Understanding Suicide

I had a particular person that had come in. They said, I've had these thoughts about suicide. I explained that the thought of suicide is just an idea. It doesn't mean you're going to act on the idea. It's just a thought. We have thoughts all the time. The thing that they did say to me is they were afraid to say it. They were afraid to admit that they had this thought. And he says, if I told my wife I had that thought, she'd panic. I became a safe place to admit that he had the thought because I didn't judge it. We just looked at it and said, is this something that we really need to go into more depth? And so when I explained to this gentleman and we really looked at it, it really wasn't a viable option for him because he had a family, he had a business, he had all these things, but he just didn't know how to deal with this particular problem he was dealing with. And it was overwhelming him. It really resolved it for him. He goes, no, I would never do it. He's got too much to live for. But at the same time, you have to take him seriously. It becomes a problem if it becomes ruminating. And so now it keeps coming up and it keeps coming in as a thought over and over and over, then I would be very concerned about it. This particular gentleman that I was talking to said he just had thought and it scared them. So where we have to be concerned is if you can't stop thinking about it. In most situations where people do commit suicide is they found no other resource to stop their pain.