Suicide Data Reveal New Intervention Spots, Such as Motels and Animal Shelters
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
I don't know why I assumed they were visiting the animals at the shelter to try to find comfort when I read the headline. The idea of planning to surrender your beloved pet before committing suicide is heartbreaking.
They usually just have too many problems, not enough support and have spent too many years wrestling with it without resolution.
If they were monsters, they would probably be planning someone else's death, not their own. It seems all too common that people around them are a big part of their unresolvable problems.
People who turn to suicide are people who turn their pain inward, not outward. They just want their suffering to stop in a world that both has no answers and often isn't really trying to find them.
For some reason, your post really brought home to me that maybe what he was seeking was a way out, that he couldn't live with what the person he had become was putting his family through and that maybe he did it because to him that was better for them than sticking around.
Helping me understand that event probably wasn't your intent, but thank you for sharing this, because I think you succeeded.
There's a quote in the novel Infinite Jest that changed my perception on suicide. This passage helped me make some sense of something so terrible. It helped me see that I honestly can't even imagine what's going through the head of someone who is going against every human instinct to otherwise survive.
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
I know a few things that can be helpful, though it's still a hard row to hoe. But saying I know anything useful often just gets me called crazy by internet strangers -- just more evidence that our own personal hells are all too often compounded by other people.
I hope you can make your peace.
This is not true. "Mental health issues" may be a broad field. I guess US prisons are full of such people, some beyond repair. But I know people who got hospitalized because of health issues and they are doing quite well today.
There is help. There are medications and things can normalize.
I have a friend who developed mental issues and, as far as I know, is roaming homeless in Canada. But this must not be the rule.
They can, but the odds and process aren't the greatest. It's a pretty common experience that people spend years going through different treatment options before they find something that really works. For major depressive disorder, something like 15-20% of patients never find something that works consistently.
It was hell. But I enjoy my life now, and I learned many lessons in that time. My past is part of me and I can use even my past for good. I try to be a role model for the people that deal with depression around me (and maybe later academia). There is very good news for people with depression: Once one decides to get help, there is a lot of well-researched therapy (& medications if needed) around. Chances of recovery and depression management are high. And it is a field where great progress is made.
Thank you for you wishes! I can only encourage anyone with depression and similar problems to seek help - it does not bother the therapists and can improve life in ways not imaginable!
I also personally tend to avoid the word "usually" because being suicidal is not overwhelmingly associated with any specific situation. All kinds of people can have suicidal thoughts, and having them is not a sign that you're a good or bad person.
If you wish, I could direct you to some of my writing. Beyond that, I don't personally know. "The System" tends to not have good answers.
Empowerment, opportunity come second, I think.
I don't know much about the system. I'm not interested or in-need of explicit welfare or handouts, and everything else was a massive waste of time.
Hate and abuse, tyranny, bullying, whatever you call it I think can happen to anyone, or any group, but it usually happens to people who were weak, or who experienced it before. Once it happens more than once you become such a target for opportunists, and pariah for everyone else who is "just following their self-interest."
I honestly don't even know what the best thing to do is.
When I was 18 I was taken out of there and then just homeless. By my mid-20s I had a lot of problems with extreme bullying again and unexplainable negativity towards me, but after a short stint with homelessness again I moved to a new city, applied for some jobs and got up to a about 80-90k compensation within a year there. Then I started having problems again with stalking and apparent intent to harm me.
This probably reads as unreal, unbelievable. If I didn't know better and read someone write this on the internet, I'd think it reads like the person has paranoid delusions, mental illness.
CPS has limited resources and a lawyered up parent can beat them. I’ve heard of institutions based on abuse like you described. Someone who went through what you did would likely end up homeless, but then there’s a chance they can beat that and get a good paying job. And then it’s a well known phenomenon that people who have been victimized at some point in their life are more likely to experience it again, later.
I don’t know you past your comments, but nothing I read sounds like paranoid delusions or mental illness.
I’m not a therapist, but I suggest you talk to one. I’m guessing you have health insurance with your good job. They wouldn’t have to give you a severe diagnoses to have it covered. I don’t know you, but maybe a professional would find you to be dealing with Adjustment Disorder or Anxiety. A professional therapist could be the trusted advocate that you need.
My caution is to only go with a licensed therapist, and one that gives you a good gut feeling. Be 100% prepared to walk away if this person starts acting like the abusers in your life. And avoid unlicensed people like “life coaches”. Some of them are great, but I also think they have a higher rate of people who just enjoy having power over other people, and that’s the last thing you need.
I hope this helps.
1) I heavily suggest going into counceling. The change of behaviour and self concept needed might be too much to manage on your own.
2) It is a unfortunate, but well-researched phenomenon that perpetuators go for a certain type of personality that expresses itself by way of talking an non-verbal communication. There is also such a thing as bad, bad luck, but social dynamics also play a role. This is an area where you can likely improve aswell: Recognizing your feelings, others feeling and actions, and what is okay and not okay for you,
Gotta go now, all the best tho! Your problems seem treatable to me, but it might take time. You can do this.
I always see this pattern when talking about tyranny and its victims. When it is talked about in an abstracted sense (meaning you are distanced from the situation by time or place), it is almost always in the above context of toxic environments. But when it is addressed directly, the focus turns to the victim and trying to identify what is wrong with them, not with the group.
I know it is a long shot but I am really eager to document the extreme abusiveness and kind of life-ruining tyranny I've experienced. I want to raise awareness and stop this from happening to anyone else.
This is because it is the only effective way to change anything. The victim has to recognize their situation, develop the will to escape / change it, and then do concrete steps. Of course, not alone. You are not guilty of anything, but it is still your responsability to change your life if you want it. It is hard and shitty, but nobody will change because you feel shitty.
It is the same as with every other difficult situation. I could stagnate my whole life, complaining about nobody helped me when I first voiced suicidal thoughts at age 10. I was fucking hard and many people failed me, including me. I did not have a childhood. I see every right to complain and blame others. But who will this help? No one. I had to change something. Because my environment is the last thing that will change.
> I want to raise awareness and stop this from happening to anyone else.
I will be blunt: This is not an effective way of achieving this goal. Much more effective would be to 1) get help (helps you to tackle those problems in your environment) and 2) join an organization that does deal with bullying (they likely know how to reach more people more effectively).
Are you sure?
Maybe your ideas would do better in my situation, maybe they'd fare worse?
Whenever we hear about bad history, such as what happened in Nazi Germany, religious persecutions, or even witch trials, everyone says they'd help them. My story is different mostly in the sense that whoever is trying to kill me or inflict ill will to me hasn't succeeded yet, and that my tyranny is not part of a collective, it is against an individual.
I don't want to be combative for its own sake. What I mean is to get at is I don't really know how much time to put into this advice. Help from whom? What organization?
General info about Victims, Bullies, Victim-Bullies
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/07/bully-victim
More on point: In-depth about who is more likely to become a victim
http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/98783/E9...
Targets who displayed vulnerable body language were more likely to report past histories of victimization, and psychopaths identified these individuals as being more vulnerable to future victimization.
https://www.workplacebullying.org/gait/
What Do Sexual Predators Look For When Grooming Victims?
https://www.oxygen.com/crime-time/jeffrey-epstein-what-do-se...
Short Circuiting the Victim Selection Process
http://www.protectivestrategies.com/victim-selection.html
Marked for Mayhem
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200901/marked-ma...
No, it doesn't.
It worked for me.
Obvious disclaimer - do watch out that they do not end up exploiting your vulnerabilities - there are known cases where that unfortunately happens as predators are everywhere.
So the specific things that worked (and didn't work) for me may be different for you. Be open minded and critical, and don't be surprised if you have to try a few things.
That said, the first thing that helped was the validation that came from talking to someone that, in my mind at least, had some broad knowledge of the subject, and knew enough to listen critically, to see whether I was in immediate crisis (I was).
The two things we tried first are often the two "go to's", an anti depressant (citalopram, an SSRI) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
Different categories of anti depressants work through different mechanisms. I got lucky, my ssri began to work almost immediately; usually it takes a couple weeks to see any effect, if any, good or bad.
I didn't fare well with CBT, I think because I'm too cynical, and I could "see the magic trick" that I was trying to play on myself. Which is the wrong way to think of it, but I couldn't help it. So I stopped that. But it has helped lots of people.
I'm not saying these two things are what will help you. But you asked.
The doc also suggested vitamins D, which I still take, and B something, which I stopped because it makes my pee smell really bad.
He also prescribed an anti anxiety drug for the immediate crisis, which I filled but never used.
And we discussed immediate crisis resources like 911.
My remedies are almost not important. The main thing was that I got validation (lots of self doubt when you're depressed), and the relief and hope that comes from taking action.
… and then die of starvation, presumably.
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-mental-health-advo...
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-mental-health-advo...
Of course, 10% is much higher than the general population rate for lifetime suicide completion rate, which is more like 0.01%, and things are complicated by severity of attempt (you’re more likely to end up in a hospital if you use pills instead of a gun). But still, most people who attempt suicide decide against it after the fact.
[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survi...
It's the best compromise ever: ban handguns, keep long guns fully legal. 2nd amendment supporters wanting to "prevent tyranny" and hunters still have their long guns, homicides and suicides (which comprise the overwhelming majority of gun deaths and are committed overwhelmingly with handguns) drop significantly.
And as always with gun control demands, the notion of "compromise" is as slimy as looking for middle ground on abortion, or mass surveillance, or segregation. Compromising rights is a verb, not a noun.
It's really your position that is untenable.
I think that argument has some basis in history (e.g. Nazi Germany), where the tyrannical government slowly got worse and worse without major internal revolts. On the other hand, there have been times where the people snapped and revolted all at once.
I think that what you describe as the boiling frog scenario would be the best possible strategy for a government that is concerned about its policies being forcefully rejected if implemented all at once.
This was an impossible situation from the beginning.
> South America guerrillas are unbeatable.
Bolivian insurgency failed, Guevara died. They don't always win.
The thing of it is the arms involved at the outset are irrelevant. You can't coerce a population largely unwilling to be controlled. Arms (including bombing devices) inevitably make their way into peoples hands. In the event of martial law things would fall into such disarray it's unsustainable.
I take issue with the idea that a population needs to be armed a priori with a specific set of weapons in order to repel a "tyranical government", which is a kind of boogeyman idea if I ever heard one. A tyrannical govt, comprised of a minority of people, versus the U.S. scenario is not a likely one. You'd sooner see a civil war, and even that's incredibly unlikely. But then I suppose you'd see gun regulation as evidence of tyranny.
The most tyrannical govt I can think of is the Chinese one and they have popular favor with their people. The HK situation shows that popular dissent is powerful with or without weapons.
Their most effective weapons tended strongly toward IEDs and RPGs rather than longarms.
If a government is unilaterally in complete control of all people at all times, full stop, then there isn't any real freedom, is there? You'd just be subecting all of society to the whim of whoever had enough money and/or guns aleady to have taken power.
But this is no place to have that discussion. Besides which, most people who express the opinion you have are not interested in contemplating any other perpsective any way.
The government doesn’t have to be in unilateral control for us to admit that citizens would have a very difficult time fighting the extremely well funded and trained military. (For the most part, they wouldn’t need to anyway, they have control of something far more powerful... banking, they’d freeze your funds and you’d be done for).
It doesn’t follow that a government that you can’t fight via conventional means gives the populous no recourse. Voting rights are still the law of the land here and civil disobedience has been effective in the past.
Secondarily it could be argued (very easily) that second amendment in the USA is about the right to maintain well regulated local militias, which at the time would have been populated by yeoman farmers bringing their own weapons.
Historically this is relevant because the revolution was fought by exactly such a set of militias on the continental side, and the British obviously thought this was an illegal action. So they needed a clause “this thing we’re doing is legal and legitimate.”
Buut there’s a difference here between a militiaman with a musket that can fire maximum 3 shots per minute, as part of the local defense force, and an independent yobbo with a hundred of round per minute assault rifle.
But no one focuses on the part of the second amendment that pertains to ‘well regulated militias’, it’s almost as if an industry that makes something with a limited audience outside of military and law enforcement has an agenda and is influencing the debate.
E.g. imagine Hawaii seceding from the US. Does it take equal military might?
The important questions to ask are, how does the civilian population split? How do the police, the military split?
What exactly do you think civil war looks like?
The idea that you have all the answers and some how guns are ineffective, at the very least in hurting those who want to oppress, is so laughable and appropriate for HN.
What is going on in HK right now? You think that would happen if they were armed?
No one says we win, but we make it hurt. You would rather be enslaved?
The US is looking for a way out of Afghanistan and they are not the victors. Lost to some men with long guns.
No, they'd be dead. Armed conflict with the PLA with no artillery or air power?
(Street protest relies on some unspoken norms that police won't indiscriminately fire on and kill protestors, precisely because the protestors aren't armed. The whole point is to stop short of actual deadly urban combat. This is partly why Tianamen was so shocking; while it's difficult to know what actually happened, it's clear that army units were sent in and simply murdered a large number of people who were carrying out an unarmed protest.)
Which is utterly puzzling because the technique of priming the slaughter with agents provocateurs amongst the protesters is neither new nor particularly difficult. Were the leaders involved just incredibly incompetent at tyranny or was there something else going on?
This is exactly the question that makes civilian arms stockpiles utterly irrelevant.
If anything, a well-ish-equipped rebellion would make it easier for the government to avoid that split: "kill them or they will kill you" is the oldest trick in the book for keeping an army fighting on your side.
Doesn't mean they're on your particular side, though :-)
- Evacuate POI to overseas territories / nuclear aircraft territories using the Air Force - Send in the tactical nukes - ... - Profit? Mostly death
Seems pretty ignorable to me.
But there are numerous examples of fighting forces comprised of citizens with small arms and explosives making the mission long, bloody, and expensive for the US military.
Nearly every military conflict after Korea has been of this variety.
There are sparse (sparse because guns in history are rarely found among civilians) instances of people using arms to defend themselves against overwhelming state adversaries. Dictators may be cruel but they're not exactly trying to rack up police casualties.
> A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties were probably less than 150.
At most you have some increasingly out-of-date information from before the policy was implemented, when the wider market, technology, access to capital, etc has changed.
Another example is minimum wage laws, it's very difficult to measure what costs there were if the jobs simply weren't created, not simply going declining in existing businesses or measurable marketplace. Combined with the countless other factors which influence hiring and cyclical trends.
I'm not sure what the solution is here but I'm skeptical of a lot of economic research.
I'm not saying quantitative research can exist without data, I'm not sure where you got that idea. But not all data is quantitative. Data that is non-numeric is qualitative data. A case-study, for example, is often qualitative, though incorporating plenty of numeric data in support.
Other perhaps obvious indicators of risk would be likely be lay offs, prolonged unemployment, significant job or status loss, loss of assets, foreclosure / eviction, divorce, death of spouse and/or family, severe illness or diagnosis, chronic pain, chronic health conditions, isolation, loss of social standing, drug/alcohol abuse, etc.
I think we spend too much effort on avoidance without acknowledging that people come to a conclusion of ending their life for multiple reasons, and people aren't really falling for the prevention.
Did the underlying irreconcilable problem get solved? No? Okay imma head out.
Does the person have to be in pain or struggling with something? Intervention failed
Setting up cultural barriers doesn't prevent it, setting up religious mental barriers doesn't prevent it.
The crux of the idea is that suicide hurts those still living. Maybe there is room to prepare the living for that, instead of just being collateral damage in a failed or missed intervention opportunity.
My primary argument is that our culture is too one-dimensional on this issue and maybe shouldn’t just be prevent the suicide just because.
Does the above approach have merit? Why or why not?
(edit: just saw another poster who said people that attempt it and survive don't try it again 90% of the time. that somewhat influences my thoughts, but they still attempted)
I was actually scared the first time I went to Switzerland because I was wondering if that was a low key way to off someone
Posting because, if allegations are true, it only reinforces my belief that our white collar workplaces have become highly mentally taxing and employees need judgement-free resources provided by employers to deal with them.
I took short term disability leave to deal with severe mental health issues. My career didn't end, in fact, I got a promotion very shortly after returning to work. I didn't even lose my security clearance and I fully disclosed my hospitalization/disability leave. My clearance is required to do my job.
* All of this guy's info is from the Blind app, which is basically a step above the bathroom wall when it comes to information.
* He himself was fired from Facebook, so it's not like he's unbiased.
I know nothing about the situation, but I do know that for most companies it is a difficult balance between respecting privacy for the deceased and performing an investigation if it was indicated that something in the workplace was a factor.
Seeing what people in other countries go through, willingly, sacrificing for their families and persevering in relative poverty, I can't help but feel that sentiments like these come off as weak and entitled. If anything it shows that life in the first world is too comfortable, which understandably makes it hard to appreciate how easy we have it, even in the "roughest" of tech jobs.
Mental welfare is very different from survival.