A part of me wants to agree with the online groups’ premise that suicide is a decision people should be able to make, but the idea of an online group that acts like “a flytrap for suicidal people” is indeed unsettling. The idea of informing a suicidal person of viable methods doesn’t bother me as much as the encouragement the article mentions.
What say you Dopers? is informing or encouraging a suicidal person wrong?
I think most people who commit suicide probably did so for the wrong reason. As such, encouraging it would be bad[sup]TM[/sup]. Suicide in and of itself I don’t see as being a bad thing, and I do think there are valid reasons to do it (euthenasia, etc.) and for cases like that, having the info on how to go about it well seems a good thing. And similarly, encouraging the idea that it is a reasonable choice for certain circumstances may be a good thing due to the popular perception that it is always bad.
Depends , I think. If they are suicidal as a symptom of an underlying menatl health problem, then I don’t think it’s the most constructive assistance that can be renderef.
However, if they are suicidal for other reasons (terminal illness, ideological suicide) , there’s a lot to be said for making sure they are able to fulfil their rational desire without messing up and instead ending up worse than before the attempt.
Having said that, that online group seems targeted at the former, rather than the latter group, and I don’t really approve of that. Also, why are there any people who post there, I mean, if they’re so gung-ho for suicide, shouldn’t they have done it rather than sticking around to offer advice to others? I doubt many of them are “how I did it” posthumous posts, is what I mean. Sounds more like a forum for trolls to encourage terminal flameouts in others.
Ah but as to just to whether it is ethical to put up the information for anyone to see, I have no issue. Even if someone does suicide for a silly reason and might have failed if they had tried a less-well-informed suicide method, having died they won’t care much. And simply, it was their choice to make, regardless that it may have been a silly one.
I see, on finishing the article, that some were, in fact, posthumous posts by other successful suicides, so I was mistaken there.
A close family member of mine comitted suicide a couple of years ago. My family still isn’t healed from it-- probably never will be.
“Why did she do it?” everyone kept repeating. Her note left no explanations, just an apology, but her reasons were pretty clear, just from looking at what she was going through. I think what everyone was trying to get at was “Why didn’t she tell us she was considering this?” Well, because we would have tried to stop her.
Through my anguish, rage and grief, I still almost wish she would have had an online community such as the one in the OP. I know it sounds strange, but the thought that tears at my soul is the knowledge of the crushing lonliness she must have felt in her last days. My beloved relative died alone, probably feeling the most desolate isolation on earth as she came to her decision and put it into action. Perhaps knowing that others were feeling the same agony she felt might have comforted her a bit.
I think suicide should be encouraged. Anyone that does not wish to live should not be consuming our resources due to the fact that people who are not them want them to continue to live. Let them go on to whatever that next step is whether it’s oblivion or some other plane of existance.
On the other side however, I have encouraged suicide in people who tell me that they want to kill themselves, and get them to contemplate it seriously. Generally they just wanted to truly view their own mortality, and when they peer into that abyss they find that they aren’t ready for it, and none of them has killed themselves.
I have had family members who killed themselves, and sad as it is, if they wanted to go, they should go. I think the world would be a happier place if those that didn’t want to be here weren’t here.
Erek
I’m sorry for your loss. Dealing with the pain of suicide is very difficult. One of my duties is to teach a suicide intervention class. The model that Army adopted for the past year was Applied Suicide Intervention Skill Training. In this workshop, we believe that people who attempt suicide probibly have reasons for living. We try to connect the person at risk to the reasons.
We conduct the interventions because we believe that most people choose suicide without considering what the reasons for living are. There may be some people out there who have few reasons for living. There may be people who have a lot of reasons to choose death, but for the most part, people can choose life and overcome the situation that lead to the consideration of suicide.
Many people can come up with many reasons for and against suicide. I try not to discuss those. My purpose is to save lives.
I think a website that promotes suicide is wrong. I really do. Life is too important to waste.
I think it is a greater waste of life to go on living when you don’t want to live. We must kill to survive, we kill plants and animals, bacteria constantly. We walk through a wake of death by our mere existance, and it’s a grave responsibility to choose your life over the life that you are constantly ending simply by surviving. So if you are living and you don’t want to be that is a greater travesty and waste of life than killing yourself, because if you kill yourself then at least your body can decompose and reenter the life system and it’s resources can be better utilized by creatures that want to live.
Erek
First of all, if I remember correctly of everything I’ve read about the organization, they are not so much encouraging anyone to commit suicide, but rather (after much soul-searching and deliberation) accepting and, as Lissa said, perhaps providing some measure of feeling completely alone.
Secondly, the other part that Corporate Hippie delves into about whether or not it’s wrong to tell someone how to do, let me just say that even if you do find sources giving you information on ending your life, they are absolutely unnecessary. Having been in that place multiple times, I certainly didn’t seek out this online group to aid me in my choice. I’ve attempted several methods and they’ve all been dredged up out of my little pea brain. However, if somewhere offered safer tips and ways to drastically cut the amount of visceral damage left behind (as in say, Depends, to prevent body waste from voiding all over everywhere), I would think that is definitely more beneficial to those intent on succeeding.
Third, sometimes those who are meant to help in prevention, don’t really. I’m positive (and grateful) that Sgt Schwartz does an excellent job and I undoubtedly could have used his services. However, my most recent call to a hotline was totally useless. So, I’m simply saying that there is sometimes a reason why people get that far in their decisions and have thought them through thoroughly. Or as much as one can.
Last, I do know of which site they speak. If anyone desires the URL, since I’m not sure it’s okay to link to it here, email me. It’s in my profile.
Well, I don’t see anything wrong with detailing how to commit suicide. I don’t see anything wrong with discussing suicide with others who are also suicidal. I do have a problem with people encouraging others (particularly people they only know through a message board) to commit suicide. How can they know what is best for a person who they know so little about? The moderators of that board should change the policy so that encouraging others to commit suicide is not allowed. Post how-to files, pictures, directions on how to tie a noose, personal attempts, whatever. Discuss your feelings with others, fine. But to encourage a stranger to kill themselves is wrong.
Dude, I really, really, really hope you’re just kidding here. :rolleyes:
And if you’re not kidding, then I can only hope that you never have to personally come to grips with what a breathtakingly terrible idea this is. Leave therapy to the therapists, OK?
Yeah, when someone calls me telling me that they want to kill themselves I’ll tell them “I’m sorry I’m not a qualified therapist, I can’t talk to you right now.”, that’s a great idea. Anyway, I’ve had a 100% success rate, none of them killed themselves, so clearly I did something ‘right’ if you think that not killing themselves was a desirable outcome.
Erek
It’s not so much “how” to kill yourself as it is how to do it right…i.e., so you don’t end up brain-damaged but still alive (thus being more of a burden than you may have originally considered yourself to be). Sometimes here are details you need to concern youself with in order to do the deed completely.
Suicide is permanent. A person who is suicidal at 17 may wind up leading a long, happy and productive life. Encouraging someone to kill himself during a transient episode of depression is evil.
Well the method I usually used was to talk to them about the reasons why they wanted to make the choice. Not to talk them out of it, I encouraged it, “If it’s truly what you want to do.”, and then I would go through and mention things that they might not have thought very clearly through on the subject, like how to do it so it doesn’t hurt, and to talk about how if they do it then they shouldn’t be taking the feelings of others into account, it shouldn’t matter to them, etc… I found that by talking to them frankly about the realities of suicide that eventually they decided it wasn’t for them. I am all for people who want to live to continue to live, but I think in this country we take it too far. Some people genuinely want to die, and we should allow it. The ones who just want attention and for someone to listen to them will usually back off when you start describing the differences between razors cutting your wrists along the vein or across the vein. However, the ones that are serious about it would be taking the razors to their wrists rather than calling me, so their’s that to account for. I was a goth kid when I was younger, so suicide pleas were pretty common, and I’ve contemplated suicide on an almost daily basis for the last 15 years, so I can relate.
Erek
There are no moderators. The article is talking about an unmoderated newsgroup in the notoriously chaotic “alt.*” hierarchy. The group in question has been around since before the WWW was even created.
The “pro-choice suicide” ideology spelled out in the group’s FAQ and reflected in the posts of its participants means that the average forum member is no more likely to encourage suicide than an average pro-choice-abortion person is to encourage abortion.
Like any forum or advocacy organization, there are fringes on both sides. A minority of participants actively encourage suicide, and another minority goes out of its way to discourage it. Both generally get frowned on and flamed.
Even if there’s a decent chance that five years from now they will feel differently?
Five years is an awfully long time to wish you were dead. I’d say it’s no one’s business but the person contemplating suicide.
The main problem with these kinds of sites is that it allows suicidal people to talk with other suicidally inclined people and they can talk themselves out of reality.
Suicide is basically infectious which is why a suicide at a school can be a scary event.
Added on to that is that they offer easy and accessible ways to do it which means impulsivity is much more of an issue than normal. Many people really just need some time to come down and more effective methods reduce that time to reconsider.
All of this comes down of course to how often you think suicide is really a rational decision. In my view those cases exist but its rarer than proponents are willing to acknowledge and more often than not its a mental health issue and its little different than someone dying of cancer for the amount of real ‘choice’ involved.
But theres no easy solution to it given free speech and the like - advertising its existence in a news article wont exactly be helping the issue though I suspect.
Otara