Honestly, we need people who are willing to reach out to that person and be their friend. Convince them to start therapy, convince them to see their doctor. From what I’ve learned from my daughter, she just didn’t see a future for herself. She still struggles with her identity, people online have convinced her she’s not a human being (literally, some “therian” group talking people into believing that they’re actually dogs/cats/horse souls in a human body) – We found that the biggest problem was the internet, first and foremost. Once we got all of our kids off of it, they all started doing a lot better.
We thought she was old enough to handle all of the weird shit online – I got online at 12 and witnessed all sorts of horrid shit, completely unsupervised, but the world wasn’t nearly as connected back then. We have some truly horrid people on the internet now.
I found some of her contacts were goading her into committing suicide, there were people in her groups that were literally there to find anyone with … let’s call them “alternative” lifestyles … and they were trying to befriend people, and talk them into offing themselves.
When I deleted all of that stuff, I had messaged the groups saying that my daughter was safe but was going through some things, I got 3 DMs from random people with things like “There’s nothing wrong with trying to kill yourself!”. The world truly is a toxic hellhole; and a lot of it is confined to private areas of the internet like Discord.
I found lots of the stuff on YouTube targeted towards kids had lots and lots of suicide topics going on as well. I’m fairly supervising when it comes to internet-time with my children too. I try to watch the channels they watch, I try to ensure what they’re getting into isn’t crazy – while still staying back enough to respect their privacy.