Internet Sites Biased Towards Supporting Suicide

Believe It Or Not, I Care About You writes "According to a new study in the British Medical Journal which examined the search results for various suicide-related search terms, the most common results supported or encouraged suicide. Wikipedia was one of the most prevalent sources of information, particularly on suicide methods, although the Wikimedia Foundation itself does not encourage suicide. Other studies have shown that media coverage has an effect on suicide particularly with respect to influencing the method chosen. Interestingly, this study notes that suicide rates actually decreased with increased Web usage in England, perhaps because support is readily available to anyone who wants it."

KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!!

[by Anonymous Coward]

KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!!

Re:KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!!

[Shadow of Eternity (795165)]

KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!!

This might be the only time that a post like this is both constructive and relevant to the subject at hand.

No surprise there.

[McDutchie (151611)]

Interestingly, this study notes that suicide rates actually decreased with increased Web usage in England, perhaps because support is readily available to anyone who wants it."

The desire for suicide stems from desperation, from having no way out, from not being heard or understood by anyone. The "support" of suicide provides those with suicidal tendencies with a way out, and gives them the feeling that they are heard and understood. This then decreases the actual risk of suicide.

Re:No surprise there.

[Dr. Eggman (932300)]

Also, I can imagine it must be somewhat sobering to understand just what exactly would happen to you when you decide to ingest lye.

Re:No surprise there.

[by Anonymous Coward]

You can't describe suicide with just one variable, but you are almost hit what psychologists believe is a major factor: close social integration. In places where it is harder for an individual to be forgotten due to larger families and better 'tribal' ties, the suicide rate is the lowest. For example, the vast majority of Latin America has extremely small suicide rates as do many Middle Eastern countries. The highest suicide rates are in Asia. This phenomena has been extensively studied in Japan which has an extremely high suicide rate. It has been noted that it is extremely easy to fall under the radar and just be completely ignored in Japan. Hopefully the extremely active online social networking in Japan will help reduce the suicide rate there.

Out with a bang.

[by Anonymous Coward]

...extremely small suicide rates as do many Middle Eastern countries.

Yeah, but when they do go out, they go out with one hell of a bang!

Re:No surprise there.

[Oktober Sunset (838224)]

Have you tried the missing persons hotline?

Most of them are hosted

[LM741N (258038)]

on Comcast. I wonder why?? I guess dealing with Comcast is worse than death.

Nice to know...

[The Ancients (626689)]

...although the Wikimedia Foundation itself does not encourage suicide.

Glad to see they cleared that up.

Re:Nice to know...

[explosivejared (1186049)]

That's not true according to the Wikipedia article entitled "Wikimedia's Stance on Suicide" that someone (... cough... wasn't me...) just created. I quote:

It is the Wikimedia Foundation's firm belief that every person contemplating suicide should in fact go through with the act. Every emo kid, poor person, mentally unstable person, SCO executive, Microsoft programmer, hippie, environmental activist, and President of the United States et al would do the world a great service by just ending it all.

External Links
Liquid Dran-O
Down Not Across
Knot Theory
Auto-Defenstration

Biased study to begin with

[DocJohn (81319)]

Well, gee, if you search for only websites that offer "suicide methods" (as most of the researcher's search terms were constructed), it's not surprising you're going to find exactly that -- a lot of websites that are biased toward providing suicide methods.

The researchers stacked the deck at the onset by carefully defining their search terms to focus exclusively on "suicide methods" (not reasonable other search terms, like suicide crisis, support, help, etc.) The one non-biased search term ("suicide") shows zero pro-suicide websites in the top 10 search results on the 4 search engines the researchers used.

Read my full response at the BMJ:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters?lookup=by_date&days=1#193559 [bmj.com]

--
Psych Central
psychcentral.com [psychcentral.com]

What are you going to search for?

[Chmcginn (201645)]

The question is what is someone considering suicide going to do a search for - suicide, suicide consueling, or suicide methods?

They should have asked that question of a bunch of recent suicide attempters first.

Re:What are you going to search for?

[Jimmy_B (129296)]

The question is what is someone considering suicide going to do a search for - suicide, suicide consueling, or suicide methods? They should have asked that question of a bunch of recent suicide attempters first.

They did. From the article, "the researchers collected 12 broad search terms gathered in part from interviews with those who had attempted suicide."

Re:Biased study to begin with

[MrMage (1240674)]

I feel like I'm being a bit obvious by saying this, but by looking into "suicide methods" they weren't looking into anything related to suicide, but merely the existence of censorship or crummy search engines.

I see the good intentions, but they're treating a new age technology as if it were an older medium ("Suicide risks looking for methods clearly need help shoved at them instead").

I'll be frank here. If I were to search for suicide methods, and instead find myself inside a trap of help advertisements, I'd be sent even further down my path to kill myself because it's obvious I no longer have a say in the information that's provided to me.

Long comment short, the study was merely there for a pro censorship campaign.

protip

[TurinPT (1226568)]

Ok emos everywhere, this is how you do it.

Stand at the top of a tall structure and make sure that there is something relatively soft below.

Tie cheese wire around your neck - tight enough that it won't slip off under tension but loose enough not to choke you.
Tie the other end to something solid on top of the structure. Make sure that there is a good six or seven feet of slack.

Now stand at the edge and glue your hands to the side of your head. Wait until your hands are glued solidly to your head.

Now jump off the structure. It'll only hurt for a second, when the cheese wire runs out of slack and slices through your neck. The overhang should stop you from bashing your now-severed head against the wall of the structure when the cutting motion jerks your body backwards.

This has the excellent effect of causing whoever finds your body to think that you have pulled your head off.

Re:protip

[couchslug (175151)]

"Tie cheese wire around your neck"

I'm an American and our cheese is "wireless" (as well as, arguably, "cheeseless") you insensitive clod!

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/2/2b/250px-American_cheese.jpg.jpg [answers.com]

Bad science.

[davolfman (1245316)]

If you read the study itself, it's weighted almost entirely for people actually searching for ways to do the deed. Of course it mostly returns results instructing people how to do it, that's what they told the search engines to give them! This isn't science, this is stupidity!

Obvious

[greyhueofdoubt (1159527)]

Well, look at is this way: You have suicide, and then the opposite of suicide, which is "going on living."

Most of us are familiar with the idea of 'going on living' and have no difficulty in breathing, eating, etc. All it takes to 'go on living' is to sit there and do nothing. It is not an interesting topic nor does it raise very many interesting discussions except for 1000-level philosophy courses.

Suicide, on the other hand, is an action with immediate and also long-lasting effects on the person (of course) and society. Suicide is something that has affected me very personally several times; I can tell you that even 5-10 years after the fact, the families and friends are still having a hard time coping. So it is clear that suicide is something that warrants a fair bit of attention.

As for the question of bias (pro- or anti-suicide) based on these web searches- I think about it this way.
There are many websites out there that will tell you how to build a bomb, or repair a boat hull, or repoint masonry. A huge portion of the internet is devoted to graphic images of sex that most people find repulsive (furries...). I don't think that it's been shown that simply viewing and thinking about a subject makes a person more likely to partake in that subject, unless that person never had any exposure at all previously. Suicide is not a new band or a potato gun or a case mod. People know what suicide is from a very young age. Anyone who has every thought at all has thought about suicide before, even if only intellectually and not as a solution. It is a myth that bringing up suicide and discussing it will push depressed but stable people over the edge.

Depressed people and the people affected by depressed loved ones can find a tremendous amount of information and support on the internet. I'm not sure what the point of this slashdot article was, but I believe that any and all information about suicide ought to be public.

-b

Re:Obvious

[rhakka (224319)]

I wish people would differentiate suicide more often.

Whenever people talk about suicide, we typically picture some really depressed person in a funk offing themselves.

But what if life really isn't worth living anymore? What if you're slowly losing your mind? Terminally ill? Old and sick? A threat to others?

There are forms of suicide that are not the sudden, "Oh they had so much to live for" kind of trauma you're talking about. I wish that were acknowledged more often instead of this ridiculous "culture of life" crap out there that fails to acknowledge that quality of life is important too.

Personally, I don't see the point of saving up my entire life just to pay part of my medicals bills in my last year or two of life. I'd prefer to save up to enjoy retirement.. preferably early.. and when I start really failing, ending it all on MY terms.

Sure I might feel different then.. but I might not too ;) time to do some research...

Methodology and Implications

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

From the summary:

the most common results supported or encouraged suicide.

From the article, the search terms:

suicide, suicide methods, suicide sure methods, most effective methods of suicide, methods of suicide, ways to commit suicide, how to commit suicide, how to kill yourself, easy suicide methods, best suicide methods, pain-free suicide, and quick suicide.

To me that seems to indicate that search engines are working, not that there is more pro-suicide info online than anti-suicide. For some strange reason I doubt most anti-suicide sites will include useful information on "best suicide methods" or "pain-free suicide." The same applies to the majority of the terms used. In fact, 11 of those 12 terms are specific to people looking for ways to commit suicide. Maybe the study should have looked for terms/phrases geared towards whether or not people should commit suicide. I don't know about you but if I am looking to research painless ways to commit suicide (for whatever reason) and I search for "pain-free suicide" and the majority of the results returned are not about that topic but about trying to discourage people from doing it, well the search engine was ineffective and I would be annoyed. I don't have any problem at all with search engines not being easily hijacked by people with a specific agenda of providing me some information I don't want (be it advertising or anti-suicide counseling) instead of the information I clearly do want based upon my search criteria. Maybe if suicide prevention groups don't like this they can do the same as commercial companies and buy some ad space.

"Pro" is not the same as "discusses"

[ktappe (747125)]

Most of the sites referenced by the study seem not necessarily to be "pro" but simply making the information available. While this may seem heinous and "pro" to anyone adamantly against suicide, it is a fallacy of logic to presume those sites are "pro suicide." A parallel of this fallacy would be to believe any site that discusses Hitler would be "pro Nazi". To make information available can very much be a neutral or impartial act, and needs to be differentiated from sites (of which there certainly were also some cited by the study) that said you "should" kill yourself. Those I think we should condemn, but for us to condemn simple availability of information is a very dangerous censorship line to cross.

It's rampant at Kuro5hin

[MichaelCrawford (610140)]

Where one is often advised to "mindpixel yourself", "klerck yourself" or use "shotgun mouthwash" or "winchester mouthwash".

I have schizoaffective disorder [geometricvisions.com]. It's just like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time. One of the symptoms is severe depression: I have attempted suicide twice. There were several years where I was almost continuously suicidal. It was quite a grim existence.

I also know now that depression is actually a delusional state; feeling that life is not worth living is no more real than regarding oneself as the Emperor of France. It can almost always be effectively treated, and often cured completely.

I have found many times that the antidepressants I take for it (imipramine these days) have the effect of changing the behaviour of other people [www.geometricvisions], making them friendlier towards me. Strangers are more likely to strike up conversations with me when I'm medicated.

I'm not kidding! I'm absolutely serious.

Re:Slow To The Story

[Dr. Eggman (932300)]

Hey nice, a story thats 2 days old.

Remember, Slashdot is powered by your [slashdot.org] submissions! [slashdot.org]

Re:Slow To The Story

[Fear the Clam (230933)]

Remember, Slashdot is powered by your submissions!

Sometimes multiple times.

Re:Darwinism

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

A lot of people who seriously consider or attempt suicide are simply going a particularly bad time, and after surviving their brush with death go on to lead productive lives. Saying "just take yourself out of the gene pool" to these people isn't only callous, it's dumb.

That being said, I do believe that people who genuinely want to die and who have carefully worked out their reasons for this desire, after considering and rejecting the alternatives, should be allowed to do so. In particular, if I were dying of something that would inevitably kill me slowly and painfully (or worse, destroy the person I am long before my body dies, like Alzheimer's) then I would very much hope that I could find a sympathetic doctor to hook me up with some, ah, special medications.