My friend called me tonight talking about hurting herself and wanting to die, she was making a plan. Girls at school and her boyfriend told her to kill herself. I don’t know what to say to her to help.
THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW:
- Thank you so much for sharing your story here, we can see you are trying to find ways to help your friend. It can feel very scary to hear that your friend is feeling like hurting herself.
- It sounds like she has a very good friend in you that you are worried about her well being and you wish to support her. We always want to promote safety first, in situations like this it often helps to help her reach out to professional resources such as giving her these important phone numbers where she can connect to 24/7 help for any suicidal thoughts: Crisis Textline: Text “HELLO” to 741741 or call the National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255. While you can’t do it all alone, we also have a resource on our TOOLS page for “Helping a friend who might be suicidal”.
- Another thing to consider is, does she have any positive adult supports in her life that she can connect to? Perhaps you or they can touch base with a school counselor or teacher. If your friend is involved in any out of school activities like sports or clubs, maybe they can talk to an advisor or coach. They may have a good relationship with a parent or aunt/uncle whom they could talk to about feeling so badly right now and about the way she feels she is treated at school.
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE:
- Once your friend is in a safe space, consider…are there ways to surround themselves with positive people, environments, or activities? Build up the natural support system of people who can support her. It may be by picking up a new hobby, joining a new club away from the negative girls at school or from people who tell her such negative things.
- Have her look at our LEARN tab to learn more about depression, bullying, and suicide. This may help her gain some new insight into what she is going through right now.
- Lastly, under the LEARN tab there is also a lot of helpful information about wellness, which we also provide some tools under our TOOLS tab such as a support plan and positive talk. Thank you again for looking for stopping by to our TeenCentral site and being open to some of our resources to help your friend. It takes courage to do what you did.
