You cannot talk a person out of committing suicide, but you can help them talk themselves out of doing it. How do I know this? On returning to the States after, Vietnam I was transferred from aviation to mental hygiene where I served as the intake officer under the world famous Dr. R.L. Crews.

It was during this work that I decided to try something, and Dr. Crews agreed to let me give it a go. Instead of just listening to patients vent and threatening suicide, which was not working, I decided to engage them in conversation about what was going to happen after they ended their life as if I assumed they were going to do so the minute they left my office. It worked; not one of the thirty or forty suicidal patents committed suicide. Not only did they not commit suicide, they even stopped talking about it. I will concede that speaking matter-of-factly with a person about ending their life was not the easiest thing in the world to do, but the degree of success depends entirely on the ability to do this in earnest. I would ask questions like this, “Who do you think might want your clothes? You know, the nice things, not what you were wearing at the time of your death.”

There is just one fly in the ointment. There are people who surprise you with a suicide. Those are the ones that leave the family and friends devastated.

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