It's hard to say, the difference between passive and active tends to be blurry at best.

OTOH, I keep hearing experts claim that nobody really wants to die when they attempt to commit suicide completely neglecting the inherent selection bias that comes from interviewing survivors. It may well be true, but it's an iffy proposition to extrapolate in that fashion and reveals a bit of how much we really don't know.

At the end of the day though, the important thing is that there's going to be a second chance here, hopefully things work out better this time around. And hopefully somebody will find some good that can come out of this.

I don't want to go deeper into this particular matter in this thread, but it's pretty safe to that these people aren't really experts. An actual expert could tell you the different possible motivations for suicides (there's a classification), and supposed frequencies for each one as well.

And that's unfortunately completely true. It would be wonderful to have nice clean answers, but I think that's one of the things that makes suicide so horrible for other people. The fact that you never really know. Even when the person does survive they don't always have a clear answer as sometimes they aren't thinking clearly.

Hopefully the OP's sister can find some peace that isn't residing under 6 feet of earth.

I hope your sister pulls thru and hope for the best, for both of you.

Here, you can have some of my stoicalness (I've actually had to google the word)

Share it with your sister, it helps!

Food for thought, often times chronic insomnia or other sleep problems are misdiagnosed as depression as they can look damn near identical in terms of symptoms.. If you've been on medication that long it's a really good idea to consult with a pulmonologist and see about getting a proper sleep study done.

While it's definitely within the realm of possibility for you to have chronic major depression, if you have a sleep disorder whatever medication you're taking is just going to make that worse and prevent full recovery. Getting a sleep study would also likely help identify if there's a sleep disorder that's contributing even if it isn't the cause.

Often times misdiagnoses just make things worse and can be more harmful than not being diagnosed at all. It's not unheard of to have migraines misdiagnosed as schizophrenia in individuals that also have significant sleep disorders. There are other ones as well of course that's just one example.

I can't say nothing,but I'm sorry.Stay close to her,talk to her,is very important.
Give her a reason to live. It's a horrible world,I know,but there is always a reason to live.Show her the wonderful part of the world, give her something she likes and never let her alone.

I'm not quite comfortable with that reply, but I still don't think that this discussion is appropriate for this thread, so I'll keep my answer short. Feel free to open a new thread if you want to discuss the matter further.

It's not unusual for people with depression to be on long-term medication, in fact it's an extremely important part of the therapy. Depression is an episodic phenomenon in the vast majority of cases, and the episodes often get worse and come quicker as time progresses. Therefore, it's imperative to prevent further episodes as well as possible, and that's why people take prophylactic medication for months or years (depending on the severity of the episode and the number of recidives they already had). The usefulness of this medication has been proven numerous times. There is often a problem with patient compliance though.

Therefore, giving people ideas that they may have been misdiagnosed is a very double-edged sword. While misdiagnoses do happen, the chance that you're giving someone the idea that his medication might not be that important or necessary after all, is probably far higher than the chance that someone has indeed been misdiagnosed. Especially when you're mentioning schizophrenia in the same post, where compliance is a _huge_ problem.

With regard to sleep problems, current research points us into the direction of seeing sleep problems as an important pre-symptom of schizophrenia, and paying more attention to the possibility that an apparent sleep disorder might be a warning sign for a schizophrenia breaking out in the next 5 years might help preventing the latter. There are currently some competing theories about what's causing what in this case. I agree with you though that a possible organic cause needs to be checked thoroughly.

Wishing you both all the best in the future. Do what you have to do to take care of yourself and your Sister. Ours thoughts are with you.

It's not something I like to talk about much, and I won't go into too much detail. but I lost my sister over 10 years ago. My family knew she was depressed, knew what she was doing to herself, and we tried to get her help. Somehow I never really thought it would go so far though. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wonder if there wasn't something more I could have done to change what happened.


As terrible as this situation is, be glad for this wake up call and that you still have a chance to do something to help. Don't waste it.

That's a horrible situation to be faced with. But regardless of how you're feeling right now - and I won't pretend I know how you feel - you've got to be strong for her. No doubt the place she's in is darker still.

Don't feel bad about the pills. It was a reasonable assumption which anyone would have made in your place.

Something I can offer both your sister and yourself is the suggestion to look up and watch the Abraham Hick's Law of Attraction series of videos - Yes, there is a spiritual philosophy backing what Hick's is teaching but she's respectful enough to present the information in a coherent and down-to-earth psychologically constructive manner.

So anyone skeptic just needs to overlook that Hicks believes that she is channeling Abraham to be able to take advantage of the cognitive practices the lady offers.

From a spiritual stand point I can't claim that I know everything but I do theory that all of us, around the world, share our intelligence and wisdom with each other through a collective mind on a subliminal level and that mind, unhampered by the mechanisms of the human brain has only the main goal of love and nurturing.

The key factors behind Hick's teachings is to not only believe in yourself more but so much as to not hypersensitively take the accusations and scrutiny of others around you seriously enough to tarnish the love and respect for you own integrity.

On top of not beating yourself up and forgiving yourself more, Hicks demonstrates meditative practices that exercises the mind into defaulting into a more positively charged state so that it becomes easier and easier to find more reverence with your every day surroundings than disappointment.

The only ultimate issue that I had with the series is that it seemed like the religion's ultimate goal was to remove the person from the persona (or that which makes them an individual from everyone else) and although that might work for some, I'm a bit more like Ayn Ryand when it come to individuality.

It's still a very good watch an helped me out a lot.

Just a quick update.
My sister is doing fine now. She was made to drink charcoal and presumably had her stomach pumped. She's currently on suicide watch, but I've talked to her. I think she's going to get the help she needs. I've told her that I love her and will support her no matter what happens. Her friends have done the same. I'll be away for a while, I have to deal with a lot of family issues right now.

Thank you all for your support.

Thanx for the update...keeping the prayers and good thoughts headed in your direction SM