It is a well established fact now that suicide is contagious. Just the mention of it is enough to cause a spike in suicide attempts.
Then how do you tell people that they can be helped about it without triggering the very thing?
Then how do you tell people that they can be helped about it without triggering the very thing?
The solution is to land on what you want your audience to do in the affirmative. For the pink elephant you can say, “Don’t think of a pink elephant: put your mental energy into imagining Mikey mouse riding a surf board.”
Similarly, here we can say something like “If you’re feeling suicidal, do x.” I’m not sure what x should be. Maybe call a hotline. I would have to think more about it, but the point is that landing on an affirmative action in this manner will offset the “pink elephant” effect.