4 ms·

I don't think this is a topic which can be discussed effectively. Most platforms ban any discussion of the topic, even those who claim to support free speech wi

I don't think this is a topic which can be discussed effectively. Most platforms ban any discussion of the topic, even those who claim to support free speech will shut it down. But little is actually done to help people besides telling them to go to therapy or call some phone number. Do people really think that if they restrict access to methods of suicide people will magically get better? If that's all that a society is doing then they're simply delaying the inevitable or condemning the person to continue suffering. Worse yet, you drown someone in psychiatric drugs that kill the soul, leaving behind a walking corpse. And we pretend like it's some sort of mercy because there's an undead zombie. Even if it's but a shell of the former person. The most likely outcome is that nothing major will change, and people will continue to lament the suicides. Maybe people wouldn't commit suicide if they had actual help. But most of these people have probably been abandoned and isolated from society. Within the harsh garden of reality not all plants are able to flourish.

onethought 3y ago
It was shown in 1974 (Phillips) that suicide rate increased after reporting on it in the media. There is a correlation between it being present and accessible as an idea and increase in attempts.
- coldtea 3y ago
  People that will opt for suicide because they become aware from it through the media, are already depressed and feel defeated in life. Following with an action or not is then a technical matter. If the media didn't report on suicide, and they didn't pick it up and go for it, they'd still be living in hell mentally. So, real help would be more about helping them not feel like that (and even more so, to not live in circumstances that cause them to feel like that), than sweeping reports of suicide under the carpet.
  - onethought 3y ago
    I’m sorry, suicide has been shown to be much more acute activity than you are implying. Statistically if you stop someone, or thwart an attempt they do not try again the majority of the time. Any action we do to reduce suicides really does save lives.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Yes. My point wasn't about merely preventing suicide, but about stopping people feeling suicidal, even if they don't consider or go through the actual act. So not so much about saving lives in the technical sense, but about saving people by making them have lives worth living, and see life as such. Preventing things like bullying, abusive parents/spouses, job precarity and homelessness, and so on.
      - onethought 3y ago
        Agree entirely. But it isn’t a dichotomy. We can do both. What you are suggesting is much more root cause. Again, agree!
Nextgrid 3y ago
> you drown someone in psychiatric drugs that kill the soul, leaving behind a walking corpse A walking corpse is totally fine as long as it can keep toiling and paying taxes. From the perspective of our capitalistic society this is a good outcome. > if they had actual help A lot of mental health issues are a result of the war of attrition of the system against the person. I bet that for a non-trivial chunk of people the source of their mental health troubles is that they got unlucky at life/career/education and are stuck in a vicious circle of poverty and misery with no way out. Also, merely accessing mental health counselling requires a privileged position - knowledge workers can take an hour of their day here and there with no problems at all, but for hourly-rate menial workers the choice might be between "go to this therapy session" or "be able to pay your rent this month". Mental health counselling isn't going to change anything nor pay your rent/bills. This is a systemic problem; there are solutions but they would be bad for business and inconvenience entrenched interests.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  I would like to see more research into the cause of mental health issues. Some are clearly linked to types of pollution (eg. lead contamination), while others are linked to various diseases. Injury is another cause (contact sports, military use of explosives). If we could do more research into finding out all the causes, and changing society to eliminate them, then we could probably cut down substantially on the number of people needing mental health support in the first place.
- austhrow743 3y ago
  Is there an economic system that doesn’t value economic output?
Pannoniae 3y ago
Bit tangential but it's kind of similar with "get therapy". Now, in 2023, that expression is almost morphed into an insult (implying the person is messed up and therapy would "fix" that), with zero consideration for them beyond telling "talk to a therapist about your problems", and implicitly, "just don't bother me with it". It never comes from a place of care but as basically a way to dismiss anyone's problems by sending them to "therapy". No real problems are solved that way and this is just one of the ugly faces of the uncaring hyperindividualistic worldview.
- candiodari 3y ago
  Of course it works like this. We have transformed into a society where risk elimination is critical to one's career. It goes much, much deeper than this. What you neglect to mention, for example, is that therapists will do the same. As soon as they believe a suicide wish is realistic, they will do anything, including declaring the patient entirely healthy, to get them out. "Refer them" (ie. "go somewhere else"), declare them healthy, fall ill themselves, whatever. The alternative is that sooner or later they fail with a kid, which ends careers. This means in practice there is no help with suicide. Not for kids, and not for adults either. If you have a real problem you will not be helped. But that's not the end of it. What will happen if you DON'T have a real problem? These institutions ... are paid per-patient. So social services WILL lock up kids who express anything about suicide. "For their protection". On the aforementioned condition that they are very sure the suicide wish is NOT serious. These institutions get into the news regularly for the serious child abuse that happens there, and are legendary for how badly they take care of kids. No serious education (no more math, "rap lessons"). No going out. No TV. No contact with friends (oh! the risk!). They take away any prospects at a future, any reason to want to live. That's where the money is in therapy: "treating" very, very light problems. Problems so light they wouldn't exist without therapy. And, because kids usually don't want this, forcibly treat them. Hence the "need" for closed institutions. Not so much to keep kids away from ways to kill themselves, but because they'd never see a therapist even once if they weren't locked up. And no patients ... no money. Research into the subject regularly comes up with the observation that ... suicide does happen at such places. In fact, much more than in "free" society. Which seems strange, since they refuse any serious patient. You know, if a hospital were to only admit patients that do NOT have cancer, it's very weird to observe cancer deaths at such a hospital. But that's exactly what happens here. There is much discussion, which mostly focuses on that diagnosis (which such institutions don't do and therefore go blameless for) doesn't work. That they regularly get much more serious cases than they bargain for (thereby usually admitting that they use psychological diagnosis to AVOID helping real cases, but THAT problem doesn't need solving. The problem that needs solving is that psychological theory doesn't allow them to be effective enough at avoiding real patients). But there's another, very obvious, explanation ... that these places, these treatments, rather than treat suicidal ideation, in fact cause close to 10% of kids admitted to commit suicide, when if you'd literally told those same kids that no help was available, at most 3% would have died through suicide. And that's assuming they do actually take serious cases, which they don't. Things make a lot of sense if you realize the obvious: that help, social services, and child "protection" is built around the need for them to make money, either directly or through subsidies. And then they proceeded to hire a bunch of MBAs to maximize this money (so "known effective" methods, such as hiring highly educated well-paid individuals to take care of such kids) never happens anymore.
petercooper 3y ago
I think you're broadly right, but at the same time, the topic of suicide is an information hazard to many people (as onethought mentions). Not just suicidal people, but people who are merely curious and, more worryingly, trolls who get a thrill out of manipulating others. For this reason, I can see why many people reach for the "authorities" to do something about it. The longer term solution is to have good mental health provision and for people who might be in the earliest stages of suicidal ideation to be able to talk to either a therapist or someone they trust about their feelings. Do we have good mental health provision in the UK? Not. At. All.
superchroma 3y ago
This. The issue is that this is the most superficial interest into mental health. This is annoyance; society saying "stop that". There is no true interest in helping people. Even those who want to be helped and are prepared to work for it.
tetha 3y ago
> Do people really think that if they restrict access to methods of suicide people will magically get better? If that's all that a society is doing then they're simply delaying the inevitable or condemning the person to continue suffering. I will say there is a difference between very impulsive attempts at ending ones own life during a dark episode and more pre-planned attempts. In the impulsive case, even minor obstructions can cause the immediate impulse to fade, avoiding a very final decision. Hence why many impulsive survivors don't attempt twice. For these cases, keeping knowledge contained is a good thing in my book. This kind is also why guns are terrifying. Guns are one millisecond of impulse for an eternity of consequence. On the other hand, if someone is an incurable pain patient for 20 years and eventually decides to not be a pain patient anymore... there is very little you can do about it.
- vidarh 3y ago
  > In the impulsive case, even minor obstructions can cause the immediate impulse to fade This is the reasoning behind the limits on pack sizes of paracetamol (acetaminophen for Americans) in the UK, for example (you can buy only 32x 500mg pills at a time, and pack sizes are limited to 32 in pharmacies and 16 outside of pharmacies). There are about 10 shops within 10 minutes walk from each other near me that'd all sell it, so it's not like it'd be a barrier to someone desperately wanting a larger number of pills. The decision followed investigation that showed that a lot of the time suicide attempts with paracetamol didn't even involve buying more, but simply consuming whatever was already in the house, and so even reducing the typical amount people would have available to them was seen as a potentially worthwhile. It does appear that it had some effect: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK374099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK374099/ Though of course how many of those people go on to find another way is another question.
  - rz2k 3y ago
    Just to add to this: Tylenol/paracetamol/acetaminophen can be a tragic method, because many people whose attempts fail in the short term, and who might otherwise recover, end up with liver failure and requiring a liver transplant. Incidentally, its capacity for destroying your liver is also why this drug is especially dangerous for treating hangovers or for people who frequently drink alcohol.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gnfargbl 3y ago
> Do people really think that if they restrict access to methods of suicide people will magically get better? Effective mental health treatment isn't a pill that you take and get better; it's an ongoing, and often very long, process of gradual improvement. I don't think the article is proposing not treating people who are ill, and there's no suggestion in the article that the people were not receiving treatment. Since these people were based in the UK, our default assumption should be that they were receiving at least some level of treatment via the NHS. (Likely not enough, but some.) To me, the article is proposing that we should consider removing what might be a serious impediment to the effectiveness of that treatment. Let's take an example that is a little less emotive than suicide: alcoholism. People can and do recover from alcoholism. Imagine we somehow took two identical twins, both suffering from the same level of illness. One we place in a small town somewhere, where alcohol is completely absent for some reason (not banned, but functionally absent from everyday life). The other we place in the middle of New Orleans. We treat them both the same over a period of, say, three years. Which would you expect to have the better chance of recovery?
gadders 3y ago
I submitted this link as a story. I'd say I'm pretty close to a free speech absolutist (barring direct, credible, personal threats of violence) but I'm also a parent of a teenager, and remember myself what being one is like. Obviously people should have greater availability to mental health resources, but what worries me about a site like this is might enable the impulsive suicide - especially amongst adolescents.
DanBC 3y ago
> Do people really think that if they restrict access to methods of suicide people will magically get better? No, but we have good evidence that as part of a package of measures it's an effective way to reduce the numbers of people dying by suicide. Your post contains a number of flags that show you're not familiar at all with this topic. (eg, use of the phrase "commit suicide"). If you want more evidence based information you could look at the UK's NCISH. https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/ https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/

onethought 3y ago

It was shown in 1974 (Phillips) that suicide rate increased after reporting on it in the media. There is a correlation between it being present and accessible as an idea and increase in attempts.

coldtea 3y ago
People that will opt for suicide because they become aware from it through the media, are already depressed and feel defeated in life. Following with an action or not is then a technical matter. If the media didn't report on suicide, and they didn't pick it up and go for it, they'd still be living in hell mentally. So, real help would be more about helping them not feel like that (and even more so, to not live in circumstances that cause them to feel like that), than sweeping reports of suicide under the carpet.
- onethought 3y ago
  I’m sorry, suicide has been shown to be much more acute activity than you are implying. Statistically if you stop someone, or thwart an attempt they do not try again the majority of the time. Any action we do to reduce suicides really does save lives.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Yes. My point wasn't about merely preventing suicide, but about stopping people feeling suicidal, even if they don't consider or go through the actual act. So not so much about saving lives in the technical sense, but about saving people by making them have lives worth living, and see life as such. Preventing things like bullying, abusive parents/spouses, job precarity and homelessness, and so on.
    - onethought 3y ago
      Agree entirely. But it isn’t a dichotomy. We can do both. What you are suggesting is much more root cause. Again, agree!

Nextgrid 3y ago

> you drown someone in psychiatric drugs that kill the soul, leaving behind a walking corpse A walking corpse is totally fine as long as it can keep toiling and paying taxes. From the perspective of our capitalistic society this is a good outcome. > if they had actual help A lot of mental health issues are a result of the war of attrition of the system against the person. I bet that for a non-trivial chunk of people the source of their mental health troubles is that they got unlucky at life/career/education and are stuck in a vicious circle of poverty and misery with no way out. Also, merely accessing mental health counselling requires a privileged position - knowledge workers can take an hour of their day here and there with no problems at all, but for hourly-rate menial workers the choice might be between "go to this therapy session" or "be able to pay your rent this month". Mental health counselling isn't going to change anything nor pay your rent/bills. This is a systemic problem; there are solutions but they would be bad for business and inconvenience entrenched interests.

londons_explore 3y ago
I would like to see more research into the cause of mental health issues. Some are clearly linked to types of pollution (eg. lead contamination), while others are linked to various diseases. Injury is another cause (contact sports, military use of explosives). If we could do more research into finding out all the causes, and changing society to eliminate them, then we could probably cut down substantially on the number of people needing mental health support in the first place.
austhrow743 3y ago
Is there an economic system that doesn’t value economic output?

Pannoniae 3y ago

Bit tangential but it's kind of similar with "get therapy". Now, in 2023, that expression is almost morphed into an insult (implying the person is messed up and therapy would "fix" that), with zero consideration for them beyond telling "talk to a therapist about your problems", and implicitly, "just don't bother me with it". It never comes from a place of care but as basically a way to dismiss anyone's problems by sending them to "therapy". No real problems are solved that way and this is just one of the ugly faces of the uncaring hyperindividualistic worldview.

candiodari 3y ago
Of course it works like this. We have transformed into a society where risk elimination is critical to one's career. It goes much, much deeper than this. What you neglect to mention, for example, is that therapists will do the same. As soon as they believe a suicide wish is realistic, they will do anything, including declaring the patient entirely healthy, to get them out. "Refer them" (ie. "go somewhere else"), declare them healthy, fall ill themselves, whatever. The alternative is that sooner or later they fail with a kid, which ends careers. This means in practice there is no help with suicide. Not for kids, and not for adults either. If you have a real problem you will not be helped. But that's not the end of it. What will happen if you DON'T have a real problem? These institutions ... are paid per-patient. So social services WILL lock up kids who express anything about suicide. "For their protection". On the aforementioned condition that they are very sure the suicide wish is NOT serious. These institutions get into the news regularly for the serious child abuse that happens there, and are legendary for how badly they take care of kids. No serious education (no more math, "rap lessons"). No going out. No TV. No contact with friends (oh! the risk!). They take away any prospects at a future, any reason to want to live. That's where the money is in therapy: "treating" very, very light problems. Problems so light they wouldn't exist without therapy. And, because kids usually don't want this, forcibly treat them. Hence the "need" for closed institutions. Not so much to keep kids away from ways to kill themselves, but because they'd never see a therapist even once if they weren't locked up. And no patients ... no money. Research into the subject regularly comes up with the observation that ... suicide does happen at such places. In fact, much more than in "free" society. Which seems strange, since they refuse any serious patient. You know, if a hospital were to only admit patients that do NOT have cancer, it's very weird to observe cancer deaths at such a hospital. But that's exactly what happens here. There is much discussion, which mostly focuses on that diagnosis (which such institutions don't do and therefore go blameless for) doesn't work. That they regularly get much more serious cases than they bargain for (thereby usually admitting that they use psychological diagnosis to AVOID helping real cases, but THAT problem doesn't need solving. The problem that needs solving is that psychological theory doesn't allow them to be effective enough at avoiding real patients). But there's another, very obvious, explanation ... that these places, these treatments, rather than treat suicidal ideation, in fact cause close to 10% of kids admitted to commit suicide, when if you'd literally told those same kids that no help was available, at most 3% would have died through suicide. And that's assuming they do actually take serious cases, which they don't. Things make a lot of sense if you realize the obvious: that help, social services, and child "protection" is built around the need for them to make money, either directly or through subsidies. And then they proceeded to hire a bunch of MBAs to maximize this money (so "known effective" methods, such as hiring highly educated well-paid individuals to take care of such kids) never happens anymore.

petercooper 3y ago

I think you're broadly right, but at the same time, the topic of suicide is an information hazard to many people (as onethought mentions). Not just suicidal people, but people who are merely curious and, more worryingly, trolls who get a thrill out of manipulating others. For this reason, I can see why many people reach for the "authorities" to do something about it. The longer term solution is to have good mental health provision and for people who might be in the earliest stages of suicidal ideation to be able to talk to either a therapist or someone they trust about their feelings. Do we have good mental health provision in the UK? Not. At. All.

superchroma 3y ago

This. The issue is that this is the most superficial interest into mental health. This is annoyance; society saying "stop that". There is no true interest in helping people. Even those who want to be helped and are prepared to work for it.

tetha 3y ago

> Do people really think that if they restrict access to methods of suicide people will magically get better? If that's all that a society is doing then they're simply delaying the inevitable or condemning the person to continue suffering. I will say there is a difference between very impulsive attempts at ending ones own life during a dark episode and more pre-planned attempts. In the impulsive case, even minor obstructions can cause the immediate impulse to fade, avoiding a very final decision. Hence why many impulsive survivors don't attempt twice. For these cases, keeping knowledge contained is a good thing in my book. This kind is also why guns are terrifying. Guns are one millisecond of impulse for an eternity of consequence. On the other hand, if someone is an incurable pain patient for 20 years and eventually decides to not be a pain patient anymore... there is very little you can do about it.

vidarh 3y ago
> In the impulsive case, even minor obstructions can cause the immediate impulse to fade This is the reasoning behind the limits on pack sizes of paracetamol (acetaminophen for Americans) in the UK, for example (you can buy only 32x 500mg pills at a time, and pack sizes are limited to 32 in pharmacies and 16 outside of pharmacies). There are about 10 shops within 10 minutes walk from each other near me that'd all sell it, so it's not like it'd be a barrier to someone desperately wanting a larger number of pills. The decision followed investigation that showed that a lot of the time suicide attempts with paracetamol didn't even involve buying more, but simply consuming whatever was already in the house, and so even reducing the typical amount people would have available to them was seen as a potentially worthwhile. It does appear that it had some effect: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK374099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK374099/ Though of course how many of those people go on to find another way is another question.
- rz2k 3y ago
  Just to add to this: Tylenol/paracetamol/acetaminophen can be a tragic method, because many people whose attempts fail in the short term, and who might otherwise recover, end up with liver failure and requiring a liver transplant. Incidentally, its capacity for destroying your liver is also why this drug is especially dangerous for treating hangovers or for people who frequently drink alcohol.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gnfargbl 3y ago

> Do people really think that if they restrict access to methods of suicide people will magically get better? Effective mental health treatment isn't a pill that you take and get better; it's an ongoing, and often very long, process of gradual improvement. I don't think the article is proposing not treating people who are ill, and there's no suggestion in the article that the people were not receiving treatment. Since these people were based in the UK, our default assumption should be that they were receiving at least some level of treatment via the NHS. (Likely not enough, but some.) To me, the article is proposing that we should consider removing what might be a serious impediment to the effectiveness of that treatment. Let's take an example that is a little less emotive than suicide: alcoholism. People can and do recover from alcoholism. Imagine we somehow took two identical twins, both suffering from the same level of illness. One we place in a small town somewhere, where alcohol is completely absent for some reason (not banned, but functionally absent from everyday life). The other we place in the middle of New Orleans. We treat them both the same over a period of, say, three years. Which would you expect to have the better chance of recovery?

gadders 3y ago

I submitted this link as a story. I'd say I'm pretty close to a free speech absolutist (barring direct, credible, personal threats of violence) but I'm also a parent of a teenager, and remember myself what being one is like. Obviously people should have greater availability to mental health resources, but what worries me about a site like this is might enable the impulsive suicide - especially amongst adolescents.

DanBC 3y ago

> Do people really think that if they restrict access to methods of suicide people will magically get better? No, but we have good evidence that as part of a package of measures it's an effective way to reduce the numbers of people dying by suicide. Your post contains a number of flags that show you're not familiar at all with this topic. (eg, use of the phrase "commit suicide"). If you want more evidence based information you could look at the UK's NCISH. https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/ https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/