Phone-based crisis intervention and suicide prevention frequently involves guiding a caller toward an (often tenuous) agreement that there’s a reason to get through the next day, or maybe just the next hour.
Toward the end of a recent call, the man I’d been talking to for over 40 minutes summed up the call by saying, “Yeah, I get it…man up.” He went on to mildly berate me, suggesting that he could have had the same stupid conversation with his dad if his dad hadn’t died. But I’ll take that as a victory. He agreed he would stay alive to see his kids on the weekend.
He would not agree to turn his gun over to a friend or family member, which would have helped lessen the likelihood of impulsive, violent suicide. But, for the time being, he had put it away. And at least he was calling.
Still, the “man…
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The Life & Times of Ice 