years ago, when i was in high school, i was in a health education class (it was a required class for all freshmen) where we had a unit on mental health. for one thing, this unit was actually only about stress management and stereotypical symptoms of depression, not any other element of mental health. second of all (and the actual point of this ask), the teacher said that if you ever found out that your friend was self-harming or considering suicide, the best thing to do was to go behind their back and report them to a "trusted adult." she literally said "your relationship with them matters less than their wellbeing." as if your relationship with them has no bearing on their wellbeing whatsoever. as if betraying someone's trust wouldn't negatively impact their mental health. as if forcing them to "get help" is better for them than having a friend they can safely confide in. as if you know what they need better than they do. i already have difficulty with trust (on account of my personality disorder); it's one of my greatest fears that i might tell someone about my struggles just to have them tell someone else that i don't know or like or trust and then some stranger knows personal information about me and starts trying to control me based on the assumptions they make about that... yeah. i really don't like it. this was part of the reason i struggled for years being afraid to tell anyone anything about my self-harm (and even when i did, downplayed how serious it was and lied that i wasn't doing it anymore), and why i still haven't told anyone about my suicidal ideation. yeah. fuck that teacher. and fuck the idea that reporting mentally ill people is the best thing you can do for them.
I hate that the idea that betraying someone just because of certain mental health issues is what you should do. Just because someone is self-harming/suicidal doesn't mean that they aren't people anymore and that they don't deserve to trust. Going behind someone's back will almost always make things worse and completely demolish any sense of trust they may have. It's even worse that these ideas are instilled in schools, places where a large percentage of people struggle mentally and often have little no autonomy in the first place. I'm sorry that you've struggled due to these ideas, and I really wish it wasn't such a common experience.
