A couple of posts ago I mentioned I wouldn't be willing to go through even John's mitigated cancer treatment if I were in his shoes, and wondered if there might be anyone who wouldn't be willing to go through my life if in my shoes whereby my supposed suicidal leanings were treated as purely mental health issues. By total coincidence, I found a blog soon after by someone who seems to have a similar baseline regarding suicide and has dealt with it by taking the mental health/psychiatric route.
Her blog description mentions something called "chronic suicidal ideation" which raised my eyebrows. I never heard of that and did a search to see if that's an actual thing and the jury's still out on that. It never even occurred to me that there might be a clinical term for how I am, and I have to admit that does pretty much describe it. It's just a fancy-schmancy term for "thinking about suicide or committing suicide often, if not all the time", and to me the implication is that it's just there as a condition. In contrast, suicidal ideation that is not chronic is triggered by something, certain conditions in a person's life.
However, I don't think that's the way the mental health profession sees it. It's not an independent condition that's "just there", that developed as its own pathology, rather it's a symptom of something else, usually depression among other possibilities. So they treat the patient for depression and impress upon the patient as being depressed and if the depression is treated successfully, then the symptom of suicidal ideation will go away. And truth to tell, I can't even imagine how "chronic suicidal ideation" could be treated otherwise, so I'm not faulting the mental health profession.
That being the case, whatever "chronic suicidal ideation" is clinically would have little to do with me and vice versa since I'm not convinced I'm depressed. I amuse myself with the scenario of mental health professionals trying to convince me I'm depressed because I think of suicide or committing suicide often, if not all the time. That's just the way they think; not wanting to live means you're depressed full stop period enter send like subscribe and leave a comment. Depressed doesn't necessarily mean suicidal, but not wanting to live your life (under any horrific condition) automatically means you're depressed, no separation. John actually covers the absurdity of the mental health profession regarding "dying with dignity" suicide laws and depression.
Not quite so amusing is this blogger who thought of suicide and identified with it at the tender young age of five before all the psychological ramifications could be understood or appreciated from a developmental point of view. I don't know yet what happened after that realization, but perhaps as she got older she was bothered by the thoughts and sought psychiatric counsel who promptly pidgin-holed her as depressed, treated her as depressed, thereby convincing her she was depressed. I have to be careful not to sound too critical or cynical because maybe she is clinically depressed. If an alternative was to turn out like me, I can't really say I'm in favor of that either (except for myself, of course).
I'm only at the start of this person's blog so I only have a slice, a myopic glimpse of 10+ years of her blogging and I'm not saying anything beyond this little that I've read. Trying to be as safe and objective as possible, no judgments, at the beginning of the blog (2009) among the other things happening in her life: 1) she's seeing a psychiatrist; 2) she regularly takes meds which are constantly being tweaked and dosages adjusted; 3) she sees herself and identifies as mentally ill. She's crazy, and sometimes I have to remind myself to read her through that filter which I hope is not patronizing or condescending.
I'm not going to comment or suggest anything regarding her condition possibly having been perpetuated by the mental health profession telling her how she should view herself. Oh whoops, I just did. But really I'm not drawing any conclusions and, again, maybe the mental health professionals are right in how to treat her.
I'm just glad I wasn't shunted into the mental health juggernaut. I'll take my chronic suicidal ideation as it is without the help and hope of recovery through psychoanalysis and a cocktail of big pharma prescription drugs that psychiatrists are probably paid to push, thank you. Help, sure I'm hypothetically open to "help" if chronic suicidal ideation is addressed as the primary condition, but otherwise I'm not willing to submit to their normative formulations that depression has anything to do with it. They'd probably tell me to go back to the monastery then! Fair 'nuff. That's probably the only advice from the psychiatric profession that I'd take seriously.
I wasn't at all serious when I rhetorically pondered someone not willing to go through a lifelong fixation with suicide, implying they would've committed suicide already. And it really was coincidence that I found this person's blog. I'm still trying to make my way through it, but it's a bit of a slog for various reasons. It did, however, answer my rhetorical question. She took the psychiatric path treating chronic suicidal ideation as a purely mental health issue and she didn't commit suicide. She accepted being depressed and being prescribed drugs to deal with it. So is it also safe to say . . . she wants to live? She constantly thinks about suicide, but also wants to live? Or is that me? That's rhetorical, too, since if I wanted to live doesn't matter anymore at this point and I'm fine with that. On the other hand, there still may be people who were not willing to put up with it and did check out early, and not surprisingly there's no testimonial blog to be found.
