Whether or not they recall and follow through on their training, that is another story.

Please, if you think a friend or family member is on the verge of suicide, do seek the assistance of the police. They considered to be on the edge of suicide if the answer to the questions below are "yes".

1. Do you have thoughts about killing yourself?

2. Do you have a plan to kill yourself?

3. Do you have a means to kill yourself? (Purchasing a knife or gun for example)

If the answer to all three questions are in the affirmative (or even if it's one or two out of three), seek help. Do not leave them alone unless your safety is threatened. Call a suicide prevention line, call the local authorities, call a family member; do all three.

But regarding a stranger thousands of miles away? When every second counts? The police seem like the best option.

There is nobody else to call when someone is telling the world they're going to commit suicide, where is your compassion? I don't even know this guy, never read his blog and I live in another country, but reading that post and the "love" one he posted with photos of his children, that hits me right in the chest. I feel compelled to try and do something.

Police aren't just there for tending to crimes, they are there to serve and protect the community and in this case, protect someone in the community from themselves who is clearly suffering from immense mental stress and needs help.

The way society deals with people who clearly are suffering from mental illness needs to change. There are so many people out there just like him working in tech and non-tech alike feeling the same, sadly many don't get heard or the help they need. Remember Aaron Swartz?

It's easy for people to say, "he should tell someone, he should tell his wife" when they've never experienced mental illness before. It's easy to be uncompassionate when you're lucky to be a normal functioning human being.

What would be the right thing to do here?

Seriously though, if even one person avoids calling trained professionals off the back of this, you might have cost somebody their life.

Firstly, as others have mentioned, you don't really have better options besides (perhaps?) trying to find/call relatives. If you call EMTs they won't report without police (for good reason), if you call a local hospital (of any kind) they will just tell you to call the police.

Secondly, police absolutely do get training to handle mental health issues and get training to specifically handle this situation. (http://www.nami.org/Law-Enforcement-and-Mental-Health/What-I...)

Thirdly, this is Canada. While I'm sure the level of CIT training penetration in the USA is not ideal, I would imagine that Canadian police are far better and will show up with Canadian bacon and maple syrup and some tim hortons coffee and make it all better.