“What do you think of suicide?” he asked.

“I find it amazing,” I said, “that the mental health profession begs people who are suicidal to get help, but then betrays them.”

“How so?”

“Look. A nineteen year old who doesn’t fit in, who’s full of passion but does not know how to direct it, has been thinking about suicide for a long time. Finally things get so bad he realizes he has to do something.

“So he goes online. He sees the suicide help number. He calls it. When the recording comes on it says that calls are recorded. He slams the phone down and swears. He doesn’t want anybody recording his conversation about committing suicide.

“He’s in a panic. He looks up all the counselling services in his neighborhood, goes to their page, scrutinizes their philosophy, reads the bios of the counselors.

“Then he makes a call and a voice message comes on. He swears again but knows he has to say something. He leaves a message vague and desperate.

“A few minutes later the phone rings. ‘Oh shit!’ he thinks.

“It’s a woman. They say a few words. ‘So you’re thinking about taking your life?’ she says.

“He stammers. ‘I don’t want our conversation recorded. I need to talk.’

“‘Ok’, she says.

“The woman does some juggling of the staff’s schedule, makes an urgent call to a clinic, then calls him back. ‘Can you come in in two hours?’

“‘Yes. How much is it?’

“So he goes down. It’s a woman counselor. She promises not to record the conversation.

“They talk about his social awkwardness, the job he hates, the soul killing society he lives in. ‘No. I’ve never been abused. I had a great family life.’

“‘What do you expect from us?’ she asks.

“‘I want to see you guys one or two more times. I don’t want to come a lot and I do not want to spend a lot of money. I should be all right after that.’

“‘You are not all right now and one or two more times are not going to do it. We need five more sessions to make you stable. Can you do it?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘It’s commendable that you had the courage to seek help. You are less flustered than an hour
ago. More relaxed. So let’s make an appointment for three days from now.’

“He doesn’t like her telling him he’s screwed up. ‘OK,’ he says.

“‘But before you go I need you to promise me something.’

“‘What?’ he asks.

“‘That you will not committ suicide when you get home. If you can’t promise me that, I will call the police to take you away.’

“‘Traitor!’ he thinks. He squirms a few moments. He doesn’t like being insulted or threatened. He thinks it over. ‘I won’t kill myself at home.’

“‘You’re sure?’

“‘Yes.’ Session over.”

“But suicide help lines and local counselling offices have to protect themselves from lawsuits,” he said.

“The message machine should give people the option not to be recorded. How can I trust somebody who is recording my conversation about suicide? Who knows where the conversation will end up.

“The police thing is even scarier. I’m going to get help, then the counselor tells me she will call the police and humiliate me if I can’t promise that I won’t kill myself. It’s especially troubling when women, who are the most vocal about people getting help, and the most trusted by men to give help, put the police threat onto a client.”

“But the family of a patient would be outraged if their loved one was allowed to leave the counselling office without promising not to kill himself, then committed suicide.”

“That may be,” I said. “As far as minors go, I accept that argument. But not as far as adults go.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because that 19 year old I just told you about might never see another counselor again. As grateful as he is for having the woman help him, he doesn’t want the worry about recorded phone calls, the stress of having to choose between lying that he won’t committ suicide when he gets home and being honest then humiliated when the police cart him away like some junkie or a slob living under the freeway.”

“Most people disagree with you,” he said.

“I’d say 60% of people disagree with me. There are lots of people who think that the new suicide hot line really isn’t the great healing thing it was cracked up to be. There is still the threat of police intervention. That makes people like the 19 year old even more likely not to seek help again.

“I want to keep talking about the police. Suppose somebody was betrayed by a counselor and the police are called. So he flips and gets violent and the police kill him.

“The police don’t want him going home to possibly kill himself. But because his fear of them and the humiliation that he feels for thinking he could trust the counselor overwhelm him, he gets murdered. The police would claim it was Suicide by cop, but that’s a lie.”

“You’re too extreme.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s funny that the mental health folks are outraged when a cop kills a lunatic. The mental health people demand that a counselor be required to partner with police when somebody calls the cops about a nutcase.

“But it’s the opposite in the situation I am talking about. ‘We don’t trust you so we are going to call the people who we don’t trust and who you don’t trust to drag you to the ER to wait in line with drug addicts and gang kids.’ Then the psychiatrist, who you don’t trust, will decide whether you are stable or crazy or whether you need to take medication you do not want to take.

“If you haven’t lost your cool on the trip with the cops to the emergency room, you can give the psychiatrist a line of gibberish and thank him profusely for his service. But when you get home you’re a wreck. You don’t trust anybody.

“You need to talk to somebody about your betrayal, but what will someone think?

“They might say it’s a good thing the cops took you away. Now what? ‘I just wanted to talk to somebody’.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying lots of things.”

“Tell me.”

“One thing is to leave the police out of it. I wonder how many guys lost their cool when a counselor who they thought they could trust called the cops on them. Calling the cops was a trigger for the person thinking of committing suicide.

“Now he is dead because of the police or on a list of officially deranged people or locked up for resisting arrest. The words from the public service message keep haunting him. Get help.

“We hear that the mental health profession does not want people with bad mental health to be stigmatized. There is a photograph of a positive looking woman who has depression but is celebrated for being ‘a mom’, a professional and an all around wonderful woman who happens to have depression.

“The same thing should be said of people with chronic suicide ideation. This is Steve. He has had thoughts of suicide almost every day since 1991. He gets help when he needs it. There are a lot of wonderful, competent, loving men like Steve who know their suicide thoughts will never go away, but who desperately want to embrace the world. Make arrangements with a counselor to get yourself help when you need it – no shame, no blame – and most importantly – no police.”

“Wow.”

“I’m not finished. The mental health professionals do not want to look bad if one of their clients committs suicide. That is their greatest concern.

“The counselors do not have the maturity to say ‘It’s not our place to tell you not committ suicide. We can tell you that you have a warped brain and that you need to admit to yourself, if not to us, that you have a warped brain. We can counsel you to the best of our ability'”

“That’s it?”

“Almost. People with chronic suicide ideation can leave $1000 with a counselor. Such desperate people will know that they have somewhere to go and someone to trust explicitly the next time and the next time and the next time that they are terrified of their suicidal thoughts.”

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko