Thread by @tylerblack32

Imagine me, a suicidologist, tweeting this message from the incredible Jessi Gold. I have been accused personally and directly of "only caring about suicide," but this is a perfect message.

My comment: we also need to de-psychiatricize suicide and make it a societal problem

https://twitter.com/drjessigold/status/1487535779228401668

I am both a suicidologist AND a child and youth mental health advocate. Sometimes the venn diagram of what i'm doing is circular, other times disconnected. Mental health conflation with suicide is SOCIETIES prolem and I want to DECREASE that.

When people talk about "mental health" and then put up a suicide graph, it makes me wanna puke. Suicide is multiply-complex, and only 50% of people who die by suicide have any diagnosable mental illness (sorry advocates, yer wrong)

Suicide attempts and suicide distress can be delivered by a variety of stressors INCLUDING mental health, but also include things that we don't typically automatically discuss when we talk about suicide. Things that cost MONEY and EFFORT and DEDICATION and POLITICS and ADVOCACY.

I am so tired of people "talking about mental health" for suicide prevention. STOP CONFLATING THE TWO world. I certainly don't, and people who accuse me of this are engaging in the most bizarre projection I've ever seen.

I consider this the singularly most important tweet I have ever tweeted in the history of my tweeting. I hope its information is known more than anything else in the world.

https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1175297211183202307

Some of us have been in this space for a very long time, and we are tired of people casually wandering in, saying something, and then leaving to go about their other interests and passions.

"Hey I care, suicide important to me."

"Oh cool. We need to reexamine our whole educational system address racial discrimination, removing poverty as an outcome confounder, and create safe spaces using innovative and expensive technologies work on this!"

"No, like, a ribbon?"