Where are the hell breakers?

I hope the concept of hell breakers for suicide is obvious. Angels of the abyss is another phrase I feel conveys the same thing. I like these phrases because they succinctly communicate what would otherwise take a lot more words to explain. Sometimes like now I feel a few more words are necessary.

There are lots of agencies which work on suicide. Doctors, lawyers, health policy makers, politicians, therapists, social workers, mental health charity staff and the police. Most of these are represented by professional organisations like the Royal College of Psychiatry.

None of them are on my side. They work to put barriers between suicidal people and a good death. This is done because they don’t respect the hell of suicidal pain.

Some agencies also work to treat suicidal ideation with drugs or words. Either can alleviate the hell but they can also prolong and worsen it. This is true from my personal experience.

When they fail they default to prolonging the pain by trying to stop the individual from successfully killing themselves using a good method. They have no empathy with the pain of living while wanting to die and do not respect the individual’s right to choose a good death. They’d prolong the pain by prolonging life when the individual no longer wants to live. Again, they do not respect the hell of suicidal pain. They are more hell makers than hell breakers.

What’s perhaps worse is the absence of any effort to prevent suicidal pain from occurring. The entire mental health and social care industry is dedicated to one thing: normalising people. The only suicide prevention involves blocking good suicide methods from being accessed by anyone, even those who have been failed. The trend of focusing on individuals while never considering the bigger picture has made modern life more harsh because a bad (heartless and lacking in empathy) culture has never been the target of suicide prevention. There’s no training to wield the right of choice in death either…or life for that matter.

This is all hell making, not breaking.

There is no modern agency involved with the system which is primarily designed to be hell breakers. None understand these words:

It could be worse. I could still be alive.

They don’t understand what a fate worse than death really means to those who come to know it. They don’t have this life experience and they lack the basic empathy and intelligence to think to do anything other than what creates hell.

The suicide system doesn’t react fast or attempt to resolve suicidal pain quickly. An agency designed around hell breaking would be driven to create this sort of rapid response. It is one which understands the hellish nature of suicide pain which is central to hell breaking.

Hell breaking also involves assisted suicide because it stops hell. The religious version of hell is implicitly based upon creating suicide pain and preventing escape from it. This is the nature of the religious punishment and any hell which doesn’t create suicidal pain isn’t hell. The first step in this punishment is to make living so awful that the individual is induced to feel suicidal despair. The next step is to force the individual to stay alive while they desperately want to escape by any means including the cessation of their consciousness. Hell breakers offer a good death if they can’t solve the pain because death is a mercy for those trapped in hell. Their priority is the end of the hellish existence which creates suicide whereas hell makers choose to force their victims to stay alive.

The other difference is in the hell breaking focus of suicide prevention. Hell breaking prevents suicidal ideation, not suicide itself. It’s in this area where the current system shows its lack of empathy and vision. Hell makers think suicide prevention means stopping people from killing themselves and it has made more hells by focusing on blocking access to good suicide methods. Hell makers also fight against the legalisation of assisted suicide.

This differentiation between two polar opposite approaches might seem like an oversimplification. For example I’ve steered clear of addressing carer issues and not bothered with thoughts about personal responsibility to society. I’ve only focused on suicidal individuals. However the idea of hell breaking illustrates what would be achieved by a very different approach to suicide, one firmly seated in its recognition of the profound severity of suicide pain.

The simplification leaves out some nuances but I believe it covers the main areas where change is needed. You might not believe in the existence of the religious afterlife of punishment but surely you can recognise hell on Earth.

So I ask a question to which I already know the answer…what are would you choose? Hell making or hell breaking?