suicideTALK

I attended the 'suicideTALK' training course today, and got some useful information from this class.

By talking with the total 20 attendees (except me) in the class, I found that almost all the people are studying in medicine or psychology in University of Dundee, and they came to the class not because they are interested in how to help suicidal people, because as a medicine or a psychology student, the major required them to have some knowledge about how to deal with suicidal people, they said: "actually I have no idea about what I'm gonna to do/say if someone tell me they want to kill themselves." So I asked them: "how about if you want to commit suicide but not sure if it is a reasonable choice, so you feel that you need someone to help you on your confusion. If in this situation, will you tell your best friend you want to commit suicide?" The answer is surprising, almost all the people said they won't tell others around, even counselors, one medicine student said: "no, I won't tell anyone I want to kill myself, even professional councelling, cuz I know people don't know what they can do for me, just like us, we don't know what we should do for the suicidal people either, and we perhaps feel like the person who want to commit suicide might be have something wrong with them, I mean mentally or psychiatrically." The answer drove me to think about the meaning of counselling. Although there are many organisations around to help suicidal people, as well as such kind of course which training people how to deal with suicidal people, how many suicidal people would like to tell others or tell professional counselors to get supports and help from them? I think the professional counselling are very passive, so I wonder how the organisations encourage more suicidal people to ask for help if there only a few people would like to seek for their aids. So this point might be my breakthrough to come up my ideas.