How to Help Someone With Depression - a guide.

The Cut published How to Help Someone With Depression and it has some helpful, broad guidelines for someone who would like to know what it is that they can offer friends and family who are suffering. 

Live through this.

Live Through This is "a collection of portraits and stories of suicide attempt survivors, as told by those survivors."

Check it out.

Short film: The Fleeting Little Life of Peter Wright.

Found my way to this short-film. I'm not crazy about the post that lead me to it, the post is glib and the post is filed to "cute."

It's about suicide, you ass.

The film is well done, but be warned it's a comedy. A British comedy, so it's dry and blunt. I love English comedy, Spaced is an all-time favourite, as is Ricky Gervais.

I thought the dialogue was good, and it's sweet enough, I'm just not in a place right now where I find suicidal ideation that funny. Even though I can see the humour in the conversation, I don't quite find it funny because I can't help but identify with the protagonist.

He never really mentions why he wants to end his life, but I guess that was't the goal here. I think it's meant to really say, out loud, all the questions and possibilities that a depressed brain often shuts out.

In cognitive behavioural therapy, they often work on our use of "always" thinking, "I'm always depressed, and will always be this sad," so you're able to move towards "I'm sad right now, but that doesn't mean forever. It's just a bad day."

So, it's like a humorous representation of CBT, as played out through a conversation with a friend. See things differently, re-frame your life. Stuff like that.

The film is by Tim Hautekiet, and it's part of the Sploid Short Film Festival.

Suicide, once-removed.

One of my best friends is upside-down because an old friend of hers committed suicide. She hasn't been close to him lately, but he was a best friend to her for years in high school. That happens. Life leads us around and we don’t stay friends with everyone, but that doesn't mean we don’t care for them. I know that I still carry people in my memories, especially through the nostalgia of youth. I can’t help look back and a lot of the silly things we did and still think of everyone fondly. We had a lot of fun, being dumb teenagers.

It's always tremendously sad when someone sees suicide as the only real option to ending their pain, but I guess lately it’s also something I understand, so my shock is dulled. Maybe part of the reason she and I are so saddened by it is because we understand so well. We understand what it is to want to end it all, and this is someone whose name we know, and who took that desire and realized it. It's so close to us.

It's also infuriating because this person was apparently the only thing keeping a non-profit community drop-in centre for children open. A lot of my friends in the social sector / non-profits work insanely hard and give everything they have, to be met with little to no support by the organizations and systems that employ them. I've seen too many people burn out. I see breakdowns and anxiety because these people are lovely and caring and want to help people, and they carry that burden to a point where it’s detrimental to their health.

People who work with/around mental health, sexual health, sex work, racial discrimination, outreach, youth, violence, poverty and in social support networks of all kinds are being taken for granted, and are risking their own health and wellness daily because it’s in their nature to care, and to support. This makes me really sad, and this makes me really angry.

When my friend worked with youth in the criminal justice system (technically youth corrections I guess, she worked in “youth and family centres”) she would tell me stories that made me sick to my stomach. Horror stories. How is it that she faced this daily, as a full-time job and wasn't mandated to go to counselling or therapy as part of her work process? Same thing with all sorts of high-risk, difficult jobs where you face abuse, violence and traumatic realities. How is it not part of the god-damn culture?

It makes no sense to me. This friend ended up on burn-out because of the trauma of having a kid she was working with commit suicide while she was working. She was then hassled by insurance company psychologists and had to constantly defend her right to be fucking traumatized.

I didn't know Jean-Pierre personally, my condolences to all who knew him.

My condolences to all of us, who suffer when good people die because our systems are broken.

Suicide prevention fruit stand.

You read that title correctly!

Check out this fruit stand / mobile station that offers a suicide prevention organization a way to offer services and support in public spaces.

Read more about it here.

I like the idea of mental health conversations taking place in all sorts of spaces, but I'm thinking this would mainly work as a form of sensitization, an not necessarily as a crisis support space.

Fucking duh.

Suicide-prevention efforts must last longer, new research suggests.

Fucking duh.