goingrampant:

fierceawakening:

goingrampant:

fierceawakening:

lizardtitties:

fierceawakening:

jumpingjacktrash:

the-real-seebs:

deadpan-snarkeet:

coffeeandcomposition:

becketts-one-and-done:

thexfiles:

hanniballecterlicious:

thexfiles:

suicidal people deserve a space to talk about their suicidal feelings without risking hospitalization/institutionalization or being accused of being manipulative or attention seeking

It’s a therapist. The word you’re looking for is a therapist.

wrong

The second a therapist thinks you’re even slightly suicidal (ie. Whenever you even say the word suicide) they “pink slip” you, which means you get sent to a mental hospital against your will.

I think about suicide almost every day, but it doesn’t always mean I’m gonna go kill myself.

I just want to say, as someone who has taken courses in ethics and regulations regarding psychology and therapy and has worked at a counseling center for more than five years, THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE CASE. The only time a therapist or other healthcare provider is required to report suicidal or homicidal ideation is if there is a specific plan. I am deeply sorry to anyone who has ever experienced a therapist who acted otherwise. To the person above, I am not sure what your experience has been, but I promise you it is not a typical one, at least not in the area where I live (California). I have never heard of a “pink slip”, and I’ve worked with therapists for 5+ years.  

Going to a therapist changed my life. I was able to open up and say “I think about suicide almost every day”, and for the first time in my life someone said “You don’t have to live like this.” She didn’t have me hospitalized, she didn’t raise any alarms. She gently asked me if I had a specific plan, and when I said no, she said “We are going to help you get better.” 

YOUR THERAPIST ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT HAVE YOU HOSPITALIZED AT THE MERE MENTION OF SUICIDAL IDEATION. 

If you say, “I’m going to kill myself tonight by overdose,” then yes, they are required by law to have you hospitalized. Otherwise it is THEIR JOB to help you process your feelings and find a way to help you function and feel better. 

I cannot be more emphatic about this. Therapists, by and large, are here to help, not to hospitalize. If you have health insurance, contact them today to find out about your mental health coverage. Go to your general care doctor and tell them how you’re feeling so that they can refer you to the right person. If you don’t have health insurance, find a resource for a free/reduced fee clinic near you. Marriage and Family Therapist Interns are a great option, as they often see clients on a sliding fee scale. PLEASE GET HELP.

LISTEN TO ME: YOU CANNOT LEGALLY BE HOSPITALIZED AGAINST YOUR WILL FOR SUICIDAL IDEATION. FEAR OF HOSPITALIZATION SHOULD NOT STOP YOU FROM SEEKING HELP. 

I understand that many people have hospital related trauma, and I understand, and sympathize. Talk to me. Send me a message. I will be happy to find you further information on laws and regulations in your area, referrals to other counseling centers, or even just listen to what you have to say. 

I couldn’t in good conscience scroll past this without saying something. As someone who struggled with depression for much longer than I should have because of fear of seeking treatment, I want to encourage everyone, experiencing any degree of mental illness to get help. I will do anything I can to support those of you going through something like this. I’m here for you. 

I literally talk to my therapist about suicidal ideation all the time and all she’s ever done is have me clarify that I wasn’t planning on acting on it. I’m tired of tumblr discouraging people from trusting mental health professionals.

tumblr is full of ridiculous claims about how mental health people behave. like, i know several people who’ve been sent to mental hospitals. most of them asked to be. they specifically tried to check in. people sometimes discuss with therapists whether the degree of planning they had in place constituted “enough” for hospitalization. it’s a cooperative process because the goal is to figure out whether they need that help.

i’ve never seen this “pink slip” thing, and i’ve seen lots of people who talk to therapists about suicidal ideations a lot.

um. ‘pink slip’ means you’re fired. it’s not even a thing in mental health care.

i discussed suicidal ideation with my therapist for years. she had me clarify that it was ideation, not a plan, and hospitalizing me was not even considered.

stop trying to scare depressed people into avoiding help. it’s about as helpful and responsible as trying to talk them into sticking a fork in a light socket.

I’ve only heard pink slip used to refer to firing as well. I don’t know for sure that the post about it is false, but it seems very odd to use the same term for it. Like, idiot ball wielding cartoon villainous.

Heck, I went through a period of having really aggressive, detailed intrusive thoughts involving hurting people, and I could talk about THAT, in enough graphic detail that the poor guy probably had nightmares and I wasn’t hospitalised.

I’m very uncomfortable with tumblr’s whole scaremongering around therapists. I mean for starters, a counsellor, a therapist, a psychiatrist and a psychologist are all different categories and there’s a weird kind of conflation of all of these things, like the dude who did my CBT can force me to go on meds’ despite not having a medical license. And I absolutely believe bad mental health professionals exist, I’ve experienced them myself, but there’s a massive difference between telling people that not all therapists are decent and some are outright horrendous, and telling people (what is in this case I think deliberate, based on the pink slip thing) falsehoods to stir up a sentiment of never ever getting help of any kind.

(I have also just typed up and deleted three different disclaimers regarding how mental I am and what experiences I’ve had with professionals because I am very aware of the likelihood of getting Karen’d when I say shit like this, but I’ve decided I am under zero obligation to show off my scars for strangers on the internet.)

This, exactly.

Bad professionals definitely exist, and can certainly do lasting harm. I’ve had a few clueless ones and one legit terrible one, and she wasn’t nearly the worst out there, and I still occasionally randomly remember something she said and hate everything for a while.

And people should get to decide whether or not they want professional help, too.

But some of the descriptions on here don’t work for me because they don’t stop at “this happened to me” but insist “this will happen to you.”

Apologies if it is not my place to intrude upon this conversation. I have not a lot of experience with this subject. I would like to say that my parents have always cautioned me against sharing certain sensitive details with these sorts of psychological authority figures because of their power to destroy lives. Even if they themselves are solitary humans, they are connected to powerful social structures associated with the government, which is always out to maintain control of its citizens. The psychological authority figures want you returned to a state where you do things the government likes, and that is the underlying reason why they act like they want to help you. They’re henchmen. At least, that is the way my parents presented the issue. It’s not just tumblr. I imagine it has to do with a conservative framework conceptualizing the government as predatory in its authoritarianism vs. a liberal framework conceptualizing it as parental.

I honestly am not sure how to address this because there’s so much to unpack in it.

I think the first thing to say is… I can’t speak to other liberals, much less further-left-ists like communists, but I wouldn’t call my own understanding of the government “parental.” For me, it’s more a belief that I think pooling resources is necessary in some cases, and I think things like taxes seem like better ways to do that than “hoping enough rich philanthropists come through for us.” Especially if you’ve ever looked at how much research and resources something like an infrastructure project requires (which I have, because I’m on citizen advisory boards about local public transit.)

I am for social welfare programs, for example, because I don’t think “laziness” accounts for why they’re needed. Many disabilities prevent people from being able to work enough hours or steadily enough to support themselves; many localities are expensive to live in on top of that, for  various reasons. Government programs to help support these people make sense to me. (And honestly, I want to see SSI (and SSDI if possible, but that may just be Math) give MORE money to people, not less, and housing vouchers to be MORE readily available, not less. Yes, this means higher taxes. On the rich, if I’m picking.)

As far as the connections between mental health professionals and the government, I’m still a little confused. Low or no cost mental health services are often provided through local government, which is less than ideal, but again, given the resource pool needed to fund it I’m not sure I have a better idea.

Also… I’m sure it would be easier for the Feds to get information from local governments than from someone random, but I’m still not sure what exactly you’re saying about when and how the information is being shared.

I also am… not at all convinced that mental health care is about putting you in a state the government likes. Having less intrusive thoughts thanks to meds and support thanks to my therapist makes me a MORE effective yelly Resistance lefty, not less of one.

So, more of a conception of the people relating to the government as the cell to the body? One part of a greater thing as opposed to a sheer disconnect between the people and the government? I’m sorry; I was raised in this more conservative household, and I’m still trying to work things out. I think I lean more liberal than not, but I may be generally confused about politics. My own commentary is more social than political. 

(Also, I imagine being descended from Holocaust survivors makes one a bit paranoid about the government coming for you one day. Americans tend to view the Nazis purely as a foreign entity and not what was simply the government to its Ashkenazic citizens. Like, “It happened before; it could happen again; so, be vigilant”.)

The thing with mental health services serving the government’s wishes has to do with their power and compulsion to call the cops and have people institutionalized if they seem like they might be overly subversive. Their desire to keep citizens alive appears to be based on not wanting citizens to have too much control over their own lives. The government can choose to execute people at whim because that enforces its control but wants the people to not have that power because it’s subversive and threatens its control, as with the police shooting suicidal people dead before they can take their own lives and seeing no repercussions for it. Suicide is illegal. Is there another, liberal way to interpret that I don’t know about?

According to this site, suicide is not illegal in the U.S. You can’t be prosecuted for attempting suicide; people can only be prosecuted for assisting someone else’s suicide or negligently allowing it when they had the responsibility to prevent it.

This way of thinking – that the government wants to prevent suicide in order to control its citizens, and mental health professionals are its henchmen – strikes me as paranoid and conspiratorial rather than conservative, and I see it on both political extremes, Right and Left. As a progressive centrist (some might want to place me on the Left, but I resist it for a variety of reasons), I see the mental health profession as part of the medical profession more generally, and its aim is to keep people alive and healthy as long as possible. It is not a wing of the government; although medical services are paid for by the government in the case of the poor and elderly, most health care is provided on the private market. This actually fucks things up in a lot of ways, because the profit motive and the best interests of the patient are not always in alignment (see: doctors ordering unnecessary tests because they’re paid based on services provided rather than outcomes).

On the issue of the conservative vs. liberal ways of viewing government (are you getting that from George Lakoff?): liberals like myself are capable of making a distinction between ideal government, or government in principle, and actual government. In principle, the purpose of the government is, as @fierceawakening nicely put it, to pool the resources of individual citizens in order to provide things they can’t provide for themselves individually. Some of that is a matter of correcting for market failures (both negative externalities and “tragedy of the commons” type situations), but some of it is a matter of rescuing the most vulnerable from destitution. On this model, the government doesn’t have its own interests that are distinct from those of the people, and is therefore more trustworthy than private companies – which are motivated by their own profit – and more suitable for providing necessary goods like water, education, and health care. Unfortunately, governments are made up of people, and people can be venal, self-interested, and power-hungry. The point of a rule-of-law system is to establish institutions that ultimately work for the good of the citizenry and keep in check the self-interest of the individuals who run the institutions of government. As a matter of fact, many of the institutions we have only consistently work for the good of a certain segment of the citizenry: namely, wealthy white able-bodied straight cis men; and this has to do with the fact that these were the people who built and for the most part maintain the institutions. But the solution to this is to correct the institutions, which do have the potential to work for everyone’s benefit, with the input of those who have not historically benefited from them.