Everywhere outside the darkroom there is a small, sometimes imperceptible amount of light that the mind requires to 'see' black. In the darkroom the mind is out of its depth.

Some forms of suicide are about loss of hope but there are other reasons and its important to understand that a person may not reveal their true reasons and those reasons may not fit a generalisable picture. But the offering of hope that the situation can change I think can get through.

The problem is that its the obvious thing to say and that 'intelligent' (whatever that means) people know that there is hope even when they feel hopeless. Its the thought that may or may not get said. "Yes, I know there's hope but I don't feel it now and my present state is wanting to end it, so fuck off with your positive attitude."

An alternative can use distraction, fun and whatever else to indirectly work with the individual. I'm always in the pub and its an excellent environment to deal with someone who is suicidial if there is a suitably secluded spot away from prying ears. There are antidepressant-depressants available on tap and these also help people to open up. I. The environment is socially safe and it is a place that many people have fond memories of. Alcohol loosens people up, relieves stress and makes people happier when they're drunk and its a widely accept social medication. The hangover is the ideal form of depression - the cause is easily identified as a consequence of the night before. There is the risk of recklessness induced by alcohol and redoubled by recklessness behaviour induced by suicide (not wanting to live can change a person's attitudes to risk) leading to a drunken attempt. Its important to note that risk.

What I'm saying is a couple of pints and a chat can, perhaps, do more than seeing a professional who the suicidal person knows is going to try and talk them out of it and psychiatric antidepressant medication which is also given to stop them killing themselves. Its important that the chat isn't about suicide unless the person wants to talk about it. Maintaining social contact, distraction and ensuring that there is a bit of fun is the important aspect in my opinion. They are natural, temporary ways to relieve suicidal thoughts. Even if the suicidal person is smiling and laughing but still crying on the inside the effect of them pretending to smile and laugh can have the effect of making them genuinely express that way. That memory of simple fun can wake up that bit of a person's psyche that says, "well I like having fun. At least I can keep on doing that" or whatever other inner thought process happens such that a person moves out of the dark.

Engaging in a conversation about suicide is very difficult for anyone who is not an experienced professional or someone without extensive lived experience. For the inexperienced listening is the key and allowing the person the opportunity to accept they are suffering may also be important (many don't understand the significance of the distress that brought them to the point of suicide). Also getting them to talk more is useful because it can be a way for them to offload and in my opinion I think it is an effective way of reducing their suicidality in the short term.

Experienced people can have a more meaningful conversation. I'm not sure I'm capable of elucidating on how this would go but I'm making a differentiation between the experience levels of the samaritan because an inexperienced person can be treading in murky territory and it can be bad for their mental health if they feel like they've said the wrong thing and the person ends up killing themself. The best way to avoid that future guilt is to tread lightly.

I feel experienced people can take a different approach because they realise that often there's nothing positive or negative another person can do directly for someone who is truly suicidal (I'm making a distinction but one that I feel doesn't need explanation). They may also be more capable of taking the risks in communication and conversation necessary to get that person to listen to even a small amount of what is said, so they may be able to confront the issue that the person wants to kill themself about rather than side step it for safety.

Confidentiality is vital though I'm aware that it my case confidentiality has been broken. I've accepted that but other people wouldn't and it can be deleterious to a personal relationship. Revealing suicidal ideation is a massive step for someone. Breaking that trust can be catastrophic. Many people may want to talk to that person's close friends or their family or loved ones about it but my opinion is that it is up to that individual. The worst thing anyone can do is make the foolish mistake (as has been done to me in the past) of contacting mental health services who's knee-jerk reaction is far too often hospitalisation.

This is a very, very, very tricky area and my opinion is only that. I'm sure other people will make their own decisions but the loss of trust can be something that can be catastrophic to a distressed individual. There is little that mental health services can do except section and from personal experience that makes things worse. It is better to discuss your intention with the individual and if they firmly say "no" then it see if they will speak to someone anonymously or speak to the Samaritans helpline or speak to a person with lived experience or professional expertise outside the NHS system.

I strongly value suicide survivors in helping the suicidal because they are able to give real personal accounts. A survivor's life is usually full of useful tales that can help the newly suicidal see that they're not alone and they're not abnormal, that life can be strange and that their suicidal desire will go away. For those without that 'gift' and curse dealing with someone who is suicidal feels very out of their depth I would guess.

As a surivor there's something I can say with confidence (at this present time). Its gets better and there's hope. Those messages are much better coming from someone know to have been in the same dark place in their past that the suicidal person is in their present. Its perhaps why ending up in a psychiatric ward can be a good thing (though this is not part of the design of that system). Being able to speak to other veterans of suicidal ideation is better than speaking to any mental health professional.

I want to end on an important thing to remember as a conclusion and the important thing I can think of is to recognise the difficulty and the unending futility before engaging with someone who is suicidal. It is very hard for most people and the rewards are often not seen directly except in their continued existence. When I've been suicidal and talking about it there have been times when I've been an arsehole and that's why I'm making this point. Its an important point because it will help the samaritan through the difficulty so they can help the suicidal more.

Living with suicide

This is about living while wanting to die.

For many years I've wished I was dead. Sometimes this was daily thoughts of wanting to end it. Sometimes it is simply a wish to be dead rather than alive. Most times it is just the wish or the hope that death will come soon, that the eternal peace of nonexistance - my only hope - will finally come. Sometimes I've done something about it.

Its a difficult thing to live with. There are times when I need to talk about it but I'm scared of scaring people. People have mixed reactions to the discussion when I've broached the subject in the past.

The reasons I've attempted it in the past have been varied. The last attempt was because of my unshared experience of consciousness. My experience of consciousness has changed over the last few years. Its become an strange and unusual place. I think it is described by the word psychosis. I experience my thoughts not as my own and I feel the influence of a separate consciousness(es). This discovery and the change in my experience was distressing. There is a feeling of being controlled and the idea of free will shatters through this experience, which is perhaps why it often ends up with the cluster of symptoms described by the diagnosis of schizophrenia. My last attempt was for the reason that life with this experience wasn't worth living. There were other factors involved as well of course and the reasons for previous attempts have been different.

Its gotten much better over the last few months and has become a general desire for death or non-existance or sleep unending. I just gaze at train tracks occassionally, wishing I had the courage or energy to step forward a couple of steps.

But I carry on. I've lived with this for such a long time that its become part of me. I'm used to living with a low state of mind so I just get on with living. The brief moments of intense experience or emotion that rise above the sea of ennui keep me going. The misery isn't constant and when it returns it is like an old friend now.

Few would know on the outside. I have gotten better and better at hiding behind a social mask of cheerfulness and good humour. It was not something I was happy to use but it serves a purpose that allows me distance from others and social acceptability. The trade off is I hate myself a little bit more and I'm not authentic. It seems this blog is where I show my self.

My choices are affected by living like this. I care not for my future. I make decisions that are self-harming and will hasten my demise. An example is my legendary drinking that is functional alcoholism and a way to die sooner. Its lucky that I love drinking and it makes me feel so much better. I smoke as well and I smoke cannabis. I eat poorly and irregularly.

It is not only misery though. There is a positive aspect that's helped. Its liberated me from worrying about living a long life. My choices are short term and of the moment.
This may not make sense but I feel like its helped me to be closer to happiness than anyone I know. This make not make sense either.

Wanting to die helps me to live. It helps me to see the true value of life. My life has changed a lot through it because through this process I've found a way to live that is motivating and invigorating. I live to change the world for the better. Since I'd rather be dead my life becomes 'given' to that purpose. It is a way of thinking that allows me to cope.

Many people have said that I should see a doctor about this. I think I would say that to myself if I didn't know myself like I do. My desire to die is a choice and a choice I maintain is mine to make. Its a selfish choice but its my right. There will come a time when I take my own life and that is my intent. This may change but it will change 'organically'.

This long period of wanting to die is part of my journey through life. This journey we are all on and we take different paths. There is always value to the paths taken and there is value to my death wish.

Resilience has also built up. Resilience to the deepr reasons I want to end my life. Resilience to the life stuff that makes me want to die. Resilience to the unshared experience that is core to my desire to kill myself.