Internet Sites Biased Towards Supporting Suicide 358
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."
No surprise there. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Biased study to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
Re:Slow To The Story (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad science. (Score:5, Insightful)
Methodology and Implications (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary:
From the article, the search terms:
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.
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Quick comment about support (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a quick comment regarding the intertubes usefulness for support. My mum died after her 12 year battle with cancer at the end of last year; I was stuyding externally so I could help take care of her as she was getting weaker.
In all honesty I don't know where I would have been then or now without the Internet. Within a few hours of realising the unthinkable happened I had people literally from as far away as Alaska and South Africa (I live in Singapore) sending their condolences and thoughts, it really was something else.Also I think people tend to think of support in the fairly narrow sense, don't underestimate the pleasent distraction and coping help you can get from tinkering with source code from your favourite FLOSS app or OS, say for example FreeBSD. Really got me through some tough times.
So where's the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you going to search for? (Score:5, Insightful)
They should have asked that question of a bunch of recent suicide attempters first.
Re:Darwinism (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Biased study to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
"Pro" is not the same as "discusses" (Score:5, Insightful)
duh (Score:3, Insightful)
- search engines work well when searching for suicide methods.
- wikipedia is one of the best sources of information on the internet.
brilliant
Advertising (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, it got me curious. If you go to google and enter pain-free suicide into the product search it provides five sponsired links and they are:
Telling the Truth Doesn't Support Suicide (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the increased availability of graphic facts about what the person is thinking of doing is part of the reason that fewer people are doing it. Maybe the prevention services aren't entirely effective, but don't want to compete with simple websites that are often more approachable and carry less stigma from private viewing than asking another person for help, or admitting that one is seriously considering that desperate measure.
The fear-driven conclusion that sharing information about a practice is equivalent to encouraging it, when that info includes the discouraging facts about it, has got to go away. It's an old coping mechanism for "dangerous" information that relies on centralized authorities, and the control of the info supply, rather than growing the ability of people to think about whatever info we come across, and protect ourselves from what we filter as "bad". This is the Info Age. We've got a lot of growing up to do. Because the info flood is only going to gush more strongly, and only learning to think for ourselves can protect us.
Re:Quotes (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, if they know that every attempted suicide will be 100% successful (with or without government's assistance) then maybe - just maybe - they will consider other, less painful ways to ask for help? Like, maybe, filling a Web form?
It's rampant at Kuro5hin (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise there. (Score:3, Insightful)
The studies I looked at showed that almost everyone in Japan (everybody but old people) were actually much less likely to commit suicides than the people in the United States. I certainly could see why you'd think the opposite was true. There is a cultural history of suicides in Japan, whether it's in the form of Sepuku (ritual suicide) or Kamikazes. There is also an acknowledged underground subculture of suicides, see the movie "The Suicide Club". And even ten years ago, when I looked it up, I had seen an American documentary actually citing higher rates of suicides in Japan and showing us one example of a Japanese kid who had committed suicide because of bullying, and then they had showed the interview of a wife who had lost her office worker husband because of his suicide (which was office work and over-work-related), but otherwise I do not think that our popular impression of Japan actually translates into reality in these cases.
I also believe that the often quoted higher rates of suicide and people jumping off buildings during the depression in the United States was a myth. It sounds true enough. And it was reported widely as true at the time -- generally speaking. But when you dig down enough and try to find such incidents, you can't find any specific one.
Now of course, not having the evidence doesn't mean it didn't happen. And there is certain amount of shame around suicides, and in some places it's intentionally misreported (for instance, I had a female relative who did commit suicide in Portugal a while ago, and it was purposefully misreported by the family/press/doctor), but unless I see an actual scientific study attempting to quantify the rates of suicides in Japan (and the corresponding attempt to explain/quantify the uncertainty involved in such a study), I'm just going to assume that you're just rehashing some studies you've actually seen cited on TV, and not some actual published peer-reviewed scientific study -- that the rest of us consider a real study.
Re:Biased study to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
When people are anonymous and dont know the person they are responding to they often will just pick the most extreme solution and go with it. It really takes a decent person to sit back and think of the person they are talking to as a real person, like a friend of loved-one. This kind of thing almost never happens on the internet and I am not surprised to see it when it comes to suicide. Hopefully, the people who are looking up those websites also pick up the phone to a suicide hotline. Funny, how something like a real human voice and real interaction suddenly changes everything.
Résumé (Score:5, Insightful)
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns arent lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
(Dorothy Parker)
Re:What are you going to search for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. If the potential suicide goes searching specifically for sites that provide ways to commit suicide, then it's hard to argue that it's the search engine's for finding sites that provide ways to commit suicide.
Flamebait? (Score:5, Insightful)
jdb2
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
People always tear others down to make themselves feel better. So to survive in society you either:
a)Do whatever you can to fit in, and be successfully according to the quirks of society.
b)Do what ever makes you happy and not give a rats ass about what others think.
c)flip out and/or lash out.
There are some people who can handle it and then there are those who proclaim life is horrible when they drop and break their ipod. Unless society itself changes nothing will change and considering society has always been this way... don't ever expect change.
Re:KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
So I say: Good for you!Eenjoy your life, don't apologize for your good joss and pity those who can't figure out their own way and are miserable. Make it a challenge to not make things worse for them and try to see the good in them since that is your strength.
Good luck on your journey.
NPOV? (Score:5, Insightful)
It thus reflects the rest of the Internet. If you want to join a cult, there's plenty of information out there -- the Church of Scientology has certainly staked out its own turf. If you want to have all kinds of crazy, kinky sex, there's information on where to buy Gor books, on how to safely suffocate someone almost until they pass out, or how, exactly, to apply a whip or crop for maximum pain but minimum actual injury...
And if you want to commit suicide, you can find out where to get a gun, and how to load it. Or how to hang yourself -- how to set up the drop to be quick and hard enough to snap your neck before you feel any pain.
And if you want to get out of depression, it'll show you all kinds of prescription pills, psychiatrists, meditation, or simply support groups to help you through it.
In other words, the Internet itself is neutral -- due to the sheer amount of diversity out there, what the Internet is to you is exactly what you choose for it to be.
Is that a good thing? Would it be better if Wikipedia actively discouraged suicide?
Oh, one more thing: What I've found to be effective is simply talking to the person. It doesn't matter what you say, or even too much how you say it. It matters more that you are there -- human contact helps.
A real example: Someone told me of her plans to commit suicide. I was sick of trying to help her with her almost daily threatening to do so. So instead, I asked her how she was planning to do it. And I criticized her for her technique, and brainstormed a bit with her on more effective ways of killing herself -- quickly, and without mistakes, so she wouldn't wake up in the hospital.
And after a few minutes of this, she broke out laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
Remember, kids -- anyone who really wants to end their life can do it, quickly, easily, painlessly -- or painfully, if they like. The fact that they are still alive and still talking to you means they aren't going to go through with it.
I can only wonder if the Wikipedia article could have anything like that effect... Or if it's just the opposite, if it's too impersonal.
Re:KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? +5, insightful... here on nerd central? Of course the websites out there must be biased.
What's wrong with you people? Would you listen to a moron painting all the cancers of the world with a single size 200 paintbrush and asking all cancer victims to not pass off their dna? Then why single out the depressions? Depression is not anymore a disease than cancer is... it is a class of diseases. And while it may kill you, it certainly does not kill your drive to pass off your dna. What the parent is saying is just ugly and elitist.
Quoting from the American Psychiatric Association's response to Szasz [wikipedia.org],
What the parent has is just a false dichotomy.
While we might understand very little about the brain and depressions, our knowledge is nowhere as shallow as the parent implies.
Almost all forms of depression now have a provably strong physical component. Some forms of depression are more disabling than others. Some people are genetically predisposed to some. Some are treatable. Some depressions are like cancers and some are like untreated common colds. It is not for fun or glorification that some mental problems are considered medical disorders.
+5 insightful (Score:2, Insightful)
Putting yourself in the center of the universe and not understanding why other people may have different feelings is not insightful in my opinion.
There's an interesting experiment described on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness [wikipedia.org] in which dogs are put in an unpleasant situation that they can not escape from. Only 30% of the dogs where not effected in such a way that they thought the situation could not be escaped in the future. Translated to humans I think this means that the majority of people would become depressed if they were in a hopeless situation without a job, family or friends for extended periods of time. Not just an unfortunate few. I think most people are just lucky that they are fixed in this social framwork of work an relationships that is so important for their wellbeing. They would fall apart when it drops away. Then only the other part of 30% may actually see new opportunities.
Re:KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT!!! (Score:3, Insightful)