Hi. I figured I'd post in here to get this off my chest. It's as anonymous as I can keep it and nobody on these forums knows the person involved so I figured this was an okay place to do this.
I do need to include a trigger warning, this story does include the topic of suicide very heavily, so if that is sensitive to you, please do not read any more.
My girlfriend tried to take her life on Wednesday night. She is now out of the psychiatric facility and home. I started therapy today because the entire experience was something I had to personally deal with, and it was a lot.. In fact, I'm still processing the events.
Ever since I've known her, she has struggled with depression. I've tried my best to help her out through her hardships, and she has certainly had her ups and downs, but it got to the point that it got to on Wednesday... She has a therapist and has been taking an SSRI for the past 2-3 months, which was a big step for her that I had to give her a lot of support with starting.. She was doing quite well until last week (week of March 7), where she started making comments about the ironies of depressed people being prescribed a medication that is quite easy to OD on. After making those comments, she realized it may not be in her best interests to have the medication in her possession, so she gave it to me, and for about a week, I was giving her her doses when she needed them.
She was trying to keep the situation quite private from her family; her mom who lives in another state was abusive through her teenage years, and is still to this day a controlling socio/psychopath/narcissist who only makes the lives of her family worse. The rest of her family is honestly fine, her dad and sister are both good people who live 5 minutes away from her and her brother, who in my opinion tries to act like too much of a dad instead of a brother, but that is beside the point. Anyways, because of her history with her mother, she thinks that her entire family would react in the same way her mother would when talking about mental health issues and whatnot, but after she started making the scary comments, I told her it may be in her best interests to tell her dad that she was at least on an SSRI. She took my advice fortunately, and her dad reassured her that her mom would not find out from him.
In the past week, I've tried to help emotionally support her as best as I can, her support group has shrank a bit; she found out someone who she thought was one of her best friends is honestly kind of a terrible person, and that made the situation worse. Our university has an emergency crisis hotline, and I tried to convince her to call them, because no matter how hard I try to emotionally support her, I am far from a mental health professional, and I would not be able to provide sufficient assistance to her other than just being there for her.
Fast forward to Wednesday night. A friend of ours and myself were off campus doing some music related things, and when we got back to campus, I was going to say bye to her before we both headed to our apartments for the night. She got in my friend's car with us, and proceeded to tell us that she had just taken about 30 ibuprofen... I called 911 before she was even finished with her sentence, and the emergency responders were able to get her to the ER in the hospital. I had to call her dad and explain what was going on, which was really not great; I've only talked to him a couple times, so breaking the news to him was hard. I then had to speak to her mother over the phone and explain the situation as briefly as I could, and when her siblings and dad arrived at the hospital, her dad was allowed to go into the room with her, and I explained everything about the events of the past week to her brother.
The next day, I was able to visit her, but, by the end of the day, she was 5150'd, which is an involuntary holding period that can be up to 72 hours in a psychiatric hospital.
She was released before the 72 hours were up, which is good because she is home now (actually at this moment she is with the friend who was with me when everything went down).
I want to help her work through this, but I just don't know how. I went to therapy to help myself process everything, but honestly, it doesn't even feel real. I love her a lot, and I know for a fact that I don't want her out of my life, especially because of something like that, so it is a relief that she is okay.
Her mental state seems better, she says that she knows for a fact that she wants to be alive now, it just scares me, because there is something in the back of my head nagging me that she is just telling me that she's just saying what I want to hear. It's scary, and I'm doing the best that I can to support her, it just feels like I'm in a constant state of fear of what is going to come next.
I just needed to get this out and say it to someone who isn't my therapist, but if anyone has any idea on how to move forward in a situation like this, I would be very appreciative of any advice.