[NotAWorkNick]

Disclaimer: I'm about to disclose some personal information so will probably burn this nick shortly.

I am slowly going blind (long, boring story; only relevance to the topic is during a discussion with the eye-guy consultant he mentioned that he had had a close personal friend of his kill himself the day after a night out and that he (the consultant) wished that he had been able to somehow sense that his friend was so close to the edge....

I looked at him softly and with compassion and said to him that there was no way in hell that he would have ever known or be able to sense something like that because the serious ones don't broadcast their intentions (simply because they don't want to be stopped from doing it).

My heart bled reading this article but having grown up in a life of violence (early start in Africa, a bit of a chequered past led me in to the world of I.T. (machines are better than humans... they can tell you why they are sick, what part(s) are broken and then either report a (1) Fixed or a (2) Not Fixed... any how, that's how I wandered into IT field mixed in with some ex military stuff including a lay-over in Dubai that lasted for two-weeks... the bloke at Heathrow customs glanced at my transit stamps and asked me where the fuck I had been for two weeks (10 day gap in departure from place {x} to arrival at LHR ....

I looked him in the eye and said simply ..... 'Good god, my arms are tired from all that flapping and those head-winds were a bitch!'

He muttered something along the lines of "f*ing smart-arses", stamped my passport and waved me through.

Whole point of the above? I dunno but nick & karma points burnt telling it.

If you take nothing else away from this – Please know that you likely would have had no way of knowing so please don’t feel guilt…. They made a decision and it was one that you (the loved one grieving) would have been unlikely to have changed even if you had have known. At best, you would be likely to have simply delayed it for a while.

YMMV

[Twirrim]

I had someone I knew from two consecutive jobs commit suicide. We'd routinely cross paths through meetings, water cooler chats etc. Nice guy, smart engineer. Capable of handling stressful incidents without batting an eyelid and spotting the shorted path to the best resolution. The kind of engineer you'd be lucky to have on your service team.

He grabbed me for a lunch time meal about a week before he committed suicide, wanted to chat about my faith. These conversations happen from time to time, especially working in tech which seems to bias towards atheism, so I didn't think anything of it. It was a type of conversation I've had dozens of times over.

In hindsight, of course, it was obvious he was looking for help. I can rationally tell myself over and over again that there was no possible way I could have known, but I highly doubt I'll ever convince myself of it.

[saalweachter]

> Capable of handling stressful incidents without batting an eyelid...

A lot of anxiety-ridden people have a sort of "Hulk secret" that they seem to handle stressful situations well because they are always extremely stressed. If they couldn't maintain a calm exterior while freaking out inside they couldn't get through the line at the grocery, so when shit starts hitting the fan for real that mask makes other people think they don't feel it.

[Twirrim]

That's a really interesting point that hadn't occurred to me before. Thanks!

[gordaco]

> the serious ones don't broadcast their intentions (simply because they don't want to be stopped from doing it).

While this might be generally true (and it's especially true in the sense you wrote the message, i.e., there's a good chance that no one could see it coming), I would add something. It's, as I said, mostly true, but far from being the case 100% of the time. Ok, that was probably obvious, but the thing is: sometimes we interpret it as the contraposition (which is, after all, equivalent to the original statement): the ones who broadcast their intentions are not serious about it. And that's a huge mistake to make, when it happens to not be true. Someone who broadcasts that kind of intentions might be overdoing that kind of millenial "everything sucks" gallows humor you see a lot in Twitter... or they might be serious.

So, pay attention to people talking about that suicidal ideation. Many times, it's more than a joke.

BTW I also agree that in many cases an intervention can only delay the decision but not prevent it completely. I know it can be a hard pill to swallow for many people (and for good reason), but I strongly believe this to be true.

[idontknowifican]

)))

[NotAWorkNick]

You are correct @idontknow.... I did omit some ellipses; My Bad.

Thank you for pointing it out (Unfortunately the edit window has closed otherwise I would add them :) )

[mettamage]

IMO no need to burn this nick. Check my comment history, I'm still going strong ;-)

[NotAWorkNick]

I meant more in terms of leaking PII ;)

Thanks for caring though, and hang in there :)

[pbourke]

Tell me you’re a lisp programmer without telling me you’re a lisp programmer