Does Raising Suicide-Awareness actually help anyone?

slingblade said:
I'm saying this: it's not handed out for free.

That's the other thing that makes my knee jerk.


You try calling a family member to take you to the mental health center near your home, go in and spill your guts, explain you're unemployed and have no insurance, and see how quickly they show you the damned door.

And then send you a bill 5 days later for $250.
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I am sorry, that is terrible. Both mental health agencies where I worked crisis intervention was provided for free. We did it as part of the grant based state funding. (Central Illinois 1990-2006) Now is someone neded more than crisis intervention then we could recommend a 'fee waiver' and there was a sliding fee scale.

That is horrible, even a trip to the ER can usually be forgiven through an application.

They should provide crisis services for free, that is terrible.
 
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jiggeryqua said:
Also, this again:

Being alive, and the choices we make when alive, creates pain for others, it leaves messes for others to clean up. Our actions frighten, offend, disturb and unsettle others. In what way is the action of suicide so different from our other actions?
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The difference is in the finality, of course. With most other things we do to one another, there is a form of redress, reconcilliation, and attempt at remedy of the various levels of harm and distress.

With dying, the inability to do any of that is gone, no longer on the table.

DR
 
MikeSun5 said:
You're right about the dude, and I have to retract what I said about the mentally ill because in the context of this thread at least, I'm sure we can agree that all suicidal people are mentally ill.
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Nope. Can't agree on that.

You yourself had problems that you learned to live with, and I'll bet more people than you know have benefited from you being here. If one person can do it, we all can. That's all I'm saying.
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Tend to agree, though "can" and "do" don't always match up.

DR
 
jiggeryqua said:
Fair enough - I don't have a lot of patience for people who want their 'strong feelings' to trump actual arguments. I take it very seriously - I just seriously reach a different conclusion to you...and you persist on the lines of "it's wrong because it's wrong because it's wrong".

It's been covered by other people (including the mother of an adult who committed suicide): it is not necessary, inevitable or 'right' to imagine that your self-interest should outweigh the decision of someone who chooses suicide.

Your crass construction of my argument as a drunk-driving analogy is offensive - though not as offensive as suicide, I'm sure. Risking killing other people is not analagous to killing oneself and leaving loved ones with grief and unanswered questions. I appreciate you don't have the patience to examine your own ideas and present reasoned arguments, but should you find yourself with some spare time and sufficient inclination, I'm prepared to read them.
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I agree people have the right to make choices regardless of the consequences, on a moral level.

However usually the judgment of people considering suicide is rather off, they are most likely not making a reasoned or balanced judgment.

So while they may have that right in an ideal world, and really you are right teh greif of others is not a consideration, I base my feelings upon the fact that most people who contemplate suicide do not want to end their lives, they want to end their pain. Out of the hundreds of people I worked with who were contemplating suicide or had attempted, none ever said that they wished they had done so succesfully, including the girl who barfed for a day after her OD attempt.

And their are more reasonable ways to end pain. It is again a violent and final solution when others may be available. But in a moral sense, yes that is a personal decision, that in the US can be moderated by intervention and judicial action.

As I said it is like fixing a broken finger by cutting off your hand. Now yes in the fact of unending pain I can understand the desire to end ones life, but morphine usually works fairly well to that end. (Both the pain and the life...)
 
Darth Rotor said:
The difference is in the finality, of course. With most other things we do to one another, there is a form of redress, reconcilliation, and attempt at remedy of the various levels of harm and distress.

With dying, the inability to do any of that is gone, no longer on the table.

DR
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I wonder how many suicide notes include the words "I'm sorry"...and/or an attempt to explain why the action is being taken?
 
Richard Masters said:
I am curious.
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Well it was a fairly rough and ready guesstimate, but I factored in things such as medical professionals having a higher than average suicide rate, my personal knowledge of (a large number of) academics (including some very high achieving ones) who have suffered severe depression, the fact that serial killers have a high rate of antisocial personality disorder and aren't prone to the sort of despair and emotional feeling that characterises the sort of suicides we were talking about. I hadn't checked whether sociopathy has an elevated suicide rate, but I just did a very quick google and found this page:

Although those with APD are known to attempt suicide, these attempts rarely result in death. There have been no studies of the rate of suicide of those with APD, but nonnatural mortality (death from suicide, accidents, and homicide) is higher in this group. Criminal offenders diagnosed with a personality disorder have a 5-year suicide rate of three percent.
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http://personalitydisorders.suite101.com/article.cfm/research_on_antisocial_pd

I am willing to be corrected if someone else has better information than my vague guesstimate.
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jiggeryqua said:
Well I may be coming across as a heartless **** but that made me weep.

"Please forgive me"...what other form of redress, reconcilliation, and attempt at remedy of the various levels of harm and distress did you have in mind, Darth?
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The kind were one is actually having a two-way personal interaction with somebody else, and can act upon promises of healing and remedy, rather than the one-way communication via note.

That is what I had in mind.

Yes, with the note there is room for an apology, but please recall:

1. My point on the finality of the act
2. For apologies to be genuine and effective, there is usually an implied or stated resolution to not do that bad thing again.

This element comes up short when you can't do anything again.

Ever.

ETA: that said, leaving a note with an apology seems better than not doing so.

DR
 
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Dancing David said:
So while they may have that right in an ideal world, and really you are right teh greif of others is not a consideration, I base my feelings upon the fact that most people who contemplate suicide do not want to end their lives, they want to end their pain. Out of the hundreds of people I worked with who were contemplating suicide or had attempted, none ever said that they wished they had done so succesfully, including the girl who barfed for a day after her OD attempt.
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On the other hand, the existence of a hefty re-attempt rate later, would suggest that the problem isn't that transient for everyone. A lot eventually wish just that: that they had succeeded. And try again.

E.g., in studies about re-attempt rates among the gay or bisexual males, re-attempt rates can be as high as 67% in one study, or 20% in another, which is still hefty, with most other studies getting results between 40% and 50%. Just because you pumped someone's stomach, doesn't mean the torment will go away.

E.g., in another study about the effectiveness of talk therapy for those rescued, the control group had a hefty 42% re-attempt rate in the next 18 month. While those counselled and everything, had "only" a 24% re-attempt rate in the same interval.

E.g., according to another source (about the rise in mid-life suicides in the USA), about a third re-attempt suicide within 1 year of the failed attempt. (This does not necessarily contradict the 42% figure in the previous paragraph, as that one is for a 1.5 years interval.)

E.g., since we're laying the blame on depression, several studies on anti-depressants has found no difference in re-attempt rate between those on anti-depressants and the control group taking placebos. And for that matter in an 1994 study, it turns out that 30% of the suicide victims were taking anti-depressants. A study of over 5000 suicides in Sweden found out that over 16% of those actually had anti-depressants in their blood at the time they killed themselves.

Turns out that even if you stuff them full of happy pills, some still will want to die and try again.

I'm sorry, but I somehow don't buy the "it's just depression": no study actually found anti-depressants to do much about it. Or for that matter the "it's a violent solution to a temporary problem": the problem seems to continue for more than a year and a half for a lot of people. It's a bit past any reasonable interval that you can ask someone to just put up with the pain until it goes away.

I'm not even sure I buy the idea that it's just some impulsive, poorly thought out solution, like your cutting off a hand analogy. A year or a year and a half are a lot of time for someone to rethink it. Unless someone wants to tell me that those people just can't make a correct judgment, I don't see how that could be the case.
 
Dismember said:
I don't think it's fair to hold a suicidal person to that standard anyway, especially in the context of severe mental and emotional disturbance.
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So you are saying people who are suicidal deserve to be held to a different standard than the rest of people?

Why does the distinction matter?
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Because, IMO, the ones who don't go through with it are stronger people than the ones that give up. Life is not easy. We all go through hardships and there are people WAY worse off than many of those who give up and end their lives. If the suicidal should be held to a different standard, maybe those people who have gone through WAY worse in their lives and did not kill themselves should be held to a different standard than "normal" people, too?

HansMustermann said:
One person could run the marathon in 2h03:59, most people can't, and most people wouldn't be called anti-social dicks if they choose not to. You won't get Stephen Hawking running the marathon no matter how much willpower might be involved.
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Yikes! :eek: I am SO glad you're posting here on the JREF instead of answering suicide hotline phone calls. In this thread alone, you've claimed most anti-depressants cause greater depression, you've stated your belief that nobody has any inherent responsibility to themselves, the people they know, or society itself, and now you've compared some suicidal people getting better to Stephen Hawking running a marathon! And people are offended by stuff that I'm saying? :boggled: At first I thought you were playing devil's advocate, but your hardcore nihilism is freaking me out.

Starthinker said:
If these are the things you think of a suicidal person then I feel sorry for anyone in your circle of influence that is suicidal. They will be hurt and offended by this, and it can easily drive them deeper into depression and closer to suicide.
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You are not the first person in this thread to forget exactly where this conversation is taking place. A person actively contemplating suicide will not be reading this thread with a gun in their hand, and if they were, my words would probably not push them over the edge. I repeat again, I would not say this stuff to a person threatening to jump off a bridge. I'd let a pro handle it.

Just know that you are offending people.
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If anyone is offended by anything I've said, then they are not paying attention and the offense is their fault. If they are ALIVE and ABLE to even BE offended, then they don't qualify for my comments on weakness.

I just hope that if any of your friends or family feels suicidal they go somewhere else for help.
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Me too!!! Getting advice for something as serious as suicide from anyone who is not a trained therapist is a terrible idea. The worst thing you can do (other than the actual suicide) is trying to deal with it on your own, and/or asking professional advice from your family, coworkers, posters on the JREF, etc.

With all those (toll-free) suicide hotline numbers out there, I seriously hope the JREF's "Does Suicide Awareness Work?" thread is not where suicidal people begin their road to recovery...
 
MikeSun5 said:
Yikes! :eek: I am SO glad you're posting here on the JREF instead of answering suicide hotline phone calls. In this thread alone, you've claimed most anti-depressants cause greater depression, you've stated your belief that nobody has any inherent responsibility to themselves, the people they know, or society itself, and now you've compared some suicidal people getting better to Stephen Hawking running a marathon! And people are offended by stuff that I'm saying? :boggled: At first I thought you were playing devil's advocate, but your hardcore nihilism is freaking me out.
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Any more distortions and emotional BS you feel like sharing? I guess it beats actually addressing the points...
 
MikeSun5 said:
You are not the first person in this thread to forget exactly where this conversation is taking place. A person actively contemplating suicide will not be reading this thread with a gun in their hand, and if they were, my words would probably not push them over the edge. I repeat again, I would not say this stuff to a person threatening to jump off a bridge. I'd let a pro handle it.
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The real problem is that people don't decide to commit suicide on the spot, with the gun in their hand. And attitudes like yours are what builds up over months and years, while they're not with the gun in their hand yet, and are very much still able to hear and read such "OMG, you don't live up to my standards, you failure" attitudes. The problem is that in that long interval, instead of seeing someone care about _their_ problems, they see anti-social dicks (since you brought up that term) telling them how big failures they are for not living up to someone else's standards. Or for even thinking of their own problems instead of thinking about such lofty goals as how they could contribute more to society.

_That_ is the problem that was discussed there.

ETA: Not that I subscribe 100% to that line of thinking, but I'd like to see you at least once actually address the point. Even if it's someone else's point.
 
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MikeSun5 said:
With all those (toll-free) suicide hotline numbers out there, I seriously hope the JREF's "Does Suicide Awareness Work?" thread is not where suicidal people begin their road to recovery...
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Yep, because a quick phone call to a stranger is all anyone needs to make everything right again. :rolleyes:
 
HansMustermann said:
The real problem is that people don't decide to commit suicide on the spot, with the gun in their hand. And attitudes like yours are what builds up over months and years, while they're not with the gun in their hand yet, and are very much still able to hear and read such "OMG, you don't live up to my standards, you failure" attitudes.
The problem is that in that long interval, instead of seeing someone care about _their_ problems, they see anti-social dicks (since you brought up that term) telling them how big failures they are for not living up to someone else's standards. Or for even thinking of their own problems instead of thinking about such lofty goals as how they could contribute more to society.
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It's clever how you've managed to call me a dick. Nice touch. :D I'm not even offended, just admiring your wordplay.

Now let me try and respond to your point that you claim I didn't address... I understand suicidal feelings take a while to build up. I understand that attitudes of "dicks" like me don't help, but I am not a therapist. Also, saying that suicidal people's problem is anti-suicide attitudes is really circular reasoning anyway considering that the people had to be considering suicide in the first place to even qualify for any disdain from the real "anti-social dicks."

You know, I need to re-quote you to clarify something else...

The problem is that in that long interval, instead of seeing someone care about _their_ problems, they see anti-social dicks ... telling them how big failures they are for not living up to someone else's standards. Or for even thinking of their own problems instead of thinking about such lofty goals as how they could contribute more to society.
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Right here, you have basically placed the blame of the suicidal person's feelings on EVERYONE ELSE besides the suicidal person. Earlier, you were adamant that it's all about the individual and outside influences such as other people's opinions don't matter. Now it's the people who disagree with suicide who are to blame for suicides?

When you figure out which side of the argument you're on, please get back to us...
 
slingblade said:
Yep, because a quick phone call to a stranger is all anyone needs to make everything right again. :rolleyes:
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Tough crowd. You do realize the alternative is death, right?

...dude, calling a hotline is a start... would you have any other suggestion for a suicidal person besides the Nike slogan? This thread seems to be leaning more and more towards that... :(
 
HansMustermann said:
The real problem is that people don't decide to commit suicide on the spot, with the gun in their hand. And attitudes like yours are what builds up over months and years, while they're not with the gun in their hand yet, and are very much still able to hear and read such "OMG, you don't live up to my standards, you failure" attitudes. The problem is that in that long interval, instead of seeing someone care about _their_ problems, they see anti-social dicks (since you brought up that term) telling them how big failures they are for not living up to someone else's standards. Or for even thinking of their own problems instead of thinking about such lofty goals as how they could contribute more to society.
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I think it's true that people don't decide to commit suicide on the spot and it can be a whole bunch of things piling on, rather than one big horrible thing that triggers it. But you are vastly overstating the impact of random dicks on suicidal people. I have suicidal ideation as part of psychosis and I've made serious attempts during episodes and been really lucky to have been stopped. When I'm there in it, picking my spot and getting my stuff together, I could care less for the opinions of anyone who isn't me. Maybe my husband might get a thought, maybe my mother, maybe not. I can see for some forms of depression maybe it matters, but I think people that low have already decided the world thinks they're losers. When you're in it reality is something that is happening at a distance to other people.

Unless a person has decided to drive somebody to the brink and have really made it their life's work, I don't think they should feel guilty about a suicide.
 
papango said:
I think it's true that people don't decide to commit suicide on the spot and it can be a whole bunch of things piling on, rather than one big horrible thing that triggers it. But you are vastly overstating the impact of random dicks on suicidal people. I have suicidal ideation as part of psychosis and I've made serious attempts during episodes and been really lucky to have been stopped. When I'm there in it, picking my spot and getting my stuff together, I could care less for the opinions of anyone who isn't me. Maybe my husband might get a thought, maybe my mother, maybe not. I can see for some forms of depression maybe it matters, but I think people that low have already decided the world thinks they're losers. When you're in it reality is something that is happening at a distance to other people.

Unless a person has decided to drive somebody to the brink and have really made it their life's work, I don't think they should feel guilty about a suicide.
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While I agree that when you are that low nothing else will seem to matter, having someone then say to you "You are stupid for feeling that way, you weak-willed individual, go ahead, take the easy way out." will certainly do more harm than good. Even if they read it somewhere and it's not really directed at them. It's just another nail in the coffin, so to speak.

Also, we are all different, I understand and accept that my point of view is one of too many to count, but what is a discussion without sharing our points of view?

To Mikesun, I know if someone was standing on a ledge you wouldn't say such things to them, but perhaps they read your words on some forum and it only made them feel more worthless, putting them there in the first place. Perhaps someone you never met, never will meet read your words and it drove them to the edge. Or read other words by other people who feel the same way you do. Again, I'll just say that this is why we need more awareness, because certain attitudes can make all the difference.
 
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