Hello, Jaycojade, David: First and foremost, Jaycojade, I'm glad your son is out of harm's way. I wonder .. is it more than temporary...

I may be WWWAAAAYYY off base, but here goes...

Jaycojade, one of the first things you mentioned was your "middle" son tried to commit suicide. Obviously, the word "middle" is important to you; otherwise, you wouldn't have brought it up.

A "middle" condition or status is an intermediate, transitional, marginal one. Primitive societies have numerous rites and rituals for people in middle conditions -- they are isolated in shacks, go through specific initiation rites, etc. Unfortunately, we have lost many such rites, or rendered them irrelevant if not downright destructive. (Teens in particular are left to themselves to sort things out). The idea of the rites is to help the person make their journey safely through a disturbing middle condition (usually from childhood to adulthood). I repeat: the rites of transition are there because the "middle" person is viewed as in a dangerous condition; after all, he/she is neither here nor there. He is being threatened, and is threatening others.

It is hardly surprising that people in a middle condition (between oldest and youngest of children, for example) face a situation laced with ambiguity. Ambiguity in turn creates AMBIVALENT emotions, reasoning. "On the one hand, on the other..." "There's the good side, and there's the bad side... "

It is relief from ambivalent emotions that, I suspect, "middle" people seek when they undertake some ABSOLUTE action. And death is absolute; there's precious little ambiguous about that; your heart is either beating or it isn't. It is the ultimate rite of passage. Is that rite (rather than death itself) really what your son is seeking? Maybe, PART of something in him in fact needs to die -- that part, well, he mistook it for the whole.

The ultimate challenge is to help your son deal with his ambivalent emotions. You/your family and friends must perform what is an extremely difficult task in our society: rites of transition to help him through this difficult period. And beyond. The fact your son swears it wil be "the first and last time" he will try to commit suicide, makes me question all the more his real condition. His absolutist, extreme posture perhaps indicates a deeper pool of conflict inside him that is threatening to drown him. Otherwise stated: one extreme always indicates the presence of its opposite, even though the latter may be in a latent, invisible form.

The upshot: people in a middle condition can "flip" -- move from one extreme to its other -- in a blink. What was latent can suddenly become manifest. So, I would be even more cautious if I were you regarding future suicide attempts. As you say, he is not "out of the woods" -- in more ways than one.

Woods, by the way, are traditional areas for initiation rites...

Hope that helps.

Tom