I think an extremely important part of mental health awareness and intervention is acknowledging that no, help isn't actually always available. Or the "help" that is, isn't actually helpful.
When I was 22 I hit a wall. I called the suicide hotline from my car so my roommates wouldn't hear me crying. I explained that I could barely shower, feed, or dress myself. I needed immediate intervention.
They asked me if they could send an ambulance for me. They wanted to hospitalize me. I explained that I was a week away from finals. And graduation. If I were hospitalized, I couldn't graduate. The inpatient program also didn't allow phones or visitors, and I knew how disastrous it would be for me to lose contact with my family support system.
I didn't need to be hospitalized. I needed daily solutions. Simple ones, even. I needed a few precooked meals in my fridge so I could use my menial energy to keep my body going. I needed a doctor to contact my school and ask if I could have some extensions on my class assignments. I needed a few excused absences so I could catch up on my lost sleep.
They told me there was an intensive program that allowed residents to live in an inpatient care facility and get daily help with tasks like eating, therapy, medication, and showering, while still leaving for work and school, but it cost $30,000. I told them half the reason I was calling them was because of my financial pressures and fear.
In about 10 minutes of back-and-forth, it became clear that they had no true solution for me. I could go into the hospital and an inpatient program which would interrupt my entire life, and which I knew did not create very good results and had traumatized some of my own friends, or, well, I couldn't even go into debt for the other program. They didn't accept any new patients without half of the cost upfront. So it wasn't even an option.
No therapist or psychiatrists or social workers could fit me in for 3-8 weeks.
So I said thank you and hung up, emotionally spent. I felt utterly empty.
Sitting in my car I realized I had a choice, to live or to stop. Nobody was going to save me. Nobody was going to help.
So I went inside, and I cried myself to sleep, and when I woke up I still hadn't made a choice. So then I did. I chose to live no matter how terrible, just in case things turned around down the road.
It was unspeakably difficult. I didn't shower. I barely ate. I either slept too much or not enough.
But I did survive, and a year later I got with a therapist who started to make things a little lighter for me.
I still struggle now, but things are usually much better, and I'm glad I'm still here.
I just think it's important to acknowledge that for many people, especially in rural areas, and for people without money, which is most people, that the "help is always available" line feels hollow. Because often times it isn't, actually.
But that doesn't mean there will never be.
Overall, we need to build an entirely new system for mental health support in this world.
But for now, ask yourself or your friend in crisis what might make things a little more bearable until help actually is available.
A meal? Emailing a professor? Clean laundry? What might make things a little lighter?
I know that on the very brink, things like this may seem totally pointless or trivial. But if you can't stop yourself or someone else from falling, sometimes the only way to save someone is with a softer landing.
