Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have updated rule 4. Posts that mention suicide are now allowed with proper flags and warnings so people who may feel triggered can avoid them.
They're not trying to be a crisis intervention space, but more of a maintenance space for people that aren't that bad off yet.
You have to pick one as a small community, you can't be both. Because the internet-community-available tools (listening empathetically to the problem, mainly) to help at one phase can potentially hurt at another, and there isn't just one set of tools that always helps all people suffering different stages of difficulty, that can just be universally employed. Particularly at this young-community scale, where there just aren't that many participants yet.
It's regrettable, and I think this should probably be explained in the rules so they don't come off as arbitrary, but it is the way it is.
If this was a private therapy space, where "patient conversations" were private, we would not have this problem.
The mod team and I have been working hard at making this a space where everyone feels heard and supported. It's difficult to make sure we are allowing people to talk freely about whatever they need to talk about, but not ending up with a time-sensitive crisis that we as volunteers don't have the tools to manage properly. We will definitely rethink that rule and ways to re-word it. We are always open to talking about the rules and what needs to change to make people feel comfortable posting here.
It does seem bad, but there are reasons why that rule is there. Anyone who is acutely suicidal needs urgent guidance and help, but places like Lemmy/FV or Reddit are not that kind of help. We are all inherently "randoms on the internet" with no (or no easily provable) credentials.
People running and participating in these kinds of communities are volunteers and not trained in mental health. As such, they are not equipped to handle anyone acutely suicidal, and should definitely not try to - for whomever's sake and their own. Pointing people towards any qualified help is about the best one can do. Any other advice is unqualified, and either offering, accepting or enabling any would be irresponsible.
I suppose in a vulnerable state of mind, that itself can seem grim or dismissive, but it really isn't. It's a matter of protecting vulnerable people from potentially shitty advice which could endanger them. Mental health is serious, you wouldn't go to Reddit or whatever with an acute heart attack, so don't do it with an acute psychological crisis either.
You can see the rationale for maintaining different communities with different purposes though.
If someone goes there feeling depressed or whatever, being greeted by a wall of posts by people contemplating suicide might be somewhat counterproductive.
I get why they do this, suicide prevention is no joke and should be handled by people that trained for it, some commenter trying to help could cause a lot of harm without meaning to do so and someone that's not in a good mental space could become triggered and/ or spiral into suicidal thoughts themselves after reading these kinds of subjects.
That said, perhaps the mods could link suicide prevention hotlines from all over the world (as you already do for different resources on -TherapyNeurodegenerative Disease Support, ADHD, Autism, Fibromyalgia, etc.). If I were me, Id put those as front and center as posible, and as easy to find as posible by those who need it (say, quote it after the rule about suicide, include it in the resources given, maybe highlight it).
Suicide.org has some great guidelines on how to mention suicide in the media (not the same thing as a mental health forum, I know, but I personally find them very useful regardless when it comes to discussing anything suicide-related on the internet, where you never know who is reading your content).
And remember, if you or someone you know is feeling suicidal, there's help out there! there's people willing to work with you to get through this, please reach out to them.
While I do not have a solution, please be aware that in the US (and I'm guessing outside the US) those who are in mental crisis and are suffering from high suicidality are grossly under-served. As it is, most psychotherapists and psychiatrists (at least the over-a-dozen I've sought treatment from) only knew to handle danger-to-self situations by contacting the authorities and arranging for committal, voluntary or otherwise.
Those of us who don't have rich relatives or truly amazing health insurance will end up in a public facility. (like a general hospital.)
About a third (30% and change) of inpatients in public facilities experience abuse, sometimes violent or sexual abuse, from the staff of the facility. Nurses are especially fond of tranquilizing their charges so they aren't too much trouble on their shift. This is routine. And it makes it easier for the orderlies to have their way.
Note this is a national statistic. You may want to check your own municipal region and where you'd be sent. Maybe the madhouse in your area is a shining example of how such a place should be run. This also is based on what is reported by patients who successfully got out of the facility. Those who were abused until they found a way to escape by suicide never get a chance to report, and much like US prisons, such incidents are commonly covered up.
To be fair, a lot of for-profit hospitals don't necessarily have better statistics on the treatment of their patients. If your family wants to send you to a swanky place, and the first thing they want to do is confiscate your cell phone, then it's time to check what overseeing parties are making sure you're safe. Otherwise, you're totally not.
In the meantime, before you turn someone who is suicidal away, before you send them to a list of hotlines and professionals, note that in the United States their normal, common recourse is to send our mental health crisis to a facility where they'll have no communication outside, will be prescribed sedatives by the hospital psychiatrist so they aren't too much trouble for the nurses, and become a plaything for the orderlies. This is what our public mental health institutions look like in the US in 2023. This is what we get for having underfunded mental health for over a century now.
Now I get that here, resources are limited. There are reasons to keep topics safe for everyone. And I do not have a good solution to this. It just means that when we can't serve people in crisis, we have to accept the risk that we're never going to see them again.
In the United States in 2021, there were 48,183 suicides with fatal outcomes, which has been rising since 2015. It's estimated about three times this number do not succeed and end up in the ER or recovering.
So I, for one, as someone who deals with (a managed level of) suicidality on a daily basis, know that if ever I go critical I'm on my own.