Suicide: Planning Versus Fantasizing

It is no doubt that there are both biological as well as environmental influences which impact a person's tendency to have thoughts of suicide. When seeking out psychological or medical advice, for suicidal ideation, one of the key aspects is to address whether the patient is experiencing suicidal fantasies or suicidal planning. While both extensions of suicidal ideation are important issues to be addressed, each will have its own extent of mental health complications and, therefore, its own treatment plan.

Within each of us there is a cognitive style of thinking which determines how we classify and process information we receive and, to some extent, determines how we progress through life, coupled with the way we view ourselves and view others. When there is a conflict or break in this cognitive process, a variety of emotional and psychological factors may be exhibited, including the risk of developing suicidal ideations.

Suicidal fantasies involve internal thoughts of the individual, often aimed at what outcome the suicide will have and, as a general rule, the suicidal thoughts do not focus upon the actual suicide process. Instead the individual will focus on the impact a suicide will have on others. In other words, individuals who fantasize about suicide, as a general rule, are fantasizing about how a particular outcome can be achieved with the absence of themselves from the picture or scene. Often, suicide fantasies are experienced in individuals who wish to elicit a degree of pain within another human being or in suicidal individuals who feel they are in an irreversible crisis and, therefore, suicide seems as the only method for getting out of the situation.