Areas › Worry and anxiety › What worry does
There is a difference between being disappointed with how things are and having given up on how things will be. The second needs a different level of care.
Disappointment still has a future attached to it: this is bad, and later might not be. Hopelessness has closed that off. If you hear someone move from complaining about now to writing off what is coming, or you hear it in yourself, do not wait it out. Ask directly and gently whether they have been thinking of hurting themselves. Asking does not put the idea there.
Qur’an and Sunnah
My servants who have harmed yourselves by your own excess, do not despair of God's mercy (Quran 39:53). The instruction is aimed precisely at people who feel they have already ruined things.
۞قُلۡ يَٰعِبَادِيَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَسۡرَفُواْ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِهِمۡ لَا تَقۡنَطُواْ مِن رَّحۡمَةِ ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَغۡفِرُ ٱلذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًاۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلۡغَفُورُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ
Say, ‘[God says], My servants who have harmed yourselves by your own excess, do not despair of God’s mercy. God forgives all sins: He is truly the Most Forgiving, the Most Merciful
Qur’an 39:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Pooled analyses of trial data have been used to set the symptom thresholds at which response and remission get counted in depression, panic, social anxiety and generalised anxiety. Where a person sits is treated as something to measure rather than something to sense. That work defines cut off points for research, and it does not by itself tell you when someone in front of you needs urgent help.
Bandelow B, Baldwin DS, Dolberg OT, Andersen HF, Stein DJ. (2006). What is the threshold for symptomatic response and remission for major depressive disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder?. The Journal of clinical psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Losing the sense that there is a future is what turns low mood into real danger.
When not to
If someone is thinking about ending their life, this is past what a conversation can hold: contact a crisis line, a doctor or emergency services the same day.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Once the surge is up it takes something like a quarter of an hour to drop, and nothing sensible said inside that window will land. Give it the time first.
A car coming at you and a spider across the room set off the same alarm. Naming which one you are facing, before you act on it, is a skill worth practising.
Treat the whole of social media as poison and you will never hear anything true about it again. Some of what happens there is genuinely good for people.