It's hard to know what to do when you're actually confronted by it

In this post I refer to a previous attempted suicide where myself and my friend intervened, on this old post: 

https://lifeforce198.blogspot.com/2024/12/gerry-and-incident-in-dublin.html

I often blog about reasons to live. This blog was originally a mental wellness and suicide prevention blog, but I have so much going on that I barely have time to come up with posts on mental wellness and quality of life.

This evening I was sitting in bed, I was tired and didn't intend to take my writing downstairs as usual, so I was sitting up watching the Addams Family and just vaguely warming up to write. I'm writing a new novel 'Empire's Survivor' if I haven't already mentioned it. Anyway my friend came into my room. Unusual but okay. He sat on my bed and told me he was suicidal. 

I'm supposed to have some training and knowledge, but in the training they teach you how to deal with suicidal strangers, bridge jumpers and so on. And as you know, I've dealt with such a scenario once and we saved her, but a friend coming to you in this state is a different matter and I was sitting with my laptop, not expecting this at all. I was totally thrown.

He told me that our other friend wouldn't help him, that he wanted a gun and our friend wouldn't bring his gun. (it turns out he no longer has a gun), anyway, he wanted me to get a gun. I talked to him about gun law and how if anyone brought him a gun they'd be arrested, and we didn't want him dead. 

He needed to talk and to be with someone, and that was fine, you know how I am, a troubled autistic person with many bad memories, so I felt at a bit of a loss here, but of course I wanted to help him. 

I asked him to talk to me. In the training you're taught to ask the person's name and introduce yourself to build a bond and make the person feel they're not alone, which didn't work with the semi-conscious suicide attempt in Dublin and would be no use with my friend. He sat on the bed and asked me if I'd get him a gun. He told me he'd asked at the gun shop but as he wasn't part of a gun club, they wouldn't let him have a gun. 

I texted the manager of the mental health charity but he wasn't much help. He said that I should phone the guards, this wouldn't help much. I texted our friend and he told me to just listen to him and be there for him and that he said these things to all his friends. Okay, I understand that but why can't something be done? Why is no one being more proactive? I guess many people find it hard like this when someone they know tells them they're suicidal. 

I explained gun laws to him, no one can get him a gun for suicide without being arrested. I looked up resources. I've done some volunteering with Pieta House, and so I emailed the person I had contact with there. In the end I phoned his psychiatry clinic with his consent and he left a message asking for a nurse to call out. 

He says he hasn't been able to sleep properly for years, he's troubled by a voice in his head. He's become very depressed with lack of sleep and lack of quality of life with the voice in his head. It's a tough one. Really I would imagine the only solution would be to change his medications, but he says no, and he saw his psychiatrist today and didn't tell them what was on his mind. So really it's hard to do much unless someone proactively liaises with his mental health team. 

He went back to his room to rest, and talked with me a bit longer later, mainly about the lack of sleep. You can imagine it's hard to do anything when you can't do anything. I just listened and sympathized. I hope the clinic can take his message seriously and someone can come round. 

Suicidal thoughts and actions impact on people around the person who is suffering. 

As previously mentioned, if someone is suicidal, they can get trapped in a dark tunnel of despair and not see a way out or a time when the problem isn't a problem. So if this man hasn't been sleeping for a long time, it's hard for him to see anything different. I remember what I'm like when I miss one night's sleep, I get physically and emotionally sick very easily, so it must be bad to have missed so much sleep. To choose life, there have to be things to live for, and without sleep, everything can be affected, it can be hard to see any positives.