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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

The one at MIT, Nightline, was smart because it pitched itself as a general "call for any reason at night" number -- I called a couple times to get urgent help (after someone tried unsuccessfully to mug me, and I needed to figure out who to report to) -- not just for suicidal people.

I suspect there are depressed people who may ultimately kill themselves who, if there were some number solely for "suicidal people", would never call, but would be likely to call "call for any reason", and then get access to mental health care in addition to whatever the phone operator gives them.

Nice to see that somehow the MIT administration fucked up Nightline, too, so it's closed for a year. Good job guys!

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We have a Nightline at University of Leeds for anyone to call for anything. It's a great thing for people who just need someone to talk to. Whether they're feeling suicidal or just a bit stressed over exams.

And the number is on the back of every student ID, which means anyone can find their number really easily.

It's apparently closed permanently, but there is some prospect that something will replace it: http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N58/nightline.html

The biggest problem seems to have been that word got out about it outside the MIT community, so that they were getting many calls from non-MIT people. But, their policy was to try to help anyone they could: http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N43/nightline.html

Maybe it would have been better to change the policy than to scrap the whole service.

(BTW I was one of the first Nightline staffers back in 1978.)

I lost most of my faith in the MIT administration in the 1990s when I was a student; they're basically a bunch of BU/small liberal arts college grad professional administrators of colleges running the institute into the ground. That's the biggest failure of the MIT model vs. a place like Stanford; there's not much chance MIT grads will eventually want to be university administrators.

>They're basically a bunch of BU/small liberal arts college grad professional administrators of colleges running the institute into the ground.

Your arrogance is truly breathtaking. I can't believe people shit on other's majors and college choices like this.

And your lack of ability to understand what was written is even more breathtaking.

The man's point was that it is not suitable for a technical institution like that to be managed and administered by non-technical people. There are a number of reasons for that but the main one is that they lack the expertise needed to run such a place and can't fully appreciate the culture of hacking that many such institutes were built upon.

Same goes for companies. The most successful software companies out there are those run by engineers. Think Google. When "business people" take over, things often have a way of turning for worse. I've seen it time and again.

He's replying to a comment that said their help line was taken down. That's not a technology problem, and I fail to see how an engineer or computer science grad would have better tackled that issue.

I agree, been saying that for a long time. You can't have "business people" running companies that run on software.

I think people are better at running the schools they themselves attended. MIT grads would be better running MIT than non-MIT grads; MIT grads, however, would be horrible at running small liberal arts colleges.

(the idea is probably a MIT undergrad or grad student who then goes to another school or business for some kind of management experience, then eventually returns to MIT, like some of the best administrators; or, a professor who also does admin functions. Professional administrators have grown in number dramatically faster than enrollment, which is part of why tuition is so high. We don't need ~50 deans.

Way to go to miss the point completely. Stupidity is also breathtaking, reading comprehension might help.

I think you're right that it needs to be more general support, someone I loved had just the last 7% of her life 'covered' by suicide hotlines and 26 years of suffering before them. The final days, weeks, months, it was all just a delaying measure at that point because she'd already come to terms with what she wanted to do.

I don't really think the solution is more hotlines, even generalized ones because you have to want to get help every single time. I think the solution is to shine so much light on mental illness it loses all of the mystery and stigma and becomes as widely discussed and debated as the following 'mentally healthy' ways to kill yourself or someone else:

- Euthanasia, or "mercy" killing because we are glad someone's suffering has ended

- Abortion, literally deciding to end another person's life who is incapable of asking you not to

And of course, the preferred method of suicide that most people will use:

- a slow poison of shitty diets and deadly vices

We never even discussed mental illness or even suicide in high school like we did ethical dilemmas.

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