[Today's blog post by Lizzie is her personal experience of feeling suicidal. We thought it might be pertinent with the sad news of Caroline Flack (40) taking her own life. It may go some way to explaining to people who just can't imagine what it's like to have such feelings, what severe depression can be like. Caroline, Moodscope]

This is the progression of my suicidal thoughts:

● I don't want to be here anymore - this comes with my depression. I just want to be taken away from it all. I feel like running over the hills and just keeping on going and not coming back. Or getting an illness that I can't fight and fading away.

● Lock me up - I want to be locked up in a little room on my own away from everything and be looked after. Disappear to a house by the sea on my own. I can't take responsibility or think through plans.

● Thinking about suicide - how do people do it? What methods are successful? Who has taken their own life and how? Constant googling of suicide related information. Songs about suicide, films, books...

● Working out possibilities for my own way out. I think about each method and whether it would work for me. Now it is part of my usual pattern of thought.

● Constant thoughts of suicide. I can't get them out of my head, they come in when I'm on my own, walking, out with friends, in work, in bed. They don't have any etiquette or boundaries. They upset me so I self harm so you can see on the outside that there is bad inside. It is real, look.

● Seeing those possibilities around me - I feel reckless. Crossing the road and knowing I could step in front of something. Opening a drawer and seeing the knife I could use. Going for a run and looking for the route that will take me away. Walking by a river or the sea and resisting just wading in. Crossing a bridge over a train track and thinking it's waiting for me. Wanting to be on top of the building not inside it. Lying in a bath and sliding under. Taking all the tablets in the medicine cupboard. Drinking myself into oblivion. Making that cut that goes just a little too deep in the wrong place.

● Acknowledgement that any of these things could happen now so I'd better write my suicide note, just in case.

● Now the note is written I can do it.

● I'm not thinking of anyone else now. It's just this. I start to check out of future events, stop replying to messages, ignore events that are coming up. There are no consequences to this for me.

● I'm so tired now of the fighting to stay well. If I just lie down to sleep and I take those pills then it'll be done. Or use a knife, straight into the heart of the bad stuff inside.

It moved through the stages slowly at first then gained momentum frighteningly quickly.

It was like sliding down a slippery slope that was a familiar run but I didn't want to get to the bottom but I couldn't stop so I knew I would hit the bottom eventually.

I'd shared the first few stages with friends, husband, counsellor, Doctor. I shared the fact that I'd written the note with three friends. They urged me to get help then intervened and got the help for me, just before I hit the bottom.

Lizzie

A Moodscope member.