When I was in Eight grade I remember being extremely depressed and having suicidal thoughts. I remember that the depression was something that kinda built up over the years, but it wasn't until 8th grade that it became as severe as it did. I told one of my friends about it, and showed her a 'suicide' note I had written. I can't remember how, but she got her hands on the note and turned it in to one of my teachers. I remember one day my mom came out and talked to me about the note I had written, the teacher had given it to her. 

Her exact words were "Do you know how selfish suicide is?", then she proceeded to 'talk' to me, but I explicitly remember her talk being more of an angry lecture than an actual heart to heart conversation. She asked me why I had written the note, and I told her because I just felt really sad, although I couldn't really put my finger on WHY i was feeling depressed (or I didn't want to tell her because she had just proceeded to make me feel like I was in the wrong). Regardless, she brushed it off and made me feel stupid for confining in her. Plus it's funny that I never remember any kind of intervention on the schools behalf, despite the teacher handing the letter over to my mom.

Then again, (maybe a year later), I remember I went to a church camp where they had this little 'Prayer Wall' where people could write prayers. I wrote something along the lines of "I hate my life. I've been considering suicide." I guess the head speaker of the camp had read it, because that night he came up on stage and read what I had written out loud to some 2,000+ people (luckily I left it anonymous), then proceeded to say "Do you have any idea how selfish that is, to want to kill yourself, when god and your family love you...". Once again, not his exact words, I can't remember them exactly, but it was something along those lines. 

 I'm speaking from personal experience here when I say that both my mom and the church just shrugging it off, and calling suicide "selfish" did far more harm for me than help. All it did was make me feel distanced from them, made them unapproachable and I felt like I had no one to talk to. I completely agree that calling suicide selfish is victim blaming. I think too many people associate suicide with crying for attention (or whatever reason they have for calling it selfish), and they kind of approach it with a "just get over it" attitude, and when you're dealing with someone who is actually suicidal, it doesn't do anything but ostracize them. The saddest part, is that I imagine most suicidal people trying to reach out to someone at one point or another, and the person they're reaching out to either handles it improperly or doesn't know how to handle it.