This piece is based in real life events and handles heavy welfare topics. Please only read if you are in an emotionally resilient place or effectively supported.
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My friend is seriously ill but we don't yet know if it's terminal. We won't know until she dies... or, just, doesn't.
Obviously she will die eventually, I will. We all will. But we don't know if she'll die before 'her time'. How can we know when it's 'her time'? Good question. And now we're considering the reality of determinism and if I wasn't in shock and pre-emptive grief I'd research and write something witty and pithy about that and it would be brilliant.
My friend has been seeing a medical specialist in the field of her illness for years. In fact, she's seen multiple specialists but, in that time, her condition has only become worse and is now teetering on the precipice of terminality.
It's almost as if there were warning signs which were missed and disregarded by these specialists which could have avoided her condition reaching this point. I wonder what biases and double standards could possibly have resulted in such discrimination? [sarcastic]
What makes it worse is that the doctors in this field don't seem to be under much scrutiny at all when it comes to identifying whether someone is terminally ill or not.
There are standardised test, of course, but so much of the duty on these specialists to act and carry out the tests seems to just be based on their nebulous belief of whether the condition is terminal, or even whether the patient is lying or pretending.
Surely this can't be right?
Even if it is that difficult to tell for certain whether a patient is terminally ill, wouldn't we collectively as a society require that patients be treated as if they are terminal, just in case? Similarly to how the English & Welsh legal system is rigged to avoid miscarriages of justice as a priority, right?
Even then it doesn't always work. I'm sure the Birmingham Six and those Post Office Postmistresses and Postmasters would have liked the system to err even further on the side of caution.
I've used vague language around the medical profession relevant to my friend's illness so far as I am not a trained colleague and am not privy to the nuances of working in this field.
But, my-oh-my, have I seen from the position of patient, friend, and family how this area of medicine chews patients up and spits them out, or abandons them entirely by closure, lack of services, or premature discharge.
For the uninitiated amongst you, who are not already screaming at your screen in solidarity and collective trauma, I am talking about mental health services.
My friend is suicidal.
-------------- Suicide Prevention Training 101 --------------
This section includes specific and precise language around suicide.
Samaritans Helpline UK: 116 123
When you embark on any suicide prevention or mental health first aider training one of the first things you'll learn is the difference between non-suicidal self injury, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts.
Non-suicidal self injury is often called self-harm and refers to behaviours which can release difficult feelings but also injure or harm the person in some way. Self harm can be emotional and psychological as well as physical.
Suicidal ideation is the thoughts about suicide. It can be passive, as in imagining what would happen or thinking about not wanting to be alive, and it can be active, as in specifically planning how to die.
Suicide attempts may sometimes be closer to a cry for help rather than a definite and final decision, even though there is a risk of death. Many people who attempt suicide and are properly supported afterwards go on to live long and settled lives.
There's no hard line between passive and active suicidal ideation, as in thinking or planning about suicide, but it's important to recognise when someone has moved into active ideation. However, many people who experience active ideation don't make suicide attempts.
You'd think that if someone voiced anything remotely indicating active ideation then support and prevention services would, or could, ramp up in response just in case they are one of the people who do go on to make a suicide attempt.
This isn't what I've seen. Sometimes active ideation isn't taken seriously or believed, and sometimes even when it is believed the services aren't available or appropriate for the person in question.
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Back to my friend. She is magnificent. She's funny and kind and smart and wonderful. She's loud and brash and generous. She is an excellent example of the best of us. And she has lost her spark.
Under debt, rising costs, limited and inappropriate housing and employment, health issues, and enormous difficulty finding respectful male romantic partners. I suppose she's lost hope.
Why on earth wouldn't she?
When the advice is to talk but we're all saying the same thing, what good is that? When the advice is to seek professional help but there is none, or it's late or inappropriate or sexist and racist what good is that?
When the advice is psychological intervention but the medication isn't working and it's your living circumstances that are killing you, what good is that!
My friend wasn't suicidal 5 years ago and this government already had considerable blood on their hands then.
I could go on, and I do, often, but you already grasp what I'm saying. The Tories haven't single handedly made my friend and millions of others suicidal but they have had a massive hand in it.
From their continued use of ATOS and general eugenicism towards disabled people in the UK, to the normalisation of transphobia all culminating in, for just one example, the murder of Brianna Ghey, the 2010-2024 various Conservative governments have built and stoked fires intended on burning down community and welfare, and been successful.
There's a proverb "The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth."
There's something in this for the traumatised Etonians et al. that grotesquely adorn our seats of political, legislative, and legal power. We are the village that they are burning down and we have to confront them. They will not stop burning of their own accord.
But first I'll try to put their fire that's burning down my friend.
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