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I know this will be painful for caring mental health professionals to read. Please read it anyway. This does reflect the reality for some people who ask for help. You may not have heard this type of response, but many people who have lived this have. I have. We need to change it. https://twitter.com/jaunty_aphorism/status/1353041218364723200
I’ve literally had a mental health professional tell me that I should switch the method of self harm I was using “if you want to die” and suggest a specific method to me, starting the sentence “why don’t you..”. They didn’t even ask why I was self harming, just suggested a method
I get that as a caring mental health professional it’s hard to read this, and hard to believe it goes on. But it does. It’s important not to ignore it. The difficulty and pain of seeing inadequate responses to suicidal people described is necessary in order to help change this.
When I’m in professional spaces and I describe inadequate responses to people who have self harmed or are suicidal, including responses that are abusive, I’m often met with near-silence. No reply at all. People wait until there’s a new topic, or a more comfortable one.
Caring mental health professionals need to understand how to listen to important testimony like this. How to respond. Then we need to work together to change this. This cannot continue to be the reality for some people who self harm or who are suicidal and ask for help.
