YOU ARE NOT ALONE
When You're Having Thoughts of Suicide
If you are in crisis right now, please call or text 988. The rest of this page will still be here when you finish that call. You are not weak. You are not too much. You are loved.
If you are in crisis or thinking about hurting yourself, please reach out right now. You do not have to know what you'll say. You only have to call.
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988. Free, confidential, 24/7. Online chat at 988lifeline.org.
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.
- The Trevor Project (LGBTQ+ youth): Call 1-866-488-7386 or text START to 678-678.
- Veterans Crisis Line: Call 988 and press 1, or text 838255.
- SAMHSA Helpline (mental health, substance use): 1-800-662-4357.
- Outside the US: find a local hotline at findahelpline.com.
You are not alone. Reaching out is not weakness — it is courage. The pain you are in is real, and it is also more changeable than it currently feels. Please give it time.
If you have thoughts of suicide, this page is for you
You did not get here by accident. Whatever brought you to a search bar in the middle of the night, whatever you typed in — we know what it took for you to type it. Read slowly. There is no rush.
What you are feeling right now is overwhelming pain combined with the temporary inability to imagine relief. The thoughts feel permanent. They are not. They feel like the truth. They are the symptom of the pain, not the truth about your life.
You are not weak. You are not too much. You are not a burden. You are not uniquely broken in a way no one would understand. You are not beyond God. You are a human being in deep pain, and the pain is real, and the pain has not made you unlovable. It has not made you unworthy of being here. It has not made God turn His face away.
This page is going to do four things: tell you the truth about what scripture actually says to people who have wished to die — and there are many of them; address some of the specific lies that suicidal pain tells; offer concrete things you can do right now to stay alive through the next hour; and connect you with the help that is waiting for you. There is no judgment here. There is only hope, and a steady hand, and the truth that you are loved.
People in the Bible have wished to die — and God did not condemn them
The most important thing scripture has to say about your experience is this: the Bible does not look away from people who have wished to die. They are not edited out. They are recorded with the pain intact, and God's response to them is recorded too. Read carefully. You are in their company.
"But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life."
Elijah was the most powerful prophet of his generation. He had just called fire from heaven on Mount Carmel — one of the greatest miracles in the Old Testament. And then he sat under a tree alone and asked God to kill him. He used the word "enough" — the same word a person at the end of their endurance uses in any era. God did not condemn him. God did not lecture him. God let him sleep, fed him bread, let him sleep again, fed him again, and only then asked him "what doest thou here?" The first thing God did with His suicidal prophet was feed him and let him rest. That is the first thing scripture shows God doing with a person in this place.
"After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spake, and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born... Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?"
Job — whom God Himself named as righteous — wished he had never been born. He wished he had died as an infant. He cursed the day of his birth. The book of Job is in the Bible. The wish to die was not removed from the record. And at the end, God did not condemn Job for the words he had said in his pain. He restored him.
"Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live... I do well to be angry, even unto death."
Jonah, after his ministry succeeded and a city repented, sat down outside the city walls and asked God to kill him. Twice. Not in shame, not in despair — in anger and exhaustion. God's response was to ask him a question, send a vine for shade, and give him another day. Sometimes the response to "I want to die" is not a cosmic answer. It is just one more day. One more moment of shade. One more conversation with the God who is patient enough to wait through your worst moment.
"Cursed be the day wherein I was born... Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?"
Jeremiah — called the "weeping prophet" — has the most extended suicidal lament in the prophetic books. He wished he had never been born. The shame he carried felt like it would consume his days. And God kept him alive to write the book of Lamentations — a book that names grief without resolving it. God did not condemn the prophet for what he wrote. He kept him to write more.
"And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness."
Moses — the deliverer of Israel, the man who spoke with God face to face — asked God to kill him rather than continue under the weight of leading the people. God's response was not to take his life. It was to give him help: seventy elders to share the burden. The pain Moses was in was real. The exhaustion was real. The answer was not death. It was support.
Read the pattern. Faithful people in the Bible — including the greatest prophets — have said in plain words that they wanted to die. God did not condemn them. He did not call them weak. He fed them, sat with them, sent them help, gave them another day. He kept them alive long enough for the pain to change. He is doing the same with you, right now, through this page and the help on the other end of 988 and the people in your life who love you. You are in good company. The wish to die is not the disqualifier from God's love. It is part of the human story, and He is in it with you.
The lies suicidal pain tells you
Suicidal pain has a specific kind of voice. It speaks in absolutes. It speaks in permanence. It speaks with the certainty of a courtroom verdict. It is also wrong about almost everything it says.
The Truth: Suicidal urges typically pass within minutes to hours. Studies of survivors of attempts consistently report that the moment of unbearable urgency was much shorter than it felt. The pain you are in right now is real, and it is also moving — even when it feels frozen. Tomorrow's brain will not be the same as tonight's brain. Sleep alone changes what is possible. One change in circumstance — a friend's call, a medication adjustment, a different therapist, a few weeks of recovery — can shift what currently feels permanent. Please give it the time.
The Truth: Survivors of loss almost universally report the opposite. The pain of suicide loss is among the most enduring kinds of grief there is. Children of parents who die by suicide carry that loss for life. Spouses, parents, siblings, friends — they would not be relieved. They would be devastated. The thought "they would be better off" is not the truth. It is the pain talking. The people who love you cannot replace you. They will not move on. Please believe them when they say they need you alive.
The Truth: The people in your life who love you do not experience you as a burden. They experience you as the person they love. The thought "I am a burden" is one of the most well-documented signs of severe depression — a thought distortion produced by the illness, not an accurate report on reality. Ask them. They will tell you. The hardest thing they will face is not the cost of your life. It is the cost of your absence.
The Truth: Romans 8:38-39: "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God." That is not a conditional statement. There is no asterisk for "unless your pain becomes too much." The pain you are in does not move you outside of His love. It moves you into the place where Romans 8:38-39 was written specifically for.
The Truth: The honest, modern, theologically grounded answer is no — suicide is not "the unforgivable sin." The Church of Jesus Christ has taught explicitly that "it is not for us to judge the eternal salvation of those who die by suicide," and that the loss of life by suicide does not separate a person of faith from the love of God. Many Christian denominations affirm the same. Mental illness alters culpability. The God who said "I will not break a bruised reed" (Isaiah 42:3) is not a God who condemns people for the worst moment of their suffering. If fear of damnation is one of the things keeping you alive right now — please hear this: that fear is misplaced. But that does not mean you should test it. Stay alive because the fear was misplaced and so is the despair. Both have lied to you.
The Truth: Treatment for depression and suicidal ideation has improved enormously in the last decade. Newer medications work for people who didn't respond to older ones. Ketamine and esketamine treatments work rapidly for treatment-resistant depression. TMS is now widely available. Therapies like CBT, DBT, and EMDR have strong evidence. If something has not worked yet, it is not the end of the road. It is one piece of information about what to try next. Please do not make a permanent decision based on the treatments you have already tried. There are more.
If you are in crisis right now — what to do in the next hour
The single most evidence-based thing you can do right now is put time and distance between you and the means. Suicidal urgency typically passes. The window of greatest danger is short. Your only job right now is to get through it.
- Call or text 988. You do not have to know what to say. You can say "I am having thoughts of suicide and I don't want to be alone with them." That is enough. The person on the other end is trained for exactly this call. They will not hang up. They will not lecture you. They will stay with you until you are safer.
- Tell one person. Your spouse, a friend, a sibling, a parent, a coworker, a pastor. Send a text right now: "I am in a really hard place tonight. Can you come over / call me / stay on the phone?" You do not need a long explanation. You only need to break the silence. Suicidal pain survives in isolation; bringing one other person into it dramatically reduces risk.
- Remove access to means. If you have firearms, ask someone to hold them tonight — a friend, a relative, a neighbor. Many police departments and sheriffs will take temporary possession of a firearm for safekeeping; you can call and ask. If you have medications you are afraid you might use, give them to someone, lock them up, flush them. The physical distance matters enormously. Studies show this single intervention saves more lives than almost anything else.
- Get to morning. Your only goal tonight is to make it to morning. You do not need to know your reason for living. You do not need to feel hopeful. You only need to stay here. Watch a movie. Take a long bath. Drive to a 24-hour diner. Call a hotline and stay on the line for an hour. Anything that puts time between you and the urge.
- Go to an emergency room if you need to. Hospitals will keep you safe. The ER is not a punishment, and you will not be detained against your will if you are willing to engage in care. If you are not safe alone, this is a legitimate place to go. Many people who later recover say the ER visit was the turning point.
If you have a plan and access to means right now, please call 988 before doing anything else on this list. You do not have to be sure. You only have to call.
The God who sits with you in the dark
The character of God that scripture reveals — over and over, in language that never gets less tender — is that He is near to people whose hearts are breaking. Not waiting for them to feel better first. Near, right now, in the dark, before anything has changed.
"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit."
Read it again slowly. The Lord is nigh — near, close — to them that are of a broken heart. The brokenness is the address He shows up at. Not the cleaned-up version of you, not the version that has its life together, not the version that feels something good about God. The broken-hearted you. That you. Right now. He is nigh.
"A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench."
A bruised reed is a plant that has been damaged but is not yet snapped. Smoking flax is a wick whose flame has gone out but where the smoke still rises — a fire almost extinguished but not quite. Both of these are images of a life that is barely holding on. And the prophet says: He will not break the reed. He will not quench the flame. The fragility you feel in yourself right now is not a reason for God to give up on you. It is exactly the kind of life He specializes in protecting.
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
The promise is rest. Not deliverance from every problem. Not a fixed life or a healed body in every case. But rest unto your soul — the kind of rest that lives underneath circumstances rather than depending on them. The kind that holds steady through what you are carrying. The qualification to receive it is the labor and the heaviness. The exact thing that makes you feel disqualified is the qualifier.
"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there... If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."
The Psalmist asks whether there is anywhere he could go to escape God's presence. The answer is no — not even hell, not even darkness. The dark you are in right now is not somewhere God cannot find you. The darkness you experience as His absence is not actually His absence. He is in the night with you. The night shineth as the day to Him. He sees you. He has not left.
"And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people... and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities."
Christ took upon Himself not only the sins but the pains, the sicknesses, the infirmities of every person He came to save. He did this so that He would know — from the inside, in the flesh, experientially — how to help. The depression you carry is not something He views from a clean distance. He has carried it. The despair, the exhaustion, the inability to imagine relief — He has known these from the inside, so that when you bring them to Him, He knows precisely how to help you carry them. You do not have to explain. He understands.
If you have survived
If you survived an attempt — last week, last year, twenty years ago — you are alive, and that is not a small thing. The shame and confusion that survivors carry are real. So is the work of rebuilding. So is the possibility of a different future.
Things that help survivors heal:
- Talk to a therapist who specializes in suicide survivors. The American Association of Suicidology maintains a directory.
- Connect with other survivors. The Alliance of Hope and American Foundation for Suicide Prevention have communities specifically for survivors of attempts.
- Be patient with the recovery timeline. Survivors often describe their recovery as taking years, with significant ups and downs. The fact that the pain returns is not failure. It is part of the process.
- Treat the underlying condition. Most attempts are associated with treatable conditions — depression, trauma, substance use, chronic pain. Treatment of the underlying condition is the most reliable path to long-term safety.
- Build a safety plan with your therapist. A written safety plan you keep with you, that lists warning signs, coping strategies, people to call, and resources, is one of the most evidence-based suicide prevention tools.
And read this carefully: God does not love you less because of what you tried to do. Romans 8:38-39 specifically lists "things present" and "things to come" — past actions and future fears — as among the things that cannot separate you from His love. The version of you that is reading this — exhausted, ashamed, uncertain whether you should be here — is the version He wants alive. The shame is something the recovery can work with. Please give it the time.
If you have lost someone to suicide
If a loved one died by suicide, the grief you are carrying is real and complicated and you are not alone in it. Suicide grief includes uniquely difficult elements: the unanswered "why," the imagined alternative scenarios, the questions about what you could have done, the social stigma that often makes it harder to talk about than other deaths.
What may help:
- Alliance of Hope — community specifically for survivors of suicide loss, with online forums, support groups, and resources.
- American Foundation for Suicide Prevention — survivor support groups, the International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day, and educational resources.
- A therapist who specializes in traumatic grief. The grief from suicide is often complicated and benefits from specialized support.
And this needs to be said clearly: your loved one was not abandoned by God in their final moment. The pain that ended their life was not stronger than His love for them. The God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3) is the God who holds them now and who holds you now. Mental illness alters culpability — your loved one is not lost because of how they died. The God who said "I will wipe away every tear" (Revelation 21:4) is the God who has not let go of them, and He has not let go of you.
When you have made it through tonight
If you are reading this from the other side of an acute crisis, here is what tends to help over the longer term. None of these are easy. All of them are possible.
- Treat the underlying condition. Suicidal ideation is most often a symptom of something else — depression, trauma, chronic pain, substance use, sleep deprivation, certain medications, hormonal shifts. Treatment of the underlying condition is the most reliable long-term path to safety. A psychiatrist can help with medication. A therapist can help with the patterns and the wounds.
- Build a safety plan. A written safety plan — listing your warning signs, coping strategies, people to call, places to go, and means restriction — is one of the most evidence-based interventions. Build it with your therapist. Keep it where you can find it on a hard day.
- Reduce access to means. If firearms or specific medications were part of any past plan, keep them out of your home or locked up where you don't have the key. This is not a permanent statement about you. It is a sensible precaution that has saved many lives.
- Stay connected. Isolation is a major risk factor. Build the connections that hold you steady — friends, family, faith community, support group, regular standing appointments. You do not need to feel deeply connected to everyone. You need a few people who can hold you, and a structure that keeps you from being alone with your worst thoughts for too long.
- Sleep, eat, move. The body and the soul are connected. Sleep deprivation alone can produce suicidal ideation in people who are otherwise healthy. Adequate sleep, food, exercise, and time outside are not optional spiritual practices — they are part of the foundation of being a person who can think clearly.
- Faith — at whatever pace works. Prayer, scripture, worship, and community are all evidence-based protective factors against suicide. They are also a place to bring the parts of yourself you can bring nowhere else. You do not have to feel anything to pray. You do not have to have your theology sorted to read scripture. The God who is nigh to the broken-hearted is nigh to whatever version of you shows up.
If you do not have words
Father,
I am tired, and I am scared,
and I do not have the strength to pray a long prayer.
You are the God who fed Elijah under the juniper tree
and let him sleep before You asked him anything.
You are the God who kept Jeremiah alive
through the years of his weeping.
You are the God of Job and Jonah and Moses
— each of whom told You, in plain words, they wanted to die —
and none of whom You let go of.
I am theirs tonight.
Be near.
Send me food and rest, like You sent Elijah.
Send me one person who will sit with me, like You sent the seventy elders to Moses.
Get me through to morning.
Show me, in some small way, that the night is not the end.
If I cannot feel You, sit with me anyway.
If I cannot pray more than this, hear what I have prayed.
I belong to You. I am still here.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Common questions
What does the Bible say to people having thoughts of suicide?
Scripture does not look away from people who have wished to die. Elijah prayed to die under the juniper tree (1 Kings 19:4). Job cursed the day he was born (Job 3:1-3). Jonah told God he was angry "even unto death" (Jonah 4:9). Jeremiah wished he had never been born (Jeremiah 20:14-18). Moses asked God to kill him (Numbers 11:15). These passages are in the Bible because real, faithful people have felt this way — and God did not condemn them. He fed Elijah. He answered Job. He spoke to Jonah twice. He kept Jeremiah alive. The thoughts you are having do not put you outside His company.
Will God forgive someone who dies by suicide?
The honest, modern, theologically grounded answer is yes. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taught explicitly that "it is not for us to judge the eternal salvation of those who die by suicide." Mental illness alters culpability. The God who said "I will not break a bruised reed" (Isaiah 42:3) is not a God who condemns people for the worst moment of their suffering. If fear of damnation is part of what is keeping you alive — please hear: that fear is misplaced. But that does not mean to test it. Stay alive because the despair has lied to you, and so has the fear.
What should I do right now if I'm thinking about suicide?
Call or text 988 right now. It is free, confidential, 24/7. If you cannot call, text HOME to 741741. If you can, tell one safe person what you are feeling. If you have a plan or means, please make them harder to access — give the gun to a friend, lock up medications. Time and distance from means is the single most evidence-based intervention. You do not have to know your reason for staying alive to call. You only have to call.
Why am I having these thoughts?
Suicidal thoughts are most often a symptom of overwhelming pain combined with the temporary inability to imagine relief. They are most often associated with depression, trauma, chronic pain, sleep deprivation, isolation, certain medications, and other treatable conditions. They are not evidence of weak character or weak faith. The thoughts feel permanent. They are not. Many people who survive attempts later report the urge passed within minutes or hours of when it felt unbearable. Please give the change time to happen.
What if I survived an attempt and feel ashamed?
If you survived, you are alive — and that is not a small thing. The shame is something recovery can work with. Talk to a therapist who specializes in suicide recovery. Connect with other survivors at the Alliance of Hope or the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Romans 8:38-39 specifically lists "things present" and "things to come" among the things that cannot separate you from God's love. The version of you reading this is the version He wants alive.
What if I lost someone to suicide?
The grief you carry is real and not yours to bear alone. Alliance of Hope is a community specifically for survivors of suicide loss. American Foundation for Suicide Prevention offers support groups. Your loved one was not abandoned by God. Mental illness alters culpability. The God who said "I will wipe away every tear" (Revelation 21:4) holds them now and holds you now.
More for the dark seasons
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