Being saved from suicide.

A fairly common one for men is the car exhaust. Run a length of hose (from a vacuum cleaner or similar) from the tailpipe into the interior, close up the windows, start the engine and breathe deeply. Fairly easy to stop if she catches him in time - turn off the engine and open the windows.

The Lady said:

I'm writing a story and the MC has tried to kill himself in the past, but he was saved when his sister came upon him.


Pills? That would work I suppose. Any after effects, consequences that anybody knows of? Do men choose to use pills much?

His sister would have to find him in time to get him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped (although I'm sure there's a more clinical term--when I worked at a psychiatric hospital we often admitted patients who had been administered charcoal. Admittedly, most often it was teenage girls). Unless you stage it to where she finds him before he's taken the pills, or has only taken a few. Regardless, she'd need to get him to a hospital, because how would she know he hadn't taken *any*?

The choice to use pills would depend on other character details, such as does he have a medical condition, or does he use drugs. I believe men would resort to suicide attempts that tie in with impulsive, risk taking behavior such as guns and the car exhaust example. Or becoming intoxicated and engaging in high risk behavior (e.g., driving fast).


What kind of pills kill?

Well, lots of pills would. I think this answer depends more on what the character has *access* to, and is it believable for the story? The more lethal the means, the more serious he'd be about it, and possibly the less likely anyone would actually be able to save him. So you'd probably need something moderate, like pills or drugs, rather than a blade or a gun. How you have sister intervene makes a difference, too. She really needs to be believable in her ability to deter him, especially if he's got a gun in his lap.

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anyway, that was just a wee bit of brainstorming--hope it helps!

Here's another common one: wrists cut, artery missed. Sis rushes him to hospital.

Pills would work, but men aren't big into pills. Personally, I would go with the hanging. And to make it work, you need to understand the dynamics of how to make it work.

First off you need to understand that suicide by hanging is vastly different than an execution. For an execution, properly done, a person's weight is obtained, then used to calculate the length of the fall. Done correctly, the fall (which is several feet) will cause the spine to break in the neck, causing a relatively instant death, and no cure.

Suicides are usually done with a minimal drop (such as a chair). As a result, death results from strangulation, and is a gradual process. So, quickly playing this out:

Brother is in his bedroom, sis is in the living room. She hears a chair fall over, calls to her brother. No answer, concern, races to bedroom. Door locked (let's make it a challenge) so she has to slam against it to open it. There's her brother, swinging, gasping for breath, grabbing at his neck, trying to save himself, sounding like a fish out of water, changing color.

She tries untying the knot, can't do it, tension building. She races to the kitchen, grabs a kitchen knife, races back to the bedroom. Brother is unconscious, not breathing. She tries to figure out how to cut him down without dropping him on the floor, then realizes she doesn't have a choice. She cuts, he drops.

He's unconscious, no pulse, no respirations. Here's you've got a choice. She can start CPR, which is okay, but you can go for the gusto. She's pissed, screams out at God for taking her brother, and slams her fist against his chest (hitting sternum). He's starts breathing. Total time would be about 2 minutes, no permanent harm done. Could have a rope burn, but that would probably disappear in time.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Men don't try to kill themselves with pills. (In general).
Men are more likely to use a gun, try to hang themselves, and things like that. The wrist cut thing isn't valid because medically speaking the chances of someone actually dying from that are low due to the amount of force you'd have to put down in order to cut deeply enough. People who really want to kill themselves don't try to cut their wrists...people who want to seem like they want to kill themselves do.

How I know all of this I will leave to your imagination....I like to research.

The Lady said:

Would that require him going to the hospital, do you think? Wouldn't require him to go to the hospital, but I imagine Sis would call the rescue squad, and they'd take him. In the US, he'd probably get a 72 hour stay to determine suicide potential.

I would like it to be so his family were unable to hush it up and his parents, his father in particular, were ashamed of him (or unable to cope, I suppose.) Give him a rope burn that disappears with time. Depending on the rope (nylon somewhat permanent probably, cotton not as likely to burn), he'd have some immediate marks that could disappear in time, especially if he's dark in complexion.

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Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Yes, a wrist-slashing would leave a scar. No matter what he did, any suicide attempt would likely be followed by at least a week or two in a psychiatric hospital. Unless, of course, he swore his sister to secrecy. If they live in a tall building, maybe he could be a jumper? She could catch him at the window? That's a man thing.

I don't know how graphic you want to go here, but if you want more, send me a PM.

I'd also check with your local rescue and police for the procedures in Ireland. I was on a rescue squad in the US, so the procedures used there might be different.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

My characters are more inventive, though it would be hard to save them. One jumped off a cliff in the dark (only to find himself in a tangle of bushes); one drove her car into the river, then decided to save herself, one tried to OD on pills and booze (really all he could do at the time) but was saved by the cleaning lady.

sneakers145 said:

My characters are more inventive, though it would be hard to save them. One jumped off a cliff in the dark (only to find himself in a tangle of bushes); one drove her car into the river, then decided to save herself, one tried to OD on pills and booze (really all he could do at the time) but was saved by the cleaning lady.

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Dang. I knew I needed a cleaning lady for something!

Lady, I have a knife that I'm sure would cut through any rope. It's a chef's knife with a wide blade about 9" long. The front half of the blade is serrated, and it will cut through anything. They're sold on late night infomercials as "Ginza knives."

Keep in mind that for the hanging scenario there doesn't have to be a 'drop' involved. A lot of men will tie the noose around something easily reachable such as a shower head, and then simply kneel to let their weight gradually tighten it, which would be enough to cut off the circulation but still leave them feeling in control. Not to mention it is less painfull as they can tighten it just enough to black out and then let gravity take its course.
This would probably be less likely to leave a mark too, and it would be a lot easier for the sister to untie him since he's not hanging from his full weight.

You could also have him try to strangle himself by simply tying something tight around his neck, or tape a plastic bag over his head. The later works really easy for the story, she walks in and finds him, rips the bag off and gives him CPR.

I ran into a similar dilemma for one of my WIPs, I needed the female protag to nearly kill herself and need CPR, but do so without leaving her with any perminate damage. I finally settled for 'attempted drowning in icey waters', although I'm thinking at this point that the scene is not going to make it into the finished story.

It's true that men don't use pills as a method of suicide as much as women, but it's not inconceivable. My Dad attempted suicide when he was 15 by overdosing on pills (so I was thisclose to not being born--always a crazy thought). But I think that method would make more sense if your character had a long history of being severely depressed. But then, most who attempt suicide usually do have that...

If you're going for drama, hanging might be good. But in order for your character to be saved, you have to make sure he wouldn't break his neck. Maybe someone else could back me up on this, but in the old days, didn't some convicted criminals pay the hangman on the sly, to put the knot of the noose on the side, so the neck would break (and thus, the death quick)? Well, on second thought, I don't think you'd have to worry too much about that. If your character isn't a hangman, he probably wouldn't know how to put the knot just right in order to break his neck. He may not even use a noose, but a scarf, or sheet or something.

Good luck!

Males do attempt and commit suicide by pills, but it's not as common. Teen males seem more likely than adult males, but I've never seen the statistics.

You used to pay your execution not to screw up, whether in a hanging or a beheading. With a hanging, there are several things that can go wrong, including the knot location, length of drop, tightness of noose, and probably a couple of other factors. Nearly all suicides by hanging are strangulation deaths, not deaths caused by a broken neck.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

And with pills, you're also dealing with a lot of potential health problems, after.

People don't usually go unconscious after taking a bunch of pills--the body doesn't want to go quietly. People usually are violently sick in one form or another. Over-the-counter drugs, especially Tylenol, are quite toxic for the liver, especially when taken with alcohol. But it can take days to die. Painful ones; often the victim has changed his/her mind during the hospital stay, that they don't want to die. But the damage can be too great to overcome.

The asphyxiation seems like a good idea--you can play it a few different ways. His face will likely be cherry red. Depending on how your MC wants to deal with it, after she calls for an ambulance she can hide the evidence and then say that the fire had gone out on the gas oven and it was an accident.

The treatment for carbon monoxide poison, I think, is time in a hyperbaric chamber, which means being shipped to a hospital that has one.

If you want info on psychiatric hospitals, why don't you start a new thread on it? You'll probably get a good bit of info.