Mental Health Experts Seek To Block the Paths To Suicide 498
HughPickens.com writes: Experts and laymen have long assumed that people who died by suicide will ultimately do it even if temporarily deterred. Now Celia Watson Seupel reports at the NY Times that a growing body of evidence challenges this view, with many experts calling for a reconsideration of suicide-prevention strategies to stress "means restriction." Instead of treating individual risk, means restriction entails modifying the environment by removing the means by which people usually die by suicide. The world cannot be made suicide-proof, of course. But, these researchers argue, if the walkway over a bridge is fenced off, a struggling college freshman cannot throw herself over the side. If parents leave guns in a locked safe, a teenage son cannot shoot himself if he suddenly decides life is hopeless.
Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries (PDF). According to Cathy Barber, people trying to die by suicide tend to choose not the most effective method, but the one most at hand. Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent," says Barber. "With a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent. So it makes a difference what you're reaching for in these low-planned or unplanned suicide attempts." Ken Baldwin, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985 and lived, told reporters that he knew as soon as he had jumped that he had made a terrible mistake. "From the instant I saw my hand leave the railing, I knew I wanted to live. I was terrified out of my skull." Baldwin was lucky to survive the 220 foot plunge into frigid waters. Ms. Barber tells another story: On a friend's very first day as an emergency room physician, a patient was wheeled in, a young man who had shot himself in a suicide attempt. "He was begging the doctors to save him," she says. But they could not.
Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries (PDF). According to Cathy Barber, people trying to die by suicide tend to choose not the most effective method, but the one most at hand. Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent," says Barber. "With a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent. So it makes a difference what you're reaching for in these low-planned or unplanned suicide attempts." Ken Baldwin, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985 and lived, told reporters that he knew as soon as he had jumped that he had made a terrible mistake. "From the instant I saw my hand leave the railing, I knew I wanted to live. I was terrified out of my skull." Baldwin was lucky to survive the 220 foot plunge into frigid waters. Ms. Barber tells another story: On a friend's very first day as an emergency room physician, a patient was wheeled in, a young man who had shot himself in a suicide attempt. "He was begging the doctors to save him," she says. But they could not.
Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Insightful)
If parents leave guns in a locked safe, a teenage son cannot shoot himself if he suddenly decides life is hopeless.
People have been proudly campaigning for irresponsible gun ownership in the US for a very, very, long time. Suggesting things like locking up guns - even in the gun owner's home - will be quickly shot down by people claiming you are impeding on their constitutional right to overthrow the government.
I really, really, wish I was exaggerating or kidding on this one.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's a big difference between promoting gun safety at home, and putting it into law.
Which would make it political suicide to even propose here in the US.
However, the few of such gun owners that I know do voluntarily practise and advocate safe gun ownership, especially around kids.
The overwhelming majority of actual gun owners are responsible. There are a lot more guns than gun accidents in this country, that is clear. However every single day there is at least one innocent child in this county who is shot as a direct result of an irresponsible owner. And those irresponsible owners are the ones whose "rights" we see so much time and money spent to protect.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Informative)
That statement is about worthless until you define what a "child" is. For a long time the gun haters like to quote statistics that defined a child as someone under 21 and as high as 24, and in their numbers. The also included "children" who were criminals that were shot by either the police or citizens defending themselves.
As it is far fewer actual children, as in those under the age of 14. A child as someone that cannot be put in prison as an adult.
So if defining a child as someone from 0 to 14 years of age
Firearm homicide (murder) of those under 14 was around 230
Firearm accidents barely made it onto the chart I was looking at with 22 unintentional firearm deaths for the 10-14 year old category. It was the only place it was in the top ten causes of death for any age group all the way up to the 65+ category.
vs.
1170 for being run over by cars
708 for drowning
1182 unintentional suffocation
408 being murdered by a parent/family member
58 dying from exposure (cold)
228 from burning to death
69 accidental death from beatings
116 bicycle accidents
Source 2012 statistics form the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. in 2012.
Firearm deaths are hardly the "low hanging" fruit on things killing children in the US, and it hardly happens "every single day" Hence why most "gun nuts" get more than a little agitated when it is used as a reason to take away their rights.
Firearm deaths and suicides do not start kicking in as a large result of death until the ages 15-24, but cars and alcohol/drug over dose kill more people by a factor of 3-5 times as many of all adults.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Insightful)
Guns do not cause suicide. They are a convenient method when available, but if not available those determined to exit this sphere of existence will find a way to do so.
Re: Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Interesting)
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Stop in vitro fertilization and medical treatment for everything except accidents too, then. After all, if you get a heart attack and we help you, we're just encouraging people with genes that provide medical risk factors to continue. In fact, we should probably take out your kids.
Depression is an illness, not a choice, and you're arguing letting people die from a disease where it's possibly preventable.
Re: Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Insightful)
No you aren't, you're simply trying to appear tough by spouting sociopathic garbage. Such emotionally motivated behaviour is the very antithesis of "clinical", and not the least bit impressive. Please grow up.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Informative)
in Australia after their firearm ban and confiscation, removing firearms does not remove suicides.
There was no "firearm" ban, but a restriction and buyback of rapid-fire weapons. Of course many people used the money to buy new legal weapons.
A bolt-action rifle or standard shotgun is not so good for massacres, but perfectly effective for hunting or suicide. There is no reason to expect a decline.
those determined to exit this sphere of existence will find a way to do so.
Ok, too hard to RTFA, but at least RTFS. It is not about those who are sufficiently determined to find a way.
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Yes, semantics, but I found the words misleading in the context.
GP implied people no longer had guns, but we actually have more guns than ever in Australia, millions of them in fact. Just far fewer semi-autos than before. Hunting is popular.
I am not defending the buyback. We already had sensible gun laws, and it mostly replaced a lot of semi-auto .22s with manual-loading ones. At massive cost to the taxpayer. We never had a gun culture in Australia, and never had a big problem with gun violence. So I'm si
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:4, Informative)
" They are a convenient method when available, but if not available those determined to exit this sphere of existence will find a way to do so."
You didn't read the article. What they are saying is that there is clear evidence that a lot of people that presently kill themselves with a readily available means, would not do it if that means required a lot more effort. Lots of people kill themselves on terrible impulse, particularly young people that are having trouble coping with there emotions due to simple biochemical forces. Those types of suicide would be reduced IF it was harder to act on that impulse. That is 100% clear.
For people that are clinically depressed the story is a different matter. For those people simple reducing the means may not help so much (although I doubt it would hurt and might save some percentage).
I don't know enough about all the facts in Australia to understand the stats you mention (you don't give a source so I can't evaluate it). This article does mention studies which indicate the opposite of what you are saying. We'd need to see all the studies together to review them to see which if any are more meaningful. We'd also need to consider any biases those sources may have...
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:4, Funny)
Guns do not cause suicide. They are a convenient method when available, but if not available those determined to exit this sphere of existence will find a way to do so.
Especially in Australia, where almost everything is venomous or actively trying to kill you.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes one can make such an argument. It would however not be based on reality and would be easily disproved by research data and statistics.
Most people that are suicidal don't want to suffer a painful death.
Most people have their darkest moments while at home.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a lot harder to kill yourself (or another person that is actively resisting) with a knife than with a gun. Having been in barroom brawls where knifes came out I can tell you that with certainty.
People that kill themselves by cutting themselves typically have to do a lot to make it work (for example preparing a hot bath to prevent clotting, etc.). And they need to cut deep, and cut correctly (slashing up and down the wrist, not across for example, as typically shown in movies) to achieve the goal, which is rather painful unless again one takes the time to acquire pain medication and consume it. This increased preparation time increases the mental barrier one needs to overcome to order to actually complete the suicide attempt and the increased time required to perform the act makes it more likely that someone might catch you in the act and save you.
People also tend to kill themselves in private, in their home, where they can't be interrupted and have had a lengthy time of isolation to deepen their depression. A handgun in the bedroom drawer "just in case" is a very easy way to attempt suicide and is in the ideal, private and quiet location that most people seek when trying to kill themselves. Other means that people choose in private, such as hanging themselves, typically have large mental barriers to overcome. Its not easy to correctly form the type of noose one needs, for example and also the death itself (by a possible lengthy suffocation) is a scary barrier to overcome. One must be very depressed to overcome that, and often when someone is that depressed they are not capable of the work involved to make it happen (and also there is a bigger chance for another person to notice how depressed they are, and offer help).
Although it is easy to crash a car as you mention, typically this is not what people want to do to kill themselves (typically, but yes there are always going to be outliers). As pointed out most people seek privacy and a period of isolation. Driving on the highway at speeds enough to cause death is not private nor isolated. And bridges can be better secured such as to make it harder (using fencing for example) and we can place emergency help phones on the bridge as well, which have been known to save people by giving them a person to speak with when they need it most.
The study is suggesting that people when deprived of an easy, private death in the convenience of their own home act on suicide impulses a lot less simple because its harder to do in the conditions one typically seeks.
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Today, roughly 90% of civilians who are shot survive. As many as 90% of victims of knife attacks bleed out before they get to the hospital.
This is true. Knives, especially knives over 3 inches long, tend to be more lethal than anything but the largest of bullet calibers or shotguns
No.. this is not true...
Ex EMT here.. Had to deal with the aftermath of numerous knife fights, and knife attacks.. What you have, in the VAST majority of cases, was a bloody mess, but wounds that are survivable, in many cases not even highly emergent. Yes, there were some deaths, but they were rare
With gunshot wounds (be they attempted homicides, suicides, or accidents) the outcomes are flipped. Modern emergency medicine is better than it ever was but you still see many cases where treatment of any kind
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Firearm accidents barely made it onto the chart I was looking at with 22 unintentional firearm deaths for the 10-14 year old category. It was the only place it was in the top ten causes of death for any age group all the way up to the 65+ category. vs. 1170 for being run over by cars 708 for drowning 1182 unintentional suffocation 408 being murdered by a parent/family member 58 dying from exposure (cold) 228 from burning to death 69 accidental death from beatings 116 bicycle accidents Source 2012 statistics form the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. in 2012.
Firearm deaths are hardly the "low hanging" fruit on things killing children in the US, and it hardly happens "every single day" Hence why most "gun nuts" get more than a little agitated when it is used as a reason to take away their rights.
It isn't a low hanging fruit. It is part of a multipronged approach, tackling all of the ways people die needlessly.
Automakers spend billions of dollars making their cars more safe, going to great lengths to add features that increase survivability. The government sets standards that must be met if the car is allowed to be sold.
Local governments and state/national governments spend millions of dollars making lakes, rivers and beaches more safe, by adding signage, marking hazards and swimming areas, h
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Automakers spend billions of dollars making their cars more safe, going to great lengths to add features that increase survivability. The government sets standards that must be met if the car is allowed to be sold.
But the don't ban cars.
Local governments and state/national governments spend millions of dollars making lakes, rivers and beaches more safe, by adding signage, marking hazards and swimming areas, hiring lifeguards, building lighthouses, etc.
But they don't ban swimming.
Just about every plastic bag
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:4, Interesting)
How on earth are firearm deaths underreported? I'm gonna call BS.
Yes, you can read the news, which isn't a good statistical reference since it's mainly about capturing eyeballs, and selling ads.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, they are dramatically underreported, as has been shown numerous times.
Well, it depends on what you mean by "dramatically." For example, the New York Times investigated this and estimates that about half [nytimes.com] of accidental gun deaths of children may not be properly reported or classified. A USA Today report said the actual numbers were 61% higher [thecrimereport.org] than the CDC numbers, perhaps getting up to 100 unintentional deaths in the year studied there.
And that latter report was by an organization promoting gun safety, so I don't think they are lowballing the figure. On the other hand, that latter report doesn't define "child," so I'm not sure what age range is involved.
In any case, while these gun deaths are deplorable and may be somewhat underreported, even organizations who are desperately looking for gun deaths don't seem to agree with your statement that "It is not hard to find an accidental shooting every single day in this country that involves a child." Maybe a couple times a week on average. But hardly "every single day."
The CDC's numbers may be low. But your numbers are too high.
And your bit about the age of a child is a straw man argument. I follow the standard definition of a child being under 18.
The problem here is again a shift from possible underreporting to vastly overreporting that is characteristic of the other side of this argument.
The unfortunate reality -- as is the case with many polarized topics in U.S. politics -- is that both sides lie and mislead. Gun advocates want these numbers to appear as low as possible. People who are anti-gun want them to appear as high as possible.
And the anti-gun side has a strong tradition of including all sorts of misleading numbers involving teenagers to jack those numbers up -- trying to lump suicides, homicides, and accidents all into one category for example. Of course, most people recognize that teenagers below the age of 18 often are smart enough and competent enough to realize what they are doing, so you can't just lump all these things together.
Anyhow, clearly you have your own biased perspective and are intent on exaggerating your data. Clearly GP has his own as well. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The gun was kept where a child could find it
2. The gun was not locked with a trigger or barrel lock
3. The gun was loaded
Avoiding any one of those things would have prevented the shooting but no 3 negligent actions all had to happen. Lets look at another common one, teenage kid shoots a fried with parents gun that was believed to be unloaded. Here again multiple things have gone wrong. In addition to the 3 mentioned in the previous example 3 more things have gone wrong. The first was that the individual who shot their friend was pointing a firearm at something they didn't intend to shoot. Second the individual handling the firearm was not handling it like it was loaded. Third the individual did not check and make the firearm safe upon picking it up. So in this tragic case we have a grand total of 6 negligent actions that if just one of them was avoided the tragedy wouldn't of happened.
All of that said I do believe in accidental discharge of a firearm as I have had such a situation happen to me. While out hunting in rather inclement weather I had some sleet land on the bolt face and temporarily freeze the firing pin forward so when I closed the action after loading my SKS it discharged the round it chambered. In this case because I was practicing proper handling the only thing that happened was that the bullet went into the ground about 10 feet in front of me. Immediately after that I went back to my truck and tore down, inspected, cleaned and oiled my sks to verify that noting was wrong with it and was able to get the pin to freeze forward again to verify that that is what happened. I have never had that problem since and now when I am out with it know to check it before closing the action in addition to all of the other safe firearm handling procedures.
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The legal age of a "child" falls into two categories: Criminality or Consent.
Depending on which State you are talking about that falls between 11 and 16 years of age. 11-13 for criminality and somewhere around 16 for consent.
I'm going to report BS on your underreporting of children being shot, because what is little Timmy going to tell his teacher, "oh yeah I fell off my bike Ms Cranberry and
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Applying the age of majority as a catch all for the definition of adulthood is a lazy and not to mention legally ignorant argument. So it would be really nice if people would step back and realize they loose the audien
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And those irresponsible owners are the ones whose "rights" we see so much time and money spent to protect.
It has historically been the policy of reasonable and just governments to punish people who have committed a crime, after they have committed said crime. Now alternatives have been proposed, most famously by Mr Orwell, but these are generally regarded as a poor choice for the populace.
If the vast majority of the population has no trouble in following a loosely enforced law, and someone cries "for the children!" to attempt to impose strict policing for the entire population for the sake of stopping the rema
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Why stop at just "gun owners'" homes? Mandatory police inspections would have to be performed at all homes, since people not on the list of gun owners could have undeclared firearms as well. I think you can see where this is going...
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Not really and that's wrong.
Codifying firearms storage into law does not require mandatory police inspections. We've got laws around gun storage in Australia and the cops cant search your home without a warrant. Even if you let them in for a chat and they notice an improperly stored gun, they cant do anything about it (besides saying "ma
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If you're paranoid and don't lock every single door in your house, including the bedroom door, before you go to sleep, you're doing it wrong.
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If you lock every single door in your house, including your bedroom door, the risk of dying in a house fire because you can't get out quickly enough probably outweighs the benefit of the extra protection.
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Most locked doors will open from the inside without any time lost.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that when you make a statement like that, it takes only a single counterexample to prove you wrong?
Like this: The mother tells 7 Action News she "didn't have time to get scared." When she heard the door to her home on Woodrow Wilson being kicked in, she immediately warned the three teenage intruders and then opened fire. [wxyz.com]
Or this: "Apparently the homeowner has been the victim of burglary recently so he was on alert, he was on edge, and as soon as he heard glass breaking he armed himself to protect himself and his 11-year-old child who was in the home." [myfoxtampabay.com]
Or this: "Police said Henry broke into the house and began to attack Moreno until her daughter, Jayda Milsap, 11, shot Henry twice with a handgun." [newsok.com] Now there's a story about kids and guns you probably didn't see on the news. If this mom had kept her gun locked so her daughter couldn't get to it, they both might be dead now.
So I'm sorry to inform you of this, but when it comes to violent crime the world does not work the way you think that it does. When an armed person is suddenly and without prior warning in your home, you are in a combat situation. And in a combat situation, seconds matter.
Whether the risk of being prepared for such a situation does or does not outweigh the risks of having an unlocked gun around depends on your risk of home invasion, who lives in the house, who visits the house, and so on. A universal assessment is impossible. But in making the choice you need to be aware that there is a tremendous selection bias in the stories that are covered in the media: defensive firearms use does not receive nearly the coverage that the accidental shooting of a kid does, but is orders of magnitude more common.
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That happened because of the combination of 1) medical associations encouraging doctors to ask the questions (for guns alone, not for all things of similar dangerousness) and 2) doctors being mandatory reporters, so having a doctor tell you not to have guns is very intimidating because it's a half step towards losing your children.
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"In the US when they police can show up and go through your home without a warrant we call that Fascism. So is having a license in order to exercise a right that is yours by simply being alive. Unlike the rest of the sheep, we for some odd reason do not like that." Awww the National Socialists moded me a troll. Sorry but calling Na
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I knew, I just knew that after reading the summary and it contained the word 'gun' that the whole first thread would be another useless gun debate with "second amendment" being brought up and people questioning each others parentage.
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How the hell is having loaded and easily accessible firearms in your own home "irresponsible"? What good is a firearm for defensive purposes if you have to open a safe before you can get to it?
I'll proudly stand up to authoritarian a$$holes like Michael Bloomberg who want to tell me what I can and can't do with my firearms in my own home. You seriously want police going around serving warrants and arresting people for the "crime" of having unlocked firearms? If they start doing that, maybe it IS time for
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And we could also stop accidental death by automobile by banning all cars except those the government gives permission to drive. Don't stop there, but a stop to DUI deaths by banning alcohol AND cars.
100% of the population should not have to give things up for the irresponsible or bad decisions of a very small minority. Or do you only think that if it affects people other than yourself??? As long as you don't have to do anything you don't want to do, it's OK to force other people.
It is not irresponsible t
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Informative)
How is it irresponsible? If a teenage boy wants to shoot himself, give him a gun!
If you're old enough to type, and you really have to ask that question, you simply don't have the level of empathy that's required to understand the answer.
Re: Maybe in a different country (Score:2)
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I have always wondered about that. So someone who finds their life unbearable is pressured not to end it because it may cause grief to other persons. If a child has stopped wanting to live, chances are the people who are close to them may have something to do with that. Yet still their feelings are so much more important than those of the suicidal child.
That may explain the victim blaming in mobbing cases. It would hurt the bullies, but the victim's existence is already screwed, so who cares if he/she gets
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Ah, so there are people out there who get it! Thank you for a voice of reason in this "I know better than you what's good for you" insanity.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has attempted suicide and just barely made it, I think that the so-called mental health experts are a bit stuck up in seeing things from nobody's perspective but theirs. The freedom to lead your way the way you choose to must include ending your own life at any time of your choosing. It is true that quite often people who attempted suicide are happy with making it out alive, and being able to live their lives. I certainly am!! On the other hand, the thought that some "expert" who is not in my frame of mind would have the ability to, essentially, take over my ability to take my life - is downright scary. Just because I'm happy with the life I have now doesn't mean that I'd be happy about someone preventing me from attempting to take my life when I did so. Two decades later, I'd consider it a gross invasion of privacy, and a horrific, slippery slope takeover of basic human liberty.
There is a very fine line between truly helping someone, and "helping" someone by - as you unashamedly admit - putting someone else's feelings over your own. Yes, as a society we have an obligation to give as much help as we can, but that help IMHO should not extend to overriding the decision of someone who wishes to take their life away. I find it, actually, completely incomprehensible that people think that preservation of human life over all else should be forced down everyone's throat. I also find it not all that clear that suicidal thoughts should be treated like a malaise in all cases. My attempt at my own life made me into a person that I am now, and who are you, or anyone else for that matter, to say that I'd be better off not having tried it? It's quite possible the worst case of "what if" imaginable, because you're not merely hypothesizing, you intend to take action.
The implication that all people with suicidal thoughts have a "very real chance" of taking down someone else is just an icing on the cake. You're nuts. I'm not a murderer, and can't imagine how attempting to take my own life would have ever made me take the life of someone else while doing so - other than indirectly, say by someone close to me dying of a stress-induced heart attack. I can't imagine that any sort of a majority, or even a significant minority of people who attempt a suicide are murderers and would take down others with them - not unless they were murderers to begin with, and suicial thoughts were just an enabler, like alcohol or drugs would be for others.
TL;DR: You're nuts, you really are.
Re:Maybe in a different country (Score:4, Insightful)
Because we know that many people that kill themselves do so because they are in the grips of simple biochemical processes related to a certain age, such as a teenager when their growth hormones are at full speed. This is something people don't have control over and its worse for some people than it is for others. These people have no rational reason to want to be dead other than they can't control their emotions. Typically the problems they have are not anything out of the ordinary, and certainly not a problem that one might rationally choose death to avoid.
For example many young people just kill themselves because they don't feel they fit into the world, or because they fall in love with someone that doesn't reciprocate. These problems are common ones. These a solvable problems that no rational person would think are so terrible that death is truly a more desirable choice. They simple need help and support to get through that difficult time of life after which the vast majority go on to be happy and live meaninful lives and are glad that they didn't die at a younger age.
On the other hand some people when faced with the certainty of a lingering, painful and undignified death (such as when someone is diagnosed with a fatal illness) might choose to rationally seek a death that they have control over, and that meets the criteria of suffering (or lack of it) that they desire. Personally I think that I'd rather die when I still have most of my wits about me and when I still have some type of control over what I am doing than to die strapped to some hospital machine, barely aware of what is going on. I don't think that people should feel forced to make that choice, but I do think I can understand the rationality behind it. On the other hand as someone that was very depressed and unhappy as a young adult, I a glad it was not easy for me to kill myself (my parents did not own a gun and I lived in a location with strict gun control laws, NYC) because now as a middle aged person I am very happy with my life and I feel I am making a contribution to society in the open source work that I do and in other ways.
I don't think life is cheap, and I am sorry you feel that way :( I hope you also find happiness in some point of life
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Yeah right. Now put it differently, suppose a number indicates your desiring to die at any given moment. The number fluctuates all the time. Then you can distinguish between a function with a few dangerous peaks and one with a dangerous level for the baseline. Making access harder for those who are just having a difficult period is bound to have results.
What you then get is a tradeoff. To what extent are you willing to restrict someone's freedom by just making some things harder, to build in delays here an
We've redefined success! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Since we've made remarkably limited advances in the treatment of patients who think that the world is worth escaping; we've decided to just start blocking the exits. On the plus side, we have some emotionally salient anecdotes, of the sort that will probably cheer you right up unless you are one of those pesky people we can't really treat!
That's exactly the kind of thinking we need to change. What the article says is that there is a 'growing body of knowledge' that people who commit suicide are not fatally lost and are not uncurable. Rather people tend to decide to take their lives unplanned and without considering the options. If you can deter them at that very moment, treatment is often possible of even unnecessary. Often it was just a momentary coming together of small things.
On the other hand there are people who are inherently suicidal.
Re:We've redefined success! (Score:4, Informative)
Who hasn't had an urge to throw himself of a bridge once upon a time?
Without actually having statistics to back me up, I'm guessing most people. Certainly not me.
Some statistics I found from a Google search suggests about 3/4 of people never have: https://www.thecalmzone.net/20... [thecalmzone.net]. Some Korean statistics go as high as 35%. I never saw higher without breaking it down into specialised at-risk populations (war veterens, LGBT people).
I'm honestly shocked that you think it's normal. Clearly it's not rare. 25% isn't low. But it's nowhere near universal.
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Re: We've redefined success! (Score:2)
Re:We've redefined success! (Score:5, Insightful)
So it is forbidden to make a decision about your life. WTF?
I am allowed to marry the wrong person and ruin my life at the drop of a hat. I am allowed to have kids where I may not be qualified to provide a decent life. I am allowed to sign a mortgage that I know I can't pay. I am allowed to try to climb the K7 if I am 70 years old, wich is very close to suicide.
But I am not allowed to take my own life.
Bollocks.
Re:We've redefined success! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are not in a fit state of mind when you get married, you can get an annulment. If you are not in a fit state of mind when you have the child, you can let the child be adopted or temporarily fostered. If you are not in a fit state of mind when you signed the mortgage, it can be nullified.
If you are not in a fit state of mind when you kill yourself, there is no going back.
I personally have no issues with suicide, even assisted suicide, so long as the person who has elected to kill themselves has done so in a fully concious, fit state of mind.
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Moreover, the mentally ill deserve what help we can give them, and those that care about them.
Re:We've redefined success! (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are not in a fit state of mind when you get married, you can get an annulment. If you are not in a fit state of mind when you have the child, you can let the child be adopted or temporarily fostered.
I'm not sure which country you're living in but it's not one I've ever heard of.
Suicide is a problem which overwhelmingly affects men. If you get married the only usual out is divorce, which means that men in 99% of cases are on the hook for support for the rest of their lives. If you're identified as the father of the child, the situation is the same. There have been cases in the US where men who donated to sperm banks, men who were raped by women when they were underaged, men who weren't even related to the child have been forced to pay child support.
This is the situation locally:
- 99 percent of husbands lose their homes during divorces
- Judges frequently make child maintenance orders against men on state benefits whose marriages have broken down - leaving many living below national insolvency guidelines, below subsistence levels
- In seven out of ten cases the judge ordered a transfer of the property into the wife’s name
- During 160 contested cases when an order was made to sell the home the wife received more than half of the proceeds in 25 percent of the cases, during the other 75 percent the proceeds were split
- Joint custody does not mean shared parenting, with children in more than nine out of 10 cases living with their mothers- the "standard access" for married dads to their children after separation is "a couple of hours" every second week, with a few hours once or twice during the week
- In no cases were the views of any child heard directly by a judge
- A significant number of divorce cases take eight years or more to be concluded
- 100% of maintenance orders, both child and spousal maintenance, are made in favour of the wife
It absolutely is reflected in most western countries.
If we're going to deal with the problem, let's deal with the problem. This article seems like political power grabbing and grandstanding on the backs of the dead, which is beyond reprehensible and shows the vile moral character of those proposing it.
Suicide: the planners and the spontaneous (Score:4, Interesting)
The person who equated this article to advocating "blocking the exits" is exactly right. The individual who actually plans to end their life in a fully conscious, fit state of mind has also surely come up with a plan that will get around any number of "blocked exit" strategies (like locking up personal guns in a cabinet, or hiding the keys to the car). They're not who this article refers to, IMO.
But the person who is distraught enough to actually go through with a plan that has a high likelihood of ending their life (as opposed to FAR more of them who might talk about it or use a half-hearted attempt as attention-seeking behavior) are going to do it when the mood strikes them. And the original article seems to be saying it's effective and appropriate to remote as many possible means to accomplish this as possible, so the means will be lacking when the mood strikes.
My problem with this is that it's only a band-aid for the underlying issue ... someone's severe depression. If it's not possible to get a person to get back the will to live, what quality of life do they have anyway, while you've "succeeded in preventing their suicide" by locking all of your knives up in a box?
Re:Suicide: the planners and the spontaneous (Score:5, Insightful)
Just one point: Talking or "joking" about committing suicide are high risk factors. It may be "attention seeking" as well, but in many cases, suicidal people feel socially isolated and genuinely need attention.
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If you feel that you should take your own life, I believe that you are well within your rights to do so. The discussion here is about the people who are attempting to end their lives on a whim, for a lack of a better term. And when they do, they realize that they made a mistake.
Examples that you are giving are also, potentially, mistakes. But they are reversible or correctable. Or in some cases, just life. Suicide attempts, that result in deat
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So we should allow people to get professional assistance on how to take their own life in a peaceful way. That way there's a graceful way out for those who have really considered the issue well. At the same time, reduce access to easy suicide on a whim.
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Approaches like that already exist in other areas.
For example, you generally cannot simply show up for a sex change operation. You have to go through (often) several years worth of consultations and evaluations, before you will be allowed to proceed.
Similar situation also exists for people that have "extra phantom limbs" (they feel that one of their legs doesn't belong to them and should be removed, for instance). Depending on where they are, they will also have an option to consultations, t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently read a story of a Japanese girl who tried to commit suicide and almost succeeded, but someone tried to help her and ‘saved’ her. Afterwards she called for people not to ‘help’ people who want to die, because life still sucked and in addition she got a huge hospital bill and even more people who guarded her from suicide.
Suicide attempts fall broadly in two categories. 1) Cries for attention. These are almost always done in a non-lethal way, in my country these tend to be pe
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But the world will be such more enjoyable for the potential suicidee when he's denied plastic bags, shoelaces, power cords and bedsheets!
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Can't we do both? Why does doing one thing (block the exits) preclude doing the other (treat the issue)?
"Posted by Soulskill" (Score:2)
The parsing is important here.
Did we need the heart-tugging anecdotes? (Score:2)
Suicide is all very tragic and it'd be lovely if no-one had to feel that way, but did we really need to throw in the anecdotes at the end?
Ken Baldwin, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985 and lived, told reporters that he knew as soon as he had jumped that he had made a terrible mistake. "From the instant I saw my hand leave the railing, I knew I wanted to live. I was terrified out of my skull." Baldwin was lucky to survive the 220 foot plunge into frigid waters. Ms. Barber tells another story: On a friend's very first day as an emergency room physician, a patient was wheeled in, a young man who had shot himself in a suicide attempt. "He was begging the doctors to save him," she says. But they could not.
How many people beg the doctors to let them die after a failed attempt?
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The anecdotes illustrate typical experiences.
Unless you are in a concentration camp, suicidal ideation and behavior is a mental health symptom. Interrupting someone's "MO" actually is a smart thing to do.
A common technique is "chain analysis"; analyzing the chain of events that led up to a suicide attempt, and then looking at how to disrupt any future chains.
People are creative (Score:4, Insightful)
On the one hand I keep thinking that if someone is determined to commit suicide, they'll find a way. (There was a police guard posted at the crossing after previous suicides to prevent this, but the teenager simply jumped the fence 200 yards from the crossing and jumped in front of the train there instead.)
On the other hand, I see the wisdom in trying to make the world a place where it's in no convenient way to commit suicide. As Banksy tweeted this morning [twitter.com], "Suicide does not end the chances of life getting worse, suicide eliminates the possibility of it ever getting better."
Re:People are creative (Score:5, Informative)
While it's a nice sentiment, it's something to which I would reply: "Please let me be the judge of that".
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One sad aspect of suicide, out of many, is that a suicide victim never gets to see for themselves that life does in fact get better.
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In the long run, everyone dies.
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Treating symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Suicide is a symptom of mental illness. Taking away the possibility to commit suicide doesn't solve the underlying cause.
As someone who suffers from medical depression I feel pretty strongly about this subject, at least as strongly as I can allow myself to feel.
It may sound paradoxical but having the option to commit suicide was one of the things that helped me to finally seek treatment. Before I approached counseling I decided on method and location for a possible suicide. Had that option not been available to me I might not have been able to push through.
Had there been a policy in place to put people with depression on a 24/7 watch-list to prevent suicide the I would have probably gone for the suicide option first.
When the subject of suicide comes up I often see people claiming that suicide is the "easy" way out. What they don't seem to realize is that more importantly it is a way out.
Some people support assisted suicide for non-treatable painful diseases. Typically autoimmune disorders or certain forms of cancer where the body attacks itself. They have seen how much victims of those diseases have to suffer.
It is much harder to see how much you suffer when the mind attacks itself. People think that therapy cures those problems. It doesn't. Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and depression are permanent. You can only learn how to endure it or acquire the discipline to keep it back.
To me the depression is much like one would expect from alcoholism. I function, but I can not allow myself to think freely. I have to keep my mind busy in complex projects and not let it wander off. Some relatives seem to have a hard time understanding that I will never want to talk nostalgia with them, ever.
Preventing suicide kind of lacks relevance since the person my mind was before died with the depression anyway.
Taking away to option of suicide doesn't solve anything of that. It only removes the inconvenience of having to deal with a body.
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Yeah right, take the guns away and ... (Score:3)
Suicide is a cultural problem, not one of availability (or unavailability) of certain means. The suicide rate of, say, the US and Germany is pretty much the same, despite guns being much more accessible in the former than the latter. However, the train network is much more developed in the latter.
People should, however, be educated about really shitty ways of killing yourself, like overdosing on acetaminophen and the like.
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People should, however, be educated about really shitty ways of killing yourself, like overdosing on acetaminophen and the like.
That's a way I'd personally prefer to avoid.
Maybe (not that it would ever happen) there could be a govt sanctioned 'suicide wait list' where you sign on and after three months of counselling and intervention if you're not taken yourself off it, it'd get done painlessly and privately.
At least that would curb the public messes. Maybe...
Barking up the wrong tree? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to address the issue of suicide by taking away the means of killing yourself is probably entirely the wrong way to go about it. People who are serious about suicide will always find a way, for starters, and unless something substantial is done to address the mental suffering that drives a person to suicide, all you achieve is to prolong the suffering. It is the kind of boneheaded, incompetent idiocy that you get from politicians, when their only goal is to get re-elected.
I think a much better approach would be
1) Give people the right to suicide and the help to do so safely, if that is the right word. This will show people who are suicidal, that you respect them, something is all too often not the case. I think respect is crucial, because if you see suicide as the only way out, you don't want to seek help if you fear that this way out will be taken away; so you have to know that you can go ahead, if you really want to.
2) Make that right dependent on them having been through good quality advice and assessment. Many people only want kill themselves because they can see no other way - they can often be helped to find a better way out.
There is still too much religiously motivated prudishness towards death - life does not belong to some 'God', it belongs to the individual and it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual what they want to do. It is IMO deeply unethical to force life on somebody who really doesn't want it.
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Re:Barking up the wrong tree? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a pretty decent support network over at the dropzone. Good folk there. A lot of them know their way around the prison system. Society tends to look down on people with criminal records, but I've trusted my life to a lot of those guys and am going to do it again without hesitation. There's a lot broken with our society, but we should fix what we can.
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Please mod parent up. Your life is yours and only yours. You should be entitled to end it. People around you may suffer or you may be alienated enough that nobody would care much, but that, again is your decision. In my country the suicide rate goes way up on people over 80. They have had enough and want to end their lifes with some dignity and spare themselves all of the suffering of terminal illneses and isolation depending on a health system that only sees them as a number.
What is wrong with that? only t
Not true (Score:5, Insightful)
No You don't. At some point in my teenage life I came to that dark place. But since the easy method was removed from my reach, I did not go for other method. the moment *passed*. In fact suicide is not always associated with a mental illness. I see many poster here pretend that, but it is not. Suicide is a symptom that somebody feels is in a situation where living further is more painful than dying. It CAN be a symptom of mental illness but also simply a symptom of intense physical pain or a symptom of plain stupid teenage angst. And for the last group, removing the easy means can simply make the person force to have more time to think.And thus prevent suicide. And then post about it on slashdot 25 years later.
Crayons and safety scissors for everyone! (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand the motivation, but there are simply far too many ways to die if you want to. Even if we nerf the whole world and baby proof everything, we won't stop an adult or teen that wants to die from doing so. But we will make the world a worse place to live.
There is a significant chance that we will just force people to choose a horrific way to die or (perhaps worse) a way that is as likely to leave them in a horrific but not dead state as it is to kill them.
Besides, how will we cook without knives?
Or we could help people so that they dont try. (Score:5, Interesting)
it seems to me that making treatment free (it's expensive!) and encouraging people to get help rather than shaming them for feeling badly would be a better way to go.
society doesn't want spend money to help the mentally ill which ironically bites them in the ass because about 1/3 of the homeless have a form of (untreated) mental illnesses which is why they are homeless. it costs more to have social programs for the homeless than it does to actually help them or even give them homes! i'm sure it would cost much less if we had free treatment to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place.
wake up, society!
Cost of making the entire world 'safe'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a thought that's way out there; let's spend those billions on research and development of new medication and treatments instead - that would likely have a far bigger impact. Sadly it's just poorly thought through emotional click bait instead of a sane approach to solving a serious problem. It's as if the rationality of humans is as well evolved as our lower spines.
Misguided Sympathy (Score:2, Interesting)
Some people commit suicide because their life sucks so much they don't want to deal with it any more. People should be afforded the dignity to make their own choices without pseudo-altruistic nannying.
Others do so because they are defective. Selfish, attention-seeking losers who want everyone around them to be part of their pity party. Screw them. The gene pool is improved by their departure.
Oh, by the way, I have personally witnessed a suicide. A roommate blew his brains out in our living room because his
Sounds like another attempt at civil disarmament (Score:3)
Nobody ever seems to want to solve the problems they have. That's hard. It's easier to solve problems you wish you had.
I locked up my gun today so little Jimmy couldn't blow his brains out. He'll be fine now.
Seems (Score:3)
that those concerned about other's ending their life are projecting their own fear of dying. Who owns one's life? Some priest, politician or shrink or the one living it?
Gun statistics in suicides (Score:5, Informative)
An anecdote from the Golden Gate Bridge: A man was spotted on the bridge in some rather agitated state, so the police was called, and the got him. It turned out he had decided to kill himself by jumping off the left side of the Golden Gate Bridge. (Un)fortunately he found himself on the right side. Now there is absolutely no difference between jumping from the left or the right side, but he had decided to kill himself by jumping from the left side. (Un)fortunately there were six lanes of traffic between the right and the left side, and he didn't dare running across the traffic for fear of getting killed, which was actually quite reasonable.
A few years ago, when there was a statistically small number of suicides at Foxconn, the company put up suicide nets which would catch and save people jumping from the roof, and more likely prevent them from jumping in the first place (because these people wanted to die, not look like idiots caught in a net). That gave a course a lot of ammunition to the idiots among the Foxconn haters and Apple haters, but it actually worked. Take a simple way of killing yourself away, and suicide rates drop.
It's long known that the majority of suicides are not done for any rational reason, but because of some mental disturbance. The slightest obstacle in the way of killing themselves can save them.
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..."males have significantly more 'successful' suicides. And that's due to the availability of guns..."
Your conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. The only thing it demonstrates is that people who use firearms in a suicide attempt are more successful than people who use other means. It's not evidence that the availability of guns is the causal factor in the attempt.
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Seems (Score:2)
that those concerned about others ending their life are projecting their own fear of dying.
Who owns one's life? The one living it or some politician, priest or shrink mindfucking about it and continuing trying to dominate others?
Utter nonsense. (Score:2)
They can no more remove the means for suicide than they can legislate a person's desire to live or what makes them horny.
It's a complete waste of time and money to even attempt to banning the items a person could use to suicide.
It's time for the fucking politicians to actually rectify a serious problem instead of dicking around with time wasting subjects and endless re-iterations of old laws to appear that they're actually working.
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legislate a person's desire to ... what makes them horny.
No, but the republicans will try.
nonsensical (Score:2)
"The world cannot be made suicide-proof, of course. But, these researchers argue, if the walkway over a bridge is fenced off, a struggling college freshman cannot throw herself over the side. "
So in short they ARE trying to suicide- proof the world. Good luck with that.
Well, no, I take that back, since I can almost guarantee that they're going to use my ever increasing taxes to pay for stringing safety nets everywhere.
terrible tragedy (Score:2)
Its sad really. Sad that these people have so much pain and sad the grievous injuries some of the survivors will sustain.... sad all around. However, I just don't feel it is a valid reason to tell someone what they can and can't have at their own disposal.
Its a nice thought and good intention, its just, not justified. I don't want to tell other people what they can and can't own, I don't want my government doing that, and want it to do less of it than it does. Hell, I would constitutionally remove the right
Gun control bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing but more theory and anecdote.
"You can reduce the rate of suicide in the United States ... if fewer people had guns in their homes ..."
Total nonsense. The number of households with firearms has been on a multi-decade downward trend:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the... [slate.com]
Meanwhile, the suicide rate per 100k people has been quite stable at 10-15 per 100k over the last 60 years:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/... [infoplease.com]
So where's the evidence that fewer gun-owning households means a lower suicide rate?
The ONLY consistently documented relationship between firearms and suicide is this:
"Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent ... with a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent."
True and I'm sure that in their so-called "study", the 10-15% of people who survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound regret it and claim it was an impulsive act, but that's hardly "proof" that access to firearms was a causal factor in suicide attempts.
This also raises the important question of how many people really want to die and how many are just desperate for attention. The "cry for help" suicide is a well known and documented fact. If you slice your wrists perpendicular to the length of the arm, you're either incompetent or you don't really want to commit suicide. Fire a 12 gauge shotgun in your mouth and there's zero doubt that you're genuinely trying to kill yourself.
Note also that the USA is #30 worldwide in suicide rate, far behind many countries with strict gun control laws. Take Japan for example with a rate of 20.7/100k.
This is just a bunch of leftist academics trying to further the gun control agenda without real evidence. Gun control groups like Michael Bloomberg's astroturf "Everytown" are actually pushing laws requiring that all firearms in private homes be locked up ... where they will be useless for defense. And imagine police getting search warrants and breaking down your door because someone saw a gun on your nightstand? Insanity..
Suicide application form (Score:2)
How about we make suicide completely legal? Think about it. We make suicide legal, but you have to apply for it. Then you have to show up at the Department of Social Health and wait in line for 5 hours, and if that doesn't make you go "man this is ridiculous... I'll just go on living" maybe you'll actually get some real help.
Anyway, you might be right. Lets put corks in tailpipes and ban metal cutlery. That'll show those damn commie suicidal bastards that they can't take away our freedom.
Sounds like sandbagging to me (Score:2)
Article title makes me think of a flood analogy: "World seeks to address rising sea levels with dikes, walls and dams."
Since the psychologists are powerless to do anything about the underlying causes of suicidal behavior, now they attempt to make it harder to do? Good luck with that.
Blister packaging (Score:4, Interesting)
The UK used to sell acetaminophen (AKA Tylenol) in bottles (like in the US).
Some people committed suicide by OD'ing on the pills.
So they changed from bottles to blister packs.
Now if you want to off yourself that way, you have to sit there and pop out ~50 pills, one by one.
It reduced those sucides by something like 30%.
That's a lot of lives saved, with a pretty low barrier.
Suicidal impulses as counter-survival birth defect (Score:3)
Is it, then, worthwhile from a purely economical point to try to baby-proof the world, or would it be more practical to emphasize recognition and identification of people with problems for targeted help? Not to mention impinging on everybody for the safety of the few (a hot reaction in so many posts here). This has some analogy to the issue of "playground safety" meaning that children get no exercise and learn no skills because the play area must be totally safe for all activities and ability levels. At what point does making the world totally safe mean nobody can have a cooking knife?
Re:The roots of suicide are buried in religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly enough, most religions do not predict a pleasant afterlife for suicides.
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Doesn't matter, because the person committing suicide is thinking "I don't care what it is, it has to be better than this".
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Why should you be scared of nonexistence? You already know what it feels like. Just try to remember the time before you were conceived. That's what it feels like to not exist.
Not very scary, is it?