Sinead O'Connor expressed suicidal thoughts over her Twitter account but qualified that she did not actually intend to commit suicide.
Suicide ideation is very common in people with mood disorders. It is necessary to discern between ideation and intent. If I were to go to the ER every time I had a suicidal thought, I'd have to set up a permanent home there.
Some days are worse than others, but I would say that not a week goes by that I don't have suicide ideation to some degree. Planning only enters into it rarely.
I use a scale of 1-10 for the seriousness of the ideation and for the seriousness of the planning. Sometimes the ideation goes as high as 8. The planning rarely goes higher than a 2 or 3.
It is, thankfully, rare for me to self-injure at this point. I realize that during my life I made a lot of para-suicide attempts but only one actual full-on attempt, which wound me up very sick but nowhere near dead. I was actually lucky that I wasn't damaged. I swallowed the contents of a small bottle of Tylenol using facial cleaner to wash them down, then chugged a bottle of alcohol of some sort. Tylenol can actually damage the liver, so I was fortunate that I was okay.
However, just because most of the time my suicidal thoughts are ideation with very little planning doesn't mean that I am not at risk for attempting suicide. As things stand now, it's not very likely. But people with mood disorders already have a greater likelihood of attempting suicide than people who are not afflicted with such.
What can ya do? I'm not about to spend my entire life on a mental ward. That would surely make me want to off myself. So I'll keep on keeping on and live for the good times and for my loved ones.
It's quite probable that the only reason I'm alive is that I wouldn't want to screw over my son and the critters I've taken in.
As one of my therapists said, this ain't the Disneyland planet.
And as I replied, could we go to that planet next lifetime?
I can always hope.
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