Escape Plan

What coping strategies have you used in the past for when you start having suicidal ideation and things happen for example such as a plan pops into your head and you hear voices in your thoughts as loud as if someone's talking telling you you should be dead?  I've tried calling professionals for help and all I've been told is that I'm basically on my own once I leave a hospital and they're not going to help me stand on my own feet so I figure what the hell's the point of even bothering with them and so I'd like to know what you guys have done to cope with stuff like this so I can try to cope better on my own until I can get my medication refilled.  I'm getting to where I'm having breakdowns in public and I'm trying to bottle it all up so I don't come across as a total nutcase and I feel guilty for how it creates chaos for the people I do open up to so it's really hard.

[ILADVOCATE]

In the past before recovery when I went to psychiatric hospitals they all had outpatient programs and follow up. I never had a problem with suicidal ideations but if I had when released they would have directed me what to do. I do generally advise coping solutions but it sounds as if things are getting out of hand and they are not listening. If your psychiatrist is directly aware of this and won't help you you can speak to an agency that protects your rights as regards care in a psychiatric hospital and they will instruct them to. When a person is discharged they are supposed to insure follow up. Hospital stays are often short due to insurance reasons and people can leave and have relapses.

[velvetvenus]

i have suicidal thoughts all the time, i deal with them with prayer and reading my bible. i don't know if you believe in god but if you do trust that he is there with you. i always remind myself if i kill myself i won't go to heaven and that helps. (please, i don't mean to offend anyone), if you don't believe in god, call a support person like a friend or family member when you are thinking these things, that does help me some too. make an in-between appointment with your psychologist or therapist. remember that your friends and family would be devastated if you weren't around! try thinking about how other people would deal with the situation if you died. i know it's just a part of bipolar but it stinks!  also try writing down your feelings in a journal to find out if there is any pattern to the thoughts. mine have no rhyme or reason but if something bad happens i always have the thoughts. this too will pass, i tell myself, and it does eventually. maybe you need a change of medicine, talk to your psychiatrist. good luck

[farraway]

What coping strategies have you used?
Corlenbelspar, you should re-post this question periodically because it is so important. Get it right and you are on the pathway to wellness.

I think these are high priority:-

Assemble a support group (including family) and make sure they fully understand your problems including medications. People you can call anytime.

Train yourself to recognise oncoming symtoms (symptoms).

Have a crisis plan.

Keep everything regular (sleep, no stress etc.) - just bunker down and see the storm out.

[Twelvesgirl]

Well, you need to take in to consideration what ILADVOCATE said.

ILADVOCATE: how would one go about finding an agency like that? If he did, would they help him get care after the hospital? And how soon could he do this?

Asking for others coping strategies are good, but having your meds that work for you are going to be good too. Please keep coming on here, don't stop that, keep messaging and posting. The reason things are getting so out of control is your lack of medication, you need to get into a hosptial w/ someone who will advocate for you to get you immediate after care.

[ILADVOCATE]

  I would say that a person's psychiatrist can assign them a social worker. They can coordinate things. A case manager as well. All hospitals are responsible for a "discharge plan" and if its a psych. hospital that includes coordination with a social worker and setting up plans for after the hospital such as outpatient treatment, support groups if needed and certainly what to do if a person isn't doing well when they are released and needed follow up. Those always did with me but I did not need those specific services. That said before my current recovery when I left the psych. hospital my psychiatrist always followed up to see if I was stable.
  Coping solutions are always a good idea when we feel depressed or have thoughts of this nature but when they start to become realistic then its time to speak to your psychiatrist and if you were just hospitalized and they aren't following up then the hospital didn't do part of what its requiured to do. Did they set up a discharge plan and what to do if things hadn't stabilized?
  

[Delusion]

My advice is harsh but i think relevent to all of us. Flood your mind with guilt when you get the thoughts and realise that how ever bad you feel there will always be someone who loves you and if you kill yourself you will be killing them inside and causing them the same level of pain you are in, in effect simply passing you pain on to those who care about you. Thats something that gets me through when im bad as like you psychaitrists refuse to help me. Just remember it always passes even when it seems hopless, in time it does pass and youll be fantastic again.

[LetaB]

  And that's not depressing? Surely if this some drastic change of your average attitude, if you feel like you go in and out of these feelings, if you are very young and do not yet know what options you have or what your future might bring to you....how many years does one wait for it to pass? How many decades? Would it EVER, in the depths of your philosophy, be sensible to end your own life? When do your own feelings finally take precedence over everyone elses?
Does your mother's suicide wreck the rest of your life? Does that event then give you the right to end your own pain over it? No, because that would just be passing it on into perpetuity, yes? An artist I deeply admired, Spaulding Gray, bitterly blamed his mother for taking her own life when he was 26. He felt she did not have the right to hurt him this way, even though she was living alone - all her children grown. Then he took his own when his children were very young. Did his mother's suicide have any bearing on his own or was it just that she was bipolar and passed it on to him? I am prolife, it's just that I hate to think that it's all about "guilt" that sticks me to this failing existence.
I'm very, very tired and will probably regret some of the things I've said here tomorrow. May I apologize now or do I have to wait until I'm called on something?

[Delusion]

If your asking if im going to call you out on something and expect a apology lol your are wrong. You are entitled to your opinion. You think one of my coping methods of many is wrong but lots of people think its great its all perspective and opinion and im not offended.

As for waiting it to pass i think you have misunderstood me a little. You ask if its sensible to wait for years for it to pass but as i hoped you would know it doesnt work like that. Being bad for years without any lift or cycling in the other direction what so ever is not bipolar its clinical depression. What i was meaning to imply is: Corlenbelspar cycles and sometimes experiences the ''suicidal ideation'' and cant deal with it but it will pass, it will come back i never said it wouldnt i just said it would pass. Its impossible for anyone to be in a suicdial state indefinately because we break out of it and move on, we may fall back into it but we get out of it in time that is cycling.

As far as being young as you say and not knowing what im talking about and what my options are i will tell you i know fully well what they are. Im unsupported no meds, no psychaitrists, no trust networks i have complained previously about this and dont wish to bring it all up here this isnt my pity corner its a reply to try and help another member. I know my options and my coping strategies exist because they are limited to my options. Its the only thing that works for me and it does. As i have said your entitled to your opinion ;)

[LetaB]

Yes, and I really do apologize because I tend to read into things the conflicting ideas that I react strongly to - even when it is out of context.
I did not meant the YOU were young and ingnorant. Only that it is more sad when a youthful person thinks there is no hope for them. They have so much time to get better.
I think it is amazing that you can be so aware and clear thinking when you have this condition with no meds. I see your statements about guilt as what they are now, just something to grab onto when you are floundering and need a few moments to wait it out. I am without med myself for some time. I guess it's sort of ironic that I have FULL insurance but there is no psychiatrist where I live who can see me for 6 months! Thanks for understanding. The whole "guilt" thing just presses all my buttons because I struggle with it constantly and it feels like a tether and not a positive thing.

[zzzmykids]

Velvetvenus, don't apologize for what is true.  There is only one way to find light in the darkness of suicidal thoughts.
How do we plan ahead?
Have a core group of friends and family you can tell when you think you are going into a "funk" about life and living.
Hopefully where all of you live you have a suicide hotline or use the national hotline if in America.
Before diagnoses of BP2 I worked the suicide hotline.  Being a grant given and public company we were not allowed to talk about God or what could rob you of more love than this life will ever give you.  Yeah right.  Most of us were Christians...don't know now left because the president of our chapter could not ever keep the funds straight and we all were overworked and afraid we would lose our training facillity each month. But that is another story.
I spoke to h.s. students and  used a "reinactment"/drama they were unaware that was a drama.  I was the sister that found my brother and how my family never was the same.
This was a compilation of the grieving people we met with, survivors of suicide.  Their lives would never be the same because of the act of a loved one to take their lives.
I had never thought of suicide as a way out until about two years ago.  Like velvetvenus, there is only one answer for me. No, do no harm to what is not mine.  My soul, it resides in this shell and so does God's Spirit.  
When on the line I used it over and over how much God loves us and wants nothing more for us to make it through this life and spend eternity with Him. In almost three years, I only lost one and it was the hospitals fault, they would not keep him and he had tried before and he called back to say goodbye. I grieved that one, had spoke with him over a week.
When someone we love or know comits suicide it does have a ripple effect through the community, especially when it is kids.
Do no harm to yourself, if you are thinking of suicide, tell someone and have them take you seriously.
Throw out all the meds and over the counter ones, except enough psych meds till you can see your psych.
Call the police for a well check
Call suicide hotline
Go outside, change environment, excercise, do deep breathing
Allow yourself to feel the emotions without acting on them.
Talk in here, give your address to someone in here
Once before I found this room, a kid in another chat room was talking suicide....found out where he lived....four states away, called the police, gave the name, they said yes he lives with his parents and I warned them.
The desk sergent ws not to call me back but did and said, it had almost been too late and thanked me...the kid probably didn't for  awhile but really, life is for living, death is no answer for our extreme pain.....the pain is for a moment when we live it here w/o killing ourselves but whether you believe in God or not doesn't change where the ones living hell on earth go, if you make a choice to take your life.......sorry for offending but would rather offend than watch any of you, including me take our lives and spend eternity.....never ending with a milllion times the agony than we live day to day.
Just a thought.
zzzmykids