A couple of years ago, a close friend of mine confessed suicidal thoughts and even specific methods they’d considered.

The first thing I did was support them by listening as closely as I could and empathizing with their misery.

The second thing I did was work with another friend to encourage our suicidal friend to get appropriate therapy and to help them access it.

We guessed they were deeply depressed and unlikely to work very hard to overcome bureaucratic hassles to accessing care, so we made phone calls and wrote letters on their behalf.

When they finally got into treatment, they began a slow recovery process that eventually worked out very well.

They thanked us for our intervention, even though more casual friends of ours criticized us.