This guy has no reason for his depression. He just is depressed.
I’ve thought of two seperate categories of helping him: “treatment” and “distraction”
Yeah, he can go rock climbing, but as soon as he stops, he’s depressed again. It’s not like he can be doing stuff 24/7.
He can’t take medication (complications with that…), so he needs something that changes his chronic disease, not something that changes his mood. Mood I can handle… but a big problem is convincing him to do something about the illness bit.
This is a strangely serious topic on this kind of website. With that said, I must say that this friend of yours is very interesting. I myself have several strange friends, although none of them are currently suicidal. One of them is insane, although it is believed that it is an affected insanity, as he seems to do it to avoid having a normal relationship with people he doesn’t know. Basically all he does is giggle for no reason, and say random things. Nice guy, just…kind of annoying. One of my other friends may not be suicidal, but he does have rapid mood swings. If he does something like fall over, or soemthing he deems embarrassing he will immediately lapse into a depressed state, and vacate. If anyone tried to confront him over a period of several hours after this, he will either pretend it never happened, or if pressed he will become angry and may edge into slight violence. If does hurt anyone he will stop being crazy, and will be sorry, but if not forgiven or told it was okay, he will dash away again. I have little to no advice to give you about your friend, except to do the best you can to understanding what makes him like this, and since medication and therapy is ineffective try and get him to make more friends like you, or someone he already knows, just so you’re not alone in these multiple three hour talks to get him to be less suicidal. I just thought you might want to know that not everyone on this site is a little kid with little to no life experience, just about eighty-five percent.
(P.S. Shoot, you’re right! I am currently wearing a strange shade of blue sweat pants, and I have yet to name them.)
Nostril Kitty, just so you know, you’re the best thing these forums have ever seen. Thought I should point that out. You forgot your “PS” though.
You win the “intelligent post” award. Here, have a trophy.
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BUT!
I’m a step ahead of you. I’ve had a few chats with him with other friends, but I think he lets out the most to me (rather, I know that).
Also, about the serious topic thing, I realized that if the topic was “plzz halp im killun miself!” or even “I’m killing myself, and I need advice” I’d get like 500 posts and they’d all say the same thing in them. This effect I have seen with my own eyes. You’re right, serious topics don’t fit into forums like this.
One thing wrong with your post though, sad to say. He’s not interesting… he used to be, now he’s really straightforward and boring. Ok, I gotta get back to another chat with him, see you around.
The way I see it, there isn’t any way to help him at all. (Yeah, me the optimist. =P)
If he has a serious emotional problem, one that isn’t a teenage two day depression, than nothing anybody does or says will help him. However, I do think he can come out of it on his own, since his suicide attempts seemed more like a beg for attention than anything.
Here, give him something to think about: What does he want to become in the future? And ask him to focus. If he doesn’t know, help him look for something that’s interesting for him. Once he’s found something, try to get him to try and become what he wants to become. Afer this, he should be fine.
I HOPE this helps, and I’m not certain it’s the best of advice, but it’s all I can think of…
Give him lots of things to look forward to, from something cool tomorrow to something cool next year. And figure out what’s making him think his life past high school isn’t worth getting to. He must be overwhelmed with something, like students that are better than him at the things he wants to do in life or something as small as some school projects that he doesn’t think he’ll finish on time, that’s causing him to want to just give up. After you’ve figured that out, reassure him that his life isn’t hopeless. He probably won’t want to share any of this, though… Maybe show him something cool that hardly anyone does, like video game designing or website design, that will fascinate him enough to try it out.
072: He’s an attention-seeker to the MAXX. But, he supposedly kept this in for 5 years… so I dunno, it’s an attention thing now, but the root is real, so… how does that work?
DaDude and Troid: He looks forward to being with his girlfriend… and that’s like… it. I guess I could get him to think of something else, but I dunno if that’d just piss him off.
Troid: Like I said, there isn’t really a problem causing his depression… it’s just kinda there.
Wait, I just had a weird realization. He went from being a manically suicidal guy that held all his problems in and stuff like that to (after he told people about it) an attention-seeking, whiny sort of typical emo kid. You know… “My parents suck, I’m failing 3 classes, I don’t think my girlfriend likes me” etc. Maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe he’s moving down to “typical teen” from “psycho”.
No, I don’t think he was psycho. He may be stepping down to typical teen though. Which isn’t a good thing, since typical teens are the ones who commit the big one.
And there doesn’t really have to be a particular problem, it’s the tiny things in large quantity that get to people. If you’re able to find a solution to that, you should consider becoming a therapist.
In the meantime, I stick to “He has to work it out on his own.”
Hmm… could it be made up things? Depressive-type people tend to make problems up for themselves… you know, the whole parents, grades, girlfriend, etc… Cause if stuff like that can contribute, it’s as easy as proving that he hasn’t got any problems. The reason why that befuddles me is cause he’s told me, explicitly, "I haven’t got any problems!"
Then again, after that, he lapses into what he calls “crashes” and starts ranting about how nobody likes him, and he’s ruining everyone’s life. That’s where the 3 hour convos come into play…
“I’m ruining all my friends’ lives by annoying them cause I’m like this.”
“No you’re not, I get annoyed at you as much as at Ashley. Hey, call me!”
“No, my parents will hear and send me to the hospital and I’ll be locked up forever!”
“I’ve already explained a million times, there’s just no way they can lock you up forever at this point…”
“AND THEY’RE GONNA GI”-- etc.
Well, maybe you’re right, and he does have to just work it out on his own… but when you think about the fact that he’s been depressed for 4 years, you’ve gotta consider that you need to nudge him along a bit… try things, talk to him, do whatever. It can’t hurt him, can it? Unless I go crazy and tell him I hate him or something.
Well, I’m not exactly a brain scientist… but I did read up on depressions, and no place anywhere bothers meantioning lasting depressions with no reason… Some sites talk about short depressions that only last a short time, and lasting depressions due to serious causes, but there’s nothing that talks about very minor reasons for a 4 year depression. This isn’t to say such depressions don’t exist, but they’re rare enough that no one really cares about them. Or maybe they don’t exist, but I doubt that.
Of course, it’s easily possible he’s just way overexaggerating, or lying, or something, but I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt.
i think ive had one of those… a couple years ago, i had just finished watching a scary movie and went to bed. i was terrified, and, after about 30 minutes, i heard footsteps outside my room. in a monsterous voice, something called out and said, “I’M HUNGRY!!!” after a few minutes, i got up the courage to go outside my room and turn on the lights. nothing was there.
that scared me so much. sorry to get all off-topicy now, but i just thought i’d share that =P
