A path not taken

I am listening to a talk about suicidal thoughts. It encourages me to consider whether i have ever really had suicidal thoughts.

I have thought that I wish I was dead, that people would be better off without me, that I simply can't go on, that there's no point, that life is too painful. I have thought of means, but rejected them as they all seemed too uncertain or painful.

This guy seems to be claiming that suicidal thoughts are a state of pathologised imagination. That people would not be better off without you, for example. But that's stupid: these people might well be better off!

But this talk was meant to be about the harm of not believing a person's avowals of suicidal thoughts... I think I lost a thread... but as it happens a man has just asked that exact question.

So, suicidal ideation, they say, is a harm in itself, a harmful mental state. So, they say, the pathology of imagination is how one gets into that mental state, which is experienced as very frightening. But it's not always. It's not always frightening! And this still doesn't explain the harm of not believing the person.

Anyway, apart from this, where I couldn't quite understand what they were saying, the session was brilliant. A lot on epistemic justice and neuro-identity - we coined that phrase in the session! It was inspiring and fascinating.

Right now, I don't want to die!