Unfortunately health 'professionals' generally respond in two ways to the expression of suicidal ideas: confinement and drugs.

In this society any denial of freedom or personal autonomy is by definition punitive. Why is this being inflicted upon someone who has done nothing illegal, and whose emotional state is likely fragile already?

Institutions like the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health*, or psych. wards in general hospitals, are inherently coercive, prison-like environments where receiving the kind of emotional nurture that might encourage someone to once again embrace life is extremely unlikely to happen.

Then there are the 'community crisis teams'... In April this year a distressing day and a Facebook status update that reflected my mood at the time caused a 'friend' to panic and dial 911, resulting in a small army of police officers descending on my apartment.

What saved me that evening is that (1) I had stepped out of the apartment and only discovered this legalized home invasion upon my return, and (2) several of my *real* friends also responded and ran interference for me with the police, enabling me to extract myself safely from a really frightening scenario.

I fail to see how sending a posse of armed men to kick in someone's door is in any way 'helpful'. In my case the outcome was that I was scared half to death - and I was fortunate. I could have easily found myself in  lockdown and drugged to the eyebrows.

Sometimes these situations turn deadly, as they have at least a couple of times in Ontario this past year. Similar situations in the city of Mississauga in December 2008, and the town of Elmvale in May this year both led to fatal shootings by police.

The drugs that are given to people in such situations (sometimes involuntarily) are themselves often responsible for the very situations they claim to be 'treating'. A friend of mine took his life in Nova Scotia in 2004 after being prescribed antidepressants (and having his shrink respond by jacking the dose way up when he complained of experiencing adverse effects). This type of occurrence is nowhere near as unusual as you might think.

These chemicals can also induce individuals to act violently against others - both the Columbine and Virginia Tech killers were known to be taking prescribed antidepressants when they went on their respective shooting sprees. What connection actually exists in these incidents remains unknown but I personally suspect this is much more than coincidence.

Our society's response to personal crises appears to be one of containment, control and pacification rather than offering anything that might be genuinely helpful. Until sincerely helpful alternatives can be routinely offered our system has no business thinking of itself as either 'compassionate' or 'democratic'.

*The largest psychiatric gulag in Canada. The Toronto-based CAMH was formed in the late 1990's through the amalgamation of several smaller institutions.