Manipulative suicide threats?

What gives you the right to “monitor” your brother’s private online correspondences? Have some respect for his privacy. No wonder he’s so aggressive and angry all the time.

That said, you should let your brother know that you found out about what he said and that you’re going to take it seriously. This will give him a heads-up that he needs to change or delete his account details, and if he’s really serious about hurting himself tonight, you’ll be able to deal with that now, too.

Stop snooping on your brother.

@trolltoll

So call the police? Drive him to the hospital?? I don’t need to be lectured right now.

You must tell your parents that he is threatening suicide. You must take it seriously.

@Hawaii_Jake is right @travelbabe24. Speak to your parents urgently. Better that people overreact and get him some help. I hope your brother is okay.

You need to start respecting your brother’s privacy, right after you determine the level of threat that he poses to himself right now. Tell him that you know that he said he’s planning to kill himself and that you’re going to be taking it seriously and will be telling your parents about it

Do not call the police. That will create more problems than it will solve.

Her brother’s privacy is secondary to her main question. If he is suicidal it’s a positive that she’s aware of it and can do something to get him help. I’m not sure where @travelbabe24 is, but calling the police might be the right thing to do. The young man might need sectioning in order to get him the help he needs. @travelbabe24, let us know what your parents say and I hope you and your brother are fine.

She shouldn’t get the police involved unless it is absolutely necessary. I have been in her brother’s position before and it will not make things better for him if the police are involved.

You don’t even know where she is. And that might be your experience, but if he’s suicidal, she might need to get the police involved to ensure he gets the help he needs.

I can conceive of no possible reason the police should be involved. The police are not mental healthcare professionals, they are people with tasers, batons, and guns. They are more likely to make things worse. I do not see why my opinion should be invalidated by the fact that I don’t know where she lives.

If he is truly having a mental health crisis right now, the last thing he needs is to be treated like a criminal. Like I was.

They also help in situations when people need help. I’ve been involved in a situation where someone threatened suicide and I had to call the police twice. On both occasions, the officers were caring and sensitive. They visited the person and checked on their welfare. They didn’t treat anyone like a criminal. As I said, we don’t know where @travelbabe24 is, and I think it’s wrong to assume all police officers treat those suffering with mental health issues as criminals. She may not be able to persuade him to seek help. Her parents may also be unable to get him to go to see a medical professional. They may need to get assistance to make sure that happens.

I sincerely hope she doesn’t need to involve the police, but if it is necessary, then I’d rather she hasn’t been frightened off taking action she needs to do because of things said here.

The police will put him in a psychiatric facility for observation and assessment. They can hold him for up to 72 hours and evaluate him. This will determine if he is a threat to himself or others. It’s not up to @travelbabe24 or anyone here to say he is or is not a threat to himself or others. The only safe solution is to have him locked up and evaluated. If he is (was) not serious about his statement of harming himself, it will teach him a lesson – which is a lesson most of us should already know – don’t make idle threats about suicide.

Disregarding for the moment the issue of privacy that you’ve raised, because it surely is – or may be – secondary to the exigent circumstances of a potential suicide, exactly what do you know?

When you say that you accessed his “secret online account”, what account is that? Facebook? A diary? A messenger service?

What is the form of his threat to suicide? Did he post a public (or semi-private) notice that others can see as well? Has he communicated knowledgeably with someone? That is, has he sent this as a message to someone, or does he believe his post to be fully private?

Has he communicated how he might carry out his threat? And has he ever acted on these threats before? What kinds of actions (if any) has he taken in the past?

Finally, are you certain that he is not aware of your snooping? How certain are you that you aren’t simply being played again?

Suicide Prevention Hotline
There are also localized services. You need to look them up.

@travelbabe24 It’s been 15 hours since you first posted this q. If your brother has not acted on his suicide threats, he probably won’t act on them at this time.

Many years ago I worked at a crisis intervention hotline, and was trained to handle suicidal calls. Every threat of suicide must be taken seriously! That being said, many times a suicidal threat is a call for help, a way of someone saying they see no alternative other than taking their own life. If the situation is still not resolved, I would definitely advise your parents. I also second @rojo‘s suggestion of the Suicide Prevention Hotline, or some similar local organization.

@trolltoll I’m truly sorry you had that type experience. Certainly, no one having a crisis of any type needs to be treated like a criminal. As far as her brother’s privacy, I think it’s better to err on the side of safety.

As far as I’m concerned, keeping tabs on a family member’s serious mental health trumps all ideological ideals of “privacy.” If that’s what it takes to save my child’s life, then it will be done.

You can’t do this by yourself. Talk to your parents. Talk to a counselor, talk to someone.

It is clearly his way of screaming out for attention. He wants people to focus on him. You have to try another approach.

“get him the help he needs”

How, exactly, do you do that? If the person doesn’t want help, rejects every kind of offer, what can you do?

If the psych ER that serves your area is a hellhole where a person can’t get food or even have a place to lie down, but just sits in a hard plastic chair for 12 hours or more without being seen by anybody, surrounded by crazies and strung-out druggies, and getting out is twenty times more difficult than getting in, what do you do if they’re not being helped there? What if they’re hospitalized by force and they reach a point where they’d like to talk to someone, and the staff says “We don’t have anyone here who can do that”?

What if the crisis is now and you can’t get him an appointment until sometime next month?

What if there’s no insurance to pay for it?

What if as a parent you are subjected to crisis after crisis of this sort, until your own resources are spent, you live in a constant state of anxiety, and your life is not your own? How long do you go on being held hostage by someone who won’t take responsibility for himself? Can you really assume the burden of keeping someone alive who says he doesn’t want to be?

And what will you do to yourself for the rest of your life if you try to save him and fail?

I would like to know how people who can say “get him help” suggest that a caring family member accomplish that all by herself.

Who are you directing your response to @Jeruba?

People haven’t suggested she do it on her own. I, and others, have advised she should tell her parents. I’ve advocated for her calling in the police (if such an extreme step is required). The OP has said her parents have found an ‘expensive psychiatrist’ and ‘expensive therapists’ for her brother. So the family has support available to them and they’re accessing it.

I don’t think anyone has suggested she can resolve his problems alone, or that she is solely responsible for helping him.

I’d like to know what you suggest this young person does? Should she just ignore the information she’s accessed? What advice do you have for the original poster?

There are very obvious markers that your brother is manipulating you and your family….his age, no job and refusal of your help to help him succeed. There could be a myriad of reasons he is this way at this stage of his life. Hearing that your dad screams at him about being a loser etc. are signs of emotional abuse. Another aspect could be that he just does not see that he will ever be able to please your dad and meet his expectations. A very dear friend of mine lost his 48 year old son who felt this way his whole life and battled drug and alcohol his whole life because of this self imposed exile from his dad’s lack of approval.

The emotional fire storm going on inside a persons mind when they express words and thoughts about ending there life is something only trained professionals understand. When my son first fell apart with his first attempt at suicide…blind side does not begin to define what my wife and I went through and I will whole heartedly support you perusing your brothers email social media etc as that is where we found hints to the emotional duress he hid so carefully from us. His second attempt brought on a full on intervention that saved his life and 3 years later he seems very much in control of his life but that will never relieve us from concern or poking our nose into his emotional well being.

His repeated threats of suicide I believe could qualify him to be hospitalized. At the very least I would sit down with him and have a heart to heart talk with him and ask him these 3 things….

Have you thought about committing suicide?
Have you ever taken steps to commit suicide?
Have you ever attempted to commit suicide in the past?

If he says yes than he should be evaluated by a mental health professional to further determine if he needs hospitalization. And if he does say yes….look him in the eyes ask if he can make you a promise not to harm himself for the next 24 hours. That is the time you need to get him help and doing this will help to calm him down by taking away the burden he is imposing on hurting or killing himself.

Is he eating and sleeping normally? Is he self medicating with drugs or alcohol? Where are your parents at with regards to his threats of suicide?

If the police or medical personnel come to the home and find out that this person has made threats of suicide, they will take him and commit him, so getting an appointment that’s weeks away won’t be an issue. If the OP does nothing and then this person harms himself, the OP may regret it and feel guilt over knowing and ignoring the threats.

@Earthbound_Misfit, what can the parents do? I don’t think the sister can take on the rescuing of this young person, beyond notifying someone. But then, what can the parents do if he doesn’t want help? All my questions are about that.

I’m sorry if I was unclear. It’s very difficult for me to treat this question with any objective distance at all. But for all the times I have heard someone say “Get him help” or “He needs help,” I have never heard anyone say you can make a person want it. Instead they always say “Unless he wants it, there’s nothing you can do.” You can try like crazy to get treatment for someone, and if they don’t cooperate, it’s no use.

I agree with @trolltoll that police involvement is not going to make things better for him. The terrible choices a parent may face can include trying to choose the least among evils when you really have no idea which is worst and you know you’ll be blamed no matter what.

I think what the OP needs to know is that if her brother does himself harm, it isn’t her fault. I don’t say she should ignore the threats. I say you can’t take on the blame if you are unable to avert someone else’s crisis. You do what you can, and you can’t do any more than that.

Suicide is a vastly complex matter, and I think any advice given to this young OP other than she should inform her parents is grossly misguided.

We sit behind our screens and read a few words and imagine we understand a situation. We don’t! We don’t know shit.

^^ditto^^

@Hawaii_Jake I felt the same way until my kid went suicidal. I spent that last 4 years of my life immersed in the subject and have more than the Readers Digest version of what is going on with people who are suicidal. The biggest component of being close to someone who is suicidal is not what we know, it is what we don’t know that is going on in that persons head. What I do know is going on when a person shuts down so bad they want to take their own life is there is a chaotic shit storm in their head that only intervention and intensive therapy will bring that person back from the precipice of doom they are at.

So again I will advocate going through their digital files, their belongings to find out whatever you can find out about what is causing this person to shut down. Even more so….get any guns, knives, anything sharp out of the house and lock up all medicines.

These situations when people articulate suicide are not complicated…you intervene…it’s that simple. You take action and as I outlined above in my answer you ask those 3 questions a yes to any of them then you take action….call for help. Anyone can do this. The OP asked for advice and people like me who have been there can offer advice and my advice is don’t do nothing…call for help.

When a parent or a loved one finds their son or daughter hiding under their bed and a knife next to them with their hands over their eyes sobbing….“please stop the noise in my head”....you don’t get them a glass of warm milk and say things will be better in the morning…you get help immediately.

Perhaps YOU don’t know shit…I sadly know a lot.

@Cruiser I have been to the precipice of suicide. I know precisely what it is like. I did not say to do nothing. You are reading meaning into what I wrote that is not there.

@Hawaii_Jake My last comment was in regards to your comment “We don’t! We don’t know shit.” It is too bad that you do not feel you have anything constructive to add to the discussion because of your own experience. I think you of anyone then could offer a unique perspective of what more others around you could have done, what clues they could have picked up on changes in behavior patterns when you were going through the slow boil up to your attempt. There are a lot of dead people with loved ones after the fact saying “I should’ve, I could’ve, I would’ve had they picked up on the clues that are more obvious after the fact.

Hello everyone. Thanks for all of the replies. I’m here with an update.

@trolltoll , My comment back to you was harsh. I was under stress and snapped so I apologize.

So my brother is ok. I got my dad to go and talk to him. We did not call the police and he is not in the hospital. He is now staying with my mom since he wants nothing to do with my dad. Unfortunately, my dad was rather insulting that night, so I understand my brothers pain. But on the other hand, my dad does so much for my brother and my brother is not appreciative at all. He is rather entitled actually. I’m hoping they can both work on themselves so their relationship can become more healthy.

As for my brothers Internet site, it’s public for everyone to see. It is on tumblr, and he usually updates his status with suicide threats every time someone upsets him. He is diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist, but it’s very hard to believe him, as he uses it to be lazy and get his way.

I understand logging onto his account is a violation of privacy. I only do it when I know he’s upset, but that still doesn’t make it right. I, too, have a tumblr, and my brother just added me on it, so now I have access to his tumblr without using his password. I like to snoop his tumblr when he’s upset so when he does post his suicide threats, I can try to stop him before he does something. Is this so wrong? He doesn’t like talking to anyone but his online friends and therapist, even when I’ve tried…

Thanks for updating @travelbabe24

Be careful, some kids can play the system.
When my son was younger a school councilor decided he was clinically depressed and the school called in a psychologist to speak with him. They (and I) did not tell him why he was seeing this person or even who it was. I was there, but not allowed in the room. When he came out I asked him how it went (fine) and what did they say (they thought I was depressed) and what did you say? His answer was “I told them what they needed to hear”. When I pressed for answers he basically said he knew what they were after and he wasn’t playing their game. He was playing his own. Nothing further came from that meeting so I assume he said whatever then needed to hear to convince them.

You’re in a nearly impossible situation, @travelbabe24. I hope that you didn’t read my earlier questions as criticisms. Criticism of your attempts to save your brother’s life – assuming any of his threats are serious, and even dealing with them that way yourself when you simply don’t know – would be inappropriate.

@travelbabe24… How was he treated by your parents growing up? How were you treated?

@Dutchess_III

We have always been VERY spoiled. My parents were not very strict, but we all were very good kids. My parents got divorced about 8 years and since then my brother and my dads relationship has been a train wreck. My dad still spoils us, but my brother isn’t so sweet back to my dad. My dad also really worries about my brother and bottles it up. Then some nights he gets so upset about it and just explodes (like the other night).