“I think about suicide every day, but I’m not planning to kill myself “

Mark Goulston
8 min readMar 22, 2019

Chronic Suicidality and How to Overcome It

“If I didn’t have my suicidality, I would have killed myself years ago” — a patient with Chronic Suicidality

This is another article in our mission, as the creators of the new suicide prevention documentary, Stay Alive, to help those of you who find this a challenge to stay alive.

I first learned about the syndrome of Chronic Suicidality from Mental Health Comedian, Frank King, who has given five TEDx talks and suffers from Major Depression and Chronic Suicidality.

For my more professional audience Chronic Suicidality is the same as Chronic Suicidal Ideation, but the latter sounds more clinical and sterile, whereas the former is what people live.

As Frank speaks about it in his talks, an example of Chronic Suicidality is that you’re having an okay day and then something upsetting or disappointing happens such as not getting a job and you think, “Okay, I can pick myself up and look for another job, get stoned or drunk or I can just kill myself.”

When you think it or say it to yourself, you think or say it calmly and as a matter of fact. You usually don’t say it to others because that would only trigger a bunch of nervous and…

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Mark Goulston
Mark Goulston

Written by Mark Goulston

Dr. Goulston is the world's #1 listening coach and author of "Just Listen" which became the top book on listening in the world

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