Regular commenter Bella Q requested that we note that today is World Suicide Prevention Day and sent me these nifty graphics too. One of the things you can do, as explained in the graphic below is to contact your Senators and ask them to support SB 2680 – The Mental Health Reform Bill. The full text of the bill can be found here, as well as information on its bipartisan group of co-sponsors, how it is calendared within the Senate, etc. In short SB 2680 will:
- Invest in mental health services and supports that are evidence-based, so people know they are getting care that works.
- Prioritize early identification and intervention, so people can get the right mental health care at the right time.
- Emphasize outcome measures, so we know if people are getting better or not.
- Maintain the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, so people can help day or night
From personal experience, and I’m sure its something everyone reading this knows all too well, people can choose to commit suicide very quickly and without demonstrating any of the normal indicators. If you are concerned about someone, here’s some places you can go to find resources:
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
Suicide Prevention Resource Center
The National Institutes of Mental Health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Mary G
That really is bipartisan. I don’t think there are many things that David Vitter and Al Franken agree on.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: Certainly not undergarments!
satby
Thanks Adam and to BellaQ for spreading the word. I just shared on FB too.
Howard Beale IV
Here’s a shoutout to @Soonergrunt-hope all is going well.
redshirt
Suicide is painless.
TIL that the director’s 16 year old son wrote that song for the movie M.A.S.H. and has made more off the royalties then Dad did for directing.
Arclite
Sounds good to me. I’d trade a couple F-35s to put a few hundred million dollars into suicide prevention.
Thoughtful David
As this is an open thread, I’m going comment on one from here that’s about a day old. Its the one talking about Hugh Hewitt and his expressing his admiration for Vlad Putin. He said Putin is better than Obama because
I didn’t see that anyone else had mentioned it, so I wanted to bring this up: that is pure “the ends justify the means” crap. It’s ok that Putin has his enemies in Russia killed. Its ok that he has people who speak against him disappeared. Its ok that he has opposition journalists jailed. After all, it “serves the country’s national interest.”
Here’s the key point: “The end justifies the means” is pretty much the definition of evil.
Once you start down that road you can pretty much do anything and think it’s justified. And pretty soon you’re slaughtering, jailing, and enslaving millions, because it “serves the country.”
This Hugh Hewitt guy has just decided that he supports evil.
They are who we think they are.
Thoughtful David
As one who has had a loved one on suicide watch before, yes, yes, yes, yes, let’s pour a few hundred billion into mental health research and care, including suicide prevention. Mental health issues are so overlooked and under resourced.
Kropadope
@redshirt: What about the pain felt by your friends and family?
JMG
One of my dearest professional friends took his own life in 2004. Complete shock to even his wife and children. The lunch he made to take to work was on the kitchen counter when they found out he’d started his car in the garage and left it running. I don’t know if I could have done anything, but the guilt just from wondering lives on. This is about the most worthy cause I can imagine.
PS: This is why legislating well is different from campaigning well. You never know the issue when you and one of your opponents agree, so burning bridges is not smart.
redshirt
@Kropadope: It’s a song from a hit movie/TV show. Not my opinion.
debbie
people can choose to commit suicide very quickly and without demonstrating any of the normal indicators
This hasn’t been emphasized enough, especially in regard to adolescents. Everyone thinks they need a checklist to tell them of the things to be suspicious of, things like moodiness (as if that’s not normal). I don’t even know what a “normal indicator” is. I think the best prevention is communication, to let kids, friends, etc. know they always have someone (you) to talk to and to confide in.
Kropadope
@Thoughtful David:
Putin is destroying his country’s economy and international credibility. But Republicans don’t actually care about the usual markers of societal well-being, they like a strong daddy government who will destroy all its enemies, as defined by Republicans, and institutions that promote free thought.
The oppression is the desired end. It’s the only end Putin is furthering. He is destroying his country.
He just declared it. He probably decided it a while ago.
Kropadope
@redshirt: Oh, sorry for being a philistine.
redshirt
Well, this is bound to be a light and carefree Saturday night thread. :(
Phylllis
My district has several staff trained as Youth Mental Health First Aid instructors, and our goal is to have all staff and at least 10% of the community trained as ‘first aiders’. There is also an Adult Mental Health First Aid curriculum. The ‘first-aider’ training takes a day and is designed to assist the average person have a greater understanding of mental health issues and how to provide help. We have received so much positive feedback regarding implementing this. More information here.
debbie
This hasn’t been emphasized enough, especially in regard to adolescents. Everyone thinks they need a checklist to tell them of the things to be suspicious of, things like moodiness (as if that’s not normal). I don’t even know what a “normal indicator” is.
I think the best prevention is communication, to let kids, friends, etc. know they always have someone (you) to talk to and to confide in.
Adam L Silverman
@Thoughtful David: Its also not true. Putin has served Putin and his immediate circle’s interests very well, Russia not so much. The economy has contracted significantly, both because of the drop in oil prices and the sanctions from seizing Crimea, and is projected to continue to do so. Civil Rights/Civil Liberties have been curtailed significantly. The media has been almost completely brought to heel and placed under state control. Hewitt lives in denial. He screams he’s for the Constitution and Freedom and Liberty, but is really a small “a” authoritarian. He seeks to dominate anyone weaker (basically his family and his employees as he’s too chicken shit to try it on anyone else) and rolls over and piddles on his belly for anyone he perceives is more powerful.
debbie
I’m not spam, dammit. Can this please be fixed?
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Nope, you’re not spam. You’re trash. All six of your attempts went right to trash.
Have you considered leaving the trailer park?//
debbie
Now it says I’m in moderation. I used words that other people have used in this thread. Help!
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
What did I say to deserve the trash?!?
P.S. Thanks!
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Arclite: I’d trade all the f-35s for anything useful.
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
Of course, what actually happens in the movie is that his friends pretend to go along with his plan, give him a sedative instead, and “cure” him by getting him laid.
The movie has not aged well, shall we say, but it’s certainly not in favor of suicide.
raven
Here’s what our old pal has to say:
redshirt
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): But then how would we fight that enemy air force that doesn’t exist?
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: I have no idea.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Oy vey…
ETA: Do I want to know what this was in regard to?
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Don’t you live in Reynoldsburg?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@redshirt: We managed well enough during my career without them, I’m sure they would do fine now.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: The CIC forum the other night in response to:
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m in Bexley. Something happen in Reynoldsburg?
Never mind. I just figured that out.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Gotcha. Doesn’t really make the comment any better.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: I had a vague memory that you were in one of the eastern suburbs, so I took a shot at the joke.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Any suburb in Ohio would probably have worked. Except maybe Kay’s.
Thoughtful David
@Adam L Silverman: @Kropadope:
I agree with you on all of the points, but my point was actually independent of whether Vlad Putin is any good at what he does, and it’s independent of anything specific about Russia. My point is that “the end justifies the means” is the heart of evil, and that Hewitt went there.
Anoniminous
One of the first things Reagan did was to eliminate Federally funded Mental Health programs using the standard Conservative bullshit excuse state and local governments and community organizations could do a better job. Without federal money the state and local governments closed their programs and facilities and most of the community organizations closed or greatly restricted their services.
Reversing this idiotic decision is one of the Democratic Party Platform sections:
Adam L Silverman
@Thoughtful David: ok
raven
@Adam L Silverman: I’m banned but I just keep writing really nasty responses. I have seen some of his statements deleted after I wrote but I have no way of knowing if they just go in the trash or he reads them.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I live with bipolar disorder. A gun could have changed that.
117 people die every single day by suicide in America. Her story is powerful and important.
I have statistics that I’ll omit so as not to derail this thread into a discussion of those stats instead of a general prevention discussion, which is the focus Adam wisely highlights. Thank you, Dr. Silverman, for the post on this topic.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): She the daughter of a good friend but, then, you knew that.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Going offline on response.
Tee
Teaching children (and adults) that they are not broken if they don’t think, feel act the same as everyone else. Teaching children that all feelings are valid and can be expressed in a safe way, i.e. talk, art therapy, physical training(martial arts or just plain calisthenics). Teaching everyone that there is value in all life and finding joy in small ways helps. Providing a ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, arms to hug or words of acceptance goes a long way.
scav
@Kropadope: Russia is well-led rather exactly the way a drop-in hedge-fund Wall Street CEO leads a leveraged company into the ground while looting it of assets. But the CEOs in both instances apparently deserve all our automatic approbation and every ruble they extract and parachute away with in the brave new conservative world that must be made great again. Farage helped lead the stampede to Brexit and then scarpered.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: My thanks to you, as well. If you believe there’s a net positive cost v. benefit ratio in sharing the data I refer to, please do so.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I think it’s swell if that’s what you mean!
eemom
@Anoniminous:
On another Reagan/mental health-related note, Hinckley was released today.
raven
Soul Miner’s Daughter doing the Natty at Bristol!
Thor Heyerdahl
I watched the fascinating documentary “The Ivory Game” today at the Toronto Film Fest. It goes into the heart of the global ivory trafficking and poaching crisis with filming in Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Hong Kong, Vietnam and China. The film looks at the lives of those who are battling the syndicates and corruption.
It’s coming out on Netflix on Nov 4.
redshirt
@Thor Heyerdahl: Is China to blame for all of it/most of it?
Adam L Silverman
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Not a problem, happy to do the post – as happy as one can be given the subject matter.
sukabi
@Thoughtful David: pretty much…way back in the early days of the W clusterfuck, when they were trying everything to justify torture, there was a female officer involved in “implementing procedures” in Iraq that was a “born again”, when asked how she could be involved she said words to the effect of “When you’ve been saved it’s very freeing, you can do anything because you’ve already been redeemed.”
Truly evil wastes of flesh.
raven
OK, I’m trying to watch two games and comment. Better stop one.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
I’m assuming Jodie Foster has gotten a pre-emptive restraining order, just in case.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Bexley wouldn’t. Grove City OTOH….
ruemara
I’m all for suicide prevention, but, & bear with me, I hear so much of this message that it’s a permanent solution to temporary problem. Or, think of all the loved ones you’d leave behind. Sometimes, I want to ask, what responsibiity do you take on for your suicidal person? Do you call? What do you bring into their existence that keeps them reminded of love, connection and goodness? It’s not enough to say it only during the crisis. You have to do it long enough for the lesson of connection to sink in.
debbie
@ruemara:
But when you’re in the midst of a crisis, it seems anything but temporary.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, definitely Grove City!
rikyrah
Hillary’s Earpiece
@Johngcole
People who spent 8 yrs screaming “Obama doesn’t represent me” feigning anger that HRC won’t represent them.
White reporters play along.
SiubhanDuinne
@Thoughtful David:
@Adam L Silverman:
@Kropadope:
It’s not just Hewitt, and it’s not just Putin. I don’t know how to link actual Twitter tweets, but saw this earlier today (h/t our friend and sometimes commenter Southern Beale):
That tweet is from, wait for it, Frank Luntz.
(One hundred percent approval? Really, Frank? That didn’t set off any alarms for you?)
ruemara
@debbie: You can’t call it temporary when people have lived years in crisis. Too many think it’s “an” incident that spurs suicide. The pain of existence can be year after year that eventually pushes you to a suicidal crisis, but it damned well isn’t temporary.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: It is amazing that people that rant and rave about fighting against being forced to self filter for politeness seem to have very thin skins when someone points out their behavior and attitudes.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
That tweet just shows you how rabid they have become! What would Ronnie say?
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: 100% seems low to me for Kim Jon Un. I’d have expected at least 114%.
debbie
@ruemara:
That’s just it. You can’t generalize. It could be long-term depression, something unexpected like the loss of a job, or just a “what the fuck” kind of impulse.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: There was a 20% MOE.
Mart
Couple years back daughter on other side of the country kept saying how depressed she was, and how she waned to kill herself to all the family here. Other daughter talked to boyfriend’s counselor mother, who told us to get off our asses and start calling for help. We did. Called local services hear that provided us with great ideas on how to talk to her, and connected her with local help. So glad we did. Really helped turn things around. Sure beat pretending nothing is wrong, or it will go away, and then have something terrible happen.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
At the risk of derailing the appropriate focus of the topic – prevention – I’ll offer some data that can be interpreted as supporting a method of prevention. Than method is limiting access to firearms by secure storage methods. The information is from the CDC:
Suicide is the 10th leading overall cause of death in the United States as illustrated by 2014 CDC data – LINK
There is an alarming incidence in the 3 age groups in the 10-34 range, where suicide – in general – is the 2nd leading cause of death. It is the 4th leading cause of death in both age groups of the 35-54 range, dropping to 7th 55-64 and out of the top 10 after 65. Those causes include disease as well as injury.
The statistics change dramatically when the methods of suicide are in the crosstabs, if you will. Firearms make a difference.
The 2014 CDC stats on cause of violence related injury death. Worth noting is that” violence related injury death” is a category that excludes diseases, and includes motor vehicle accidents, poisonings, drowning, and fatal falls, in addition to homicide and suicide – LINK
Suicide by firearm is the 3rd leading cause of death in 5 age groups: 10-14 and 35-65+ (all 4 groups within that range) and the 4th leading cause of death in 2 others 15-34 (both groups in that range).
It’s the 4th leading cause of violent injury death overall – while suicide by suffocation is the 5th and suicide by poisoning is the 7th.
The lethality of guns with regard to suicide is underexamined. Means matter, as noted in “I live with bipolar disorder. A gun could have changed that” linked above.
Old Dan and Little Anne
A nearby assemblymen killed himself the other day because of fraud charges.
Link.
Pinacacci
@rikyrah: Oh lord yes, that was NPR this morning. I wanted to scream.
Tee
@ruemara: you give them a lifeline to hang onto as the darkness closes in on them. You give them hope and a human connection to life and you help find the tools (whether it is drugs, talk therapy, etc) until they can deal. And if the person has value to your life you work to maintain a connection. I am still in contact with people I helped twenty years ago. Not everyone can do that for their own mental health, (sometimes toxic people try to manipulate caring individuals), but when that happens directing them to other resources still helps.
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: that’s counting the people he’s had “put in the ground” right?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Landline polling only.
Thor Heyerdahl
@redshirt: There was a discussion with the directors after the screening.
More than 90% of the world ivory trade goes to China, but the path flows often through containers shipped to Hong Kong, but also via Vietnam. Ivory import from “legal” sources is allowed in China but document falsification gets around that. Ivory trade is apparently the third largest criminal syndicate activity in the world behind terrorism and drugs.
Even if the West demands an end to illegal ivory, China can come back and say “yes but you can still buy ivory in the West.” There is a federal US law against the ivory trade but it’s only outlawed at the state level in a few states. Only France outlawed it in the EU within the last couple months – otherwise trade is still legal in the EU.
Apparently demand for Rhino horn leads to having the animal stuffed by a taxidermist, shipped to China, then the horn is cut off and replaced with a fake and the ivory is sold.
The cynic in me wonders if ivory is outlawed that people will go on permafrost expeditions to Siberia to harvest mammoth tusks.
Anyway check out http://www.theivorygame.com.
Adam L Silverman
@sukabi: Perhaps. I’ll have to check the crosstabs.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Good point. Luntz is losing his edge.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@debbie: As noted in literature:
Infinite Jest ― David Foster Wallace
Add a firearm to that terror, and the leap from the burning window will happen more often than not.
@ruemara:
That is exactly the case in my opinion as well. I believe David Foster Wallace got tired and was so worn out by the difficulty of living without successful treatment once his meds didn’t work that he died from his depression. I noted that to my p-doc and fellow DFW (and TVZ!) fan, who did not disagree. These diseases can be fatal, which is why access to treatment is critical. But not everyone survives, even with treatment, and their loved ones should feel a loss similar to that from a cancer death.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): And he played in my tennis program in Urbana.
Mary G
This bill is great, especially the bipartisan co-sponsors, but how do we get it through the house and its insane “Freedom Caucus”? I got so mad at Loretta Sanchez this week. She’s trying for the Republican vote, which is crazy since they are going extinct in California, and made a joint appearance with the hideous Darrell Issa in San Diego on some military thing. Traitor.
jacy
The people I’ve known who have successfully killed themselves, it was always a surprise. The people who attempted suicide and failed mostly had shown signs that people were aware of. I don’t know if this indicates the old “cry for help” idea, and the people who were unsuccessful really were just trying in some way to reach out, while the people who had come to the firm conclusion that they were leaving made sure that it would work.
debbie
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Maybe I don’t count because I didn’t succeed, but I know that for me, it was in the moment of a crisis I could not see my way out of. I had a thought, I acted, I failed, I moved on.
The first time I got through undetected, but the second time my parents found out about it. I didn’t think much of it because the moment had passed, but almost 40 years later, I read a blog post by a friend of a friend whose son had killed himself. He had had no inkling of the son’s pain and was filled with guilt and recrimination. It wasn’t until I read that post that I realized what I had put my parents through.
Major Major Major Major
@Mary G: She sucks. I’ve disliked her since the very first time I heard an interview with her.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
For me, it was a dark and twisted sense of humor that brought me back to my senses. I had terrible money problems (to the point of afraid to look at the mail, afraid to pick up the phone), had lost my job very unpleasantly a couple of months earlier, and was seriously working out a foolproof way to block ventilation in the kitchen, turn on the gas, lie down, and just go out.
Until I realized that I hadn’t paid the bill so the gas had been cut off. True story. I got the irony and took a different path.
rikyrah
vlh
@coton_luver
Day after #911 Rosie donated $1M. Billionaire #Trump took $150k from #NY Sm. Bus. recovery fund
redshirt
Adam, this is a very worthy topic, but can we get a less depressing Open Thread to talk about football and stupid stuff?
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Irony really is something. After hours of vomiting my guts out, the thought occurred to me that I really wasn’t very good at suicide, and I never tried again. Punishment worse than the crime kind of thing, I guess.
Matt McIrvin
@redshirt: And the song was intended to be the dumbest song in the world.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
I know a lot of people say that suicide is a cowardly act, but I have often thought it takes a level of courage I don’t have. For me, it wasn’t that I wasn’t very good at suicide, it was more the intellectual O. Henry/Möbius strip of recognising that the very thing that had brought me to the contemplation of suicide was the very thing that prevented it from happening.
amk
bbc fp has a screaming 24-point hillary apologizes to trump supporters headline. No analysis of if what she said is true or not. They should move their HQ to DC. They would fit right in with the current crowd of bw hacks.
The Moar You Know
@Thor Heyerdahl: The high-end acoustic guitar building industry – small as it is – has been using mammoth ivory, AKA “fossil ivory”, for the last thirty years. For restoration only, I’ve never seen a maker who supplies it as a stock option. Everyone uses cowbone these days, the difference in tone (there is one) is minimal at best. I have seen walrus tusk also sold and used for the same purpose.
I used to have a nifty sheet in my old shop that showed the difference between the structure of elephant ivory and mammoth ivory. You can’t pass one off as the other if you know what to look for, and it’s not hard to see.
I doubt that there’s going to be a stampede for mammoth ivory. It’s been sitting in the ground for about 30-50 thousand years and it gets stained pretty badly in that amount of time, and bleaching it makes it into a crumbling, cracked mess.
redshirt
@The Moar You Know: Do you know, or anyone, if it’s possible to make ivory artificially?
redshirt
Also, has 9/10 always been “Suicide Prevention Day”, or is that a post 9/11 thing?
Because I just keep seeing an image of my head of that jumper. And who could blame him?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: I know, and I count you as giving me a 2nd degree connection to him.
Feathers
One of the hard things to face is that we still don’t know much about suicide. Although there has been a spike in suicide rates in recent years, the overall rate is the same as it was a century ago. Rates are similar around the world. The risk seems to be in impulsiveness as much as depression.
Link: Q&A with Matthew Nock Note: Nock is a researcher at Harvard who is doing very interesting research in who commits suicide and in trying to build predictive tools. He won a MacArthur Fellowship a few years back. There are several other articles about him and his work in the Harvard Gazette.
One of the real risk factors that no one seems to understand is bariatric surgery. Patients who have had weight loss surgery have a ten times risk of dying by suicide or overdose. I know people who have decided to or have had the surgery, and I don’t know whether to bring it up. I’m very overweight and had doctors bring up weight loss surgery, often quiet casually and cheerfully, without asking about my mental health history. One doctor suggested it even knowing my ADHD diagnosis and history with depression and anxiety. It’s a terrible world sometimes. Here’s more on the subject from a website that unfortunately is no longer updating. JFS Special: The latest research on actual deaths seen after surgery for weight loss
Matt McIrvin
@jacy: I lost an old childhood friend who was an exception: everyone knew he was having suicidal feelings, and he was getting therapy for it. But he killed himself anyway, with pills. Had it all methodically plotted out in advance. Took his kids on a cruise beforehand; in hindsight, he was saying goodbye. I doubt anyone could have prevented it short of having him involuntarily committed.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: Just put a new one up as reminder for tomorrow’s AMA with Cheryl Rofer.
Lizzy L
@amk: That was to be expected. I have a very mixed reaction to this. I thought the speech she made in August calling out Trump’s supporters as racists was terrific. I wish she had not made the “deplorables” comment. I thought it was clumsy. OTOH: having made the “deplorables” comments, I wish she had chosen to stand by them, because although they are clumsy, they are also truthful. (The irony of Trump’s supporters calling Clinton out for not being politically correct makes my head spin.)
GOTV GOTV GOTV.
Anoniminous
@eemom:
31 years ago.
Sirhan Sirhan is still behind bars.
Omnes Omnibus
This is one of those threads where I have little to offer (if I ever do). To the best of my knowledge, the closest I have come to a person connected with me committing or trying to commit suicide is when my 90-something at the time grandmother let people know that she had enough painkillers around the house to check out if she needed to go to a nursing home as a permanent move. I don’t know if I have been unaware of people around me or if my circle* of friends and family have been lucky on this particular front.
*Meatspace circle, that is.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you good sir.
rikyrah
About That Michelle Obama Essence Photo …
She Matters: I have so many questions. Like, where has she been hiding that all this time?
BY: DEMETRIA LUCAS D’OYLEY
Posted: September 9, 2016
I said I wasn’t going to write about it. But I have to. I. Have. To.
On Wednesday evening, I was practicing my ritual of procrastinating by browsing through Instagram. A friend, an Essence editor, posted a new image of the first couple that will run in the upcoming October issue. The Obamas are on the cover.
If you saw the picture, I know you saw … what everyone who saw the photo saw. All over social media, everyone’s talking about first lady Michelle Obama’s, uh, surprise ending. Constantly.
I want to be respectful of my FLOTUS. I do. I do not wish to objectify her. I will not. But it’s pointless to pretend not to see what we saw. And I’m making a public observation because, I mean, it stands out! It sits up! It cannot be missed. It’s the first thing everyone sees who looks at the image.
Case in point: I showed the picture to my husband with no commentary. He laughed.
Husband: That ain’t junk in the trunk. That’s luggage!
Me: That. Is. The. First. Lady.
Husband: She is a woman and I am a man with good vision.
Me: GREG!
Husband: You don’t need 20-20 to see that, though.
Feathers
@jacy: One of the reasons antidepressants carry a suicide risk warning is that if you are depressed it is very difficult to actually get anything done in any sort of effective way. The danger, especially at the beginning of treatment, is that the antidepressants will increase ones efficacy before actually improving mood. At least that is the theory. Also, newer research shows that depression vastly increases suicidal thoughts, while disorders of impulse are the danger signal for suicide. One Australian study on people who had survived suicide attempts showed that the decision to commit suicide was usually made within 15 minutes of the attempt. Which is why guns are such a hazard and just having a difficult to open safe cuts the risk greatly.
SiubhanDuinne
@redshirt:
I imagine many, if not most, of us would have made the same choice. But the horrible dilemma faced by those trapped on the upper levels of the Twin Towers is a very different thing from those who have been wrestling (perhaps for months or years) with mental illness and/or existential demons and have decided on the “easy way out.”
Which is to say that, as valuable as “Suicide Prevention Day” may be, if the date was selected solely because of the 9/11 jumpers, I find that pretty cynical and emotionally manipulative.
gene108
@Anoniminous:
Reagan coincided with a push to shift mental healthcare to community / local settings, rather than “warehousing” patients and effectively locking them up for life.
The reformer agreed the big mental health facilities should be closed down. The problem is Reaganism started taking over and the funding never materialized.
Like charter schools, there are no ideas with good intentions American conservatives cannot warp or undermine, regardless of the harm done to people.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@debbie: @SiubhanDuinne: Both your stories are examples of suicide attempts that were impulsive, which could have been successful had a firearm been available.
Many people who live with the brain diseases like major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and even sever anxiety disorder will make an impulsive attempt on a really bad day, and a handy firearm can mean the difference between an attempt and a success. But people die by other methods daily. And they can’t all be saved. Nor can families necessarily know how ill they are that day – or at all. Any more than loved ones can diagnose another fatal disease like cancer or an infection.
I hate that love ones feel guilt – however appropriate it seems to them – because so often they had no way of knowing how ill their loved one was. And compassionate communication cannot save everyone; even treatment can’t. But that doesn’t mean an effort isn’t worthwhile, when there’s an indication of a problem.
@redshirt: The first World Suicide Prevention Day was held in 2003 and was an initiative of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, World Suicide Prevention Day has taken place on 10th September each year. I suspect it’s unrelated to 9/11 only because it’s a WHO initiative rather than a US focused organization.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
As an old white lady who pretty much worships the Obamas, I must tell you I absolutely LOVE the Essence photos I’ve seen online. Gonna buy my own copy as soon as the new issue is available on newsstands later this week!
Michelle is just perfection. And clearly, POTUS agrees with me :-)
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: Actually she didn’t walk it back. She apologized for speaking in generalities, then doubled down on tying the racists, xenophobes, etc to Trump through Bannon and others.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Feathers: The lift of mood that occurs in the spring is thought to be why spring is the time with the highest incidence of suicides, so the same “lift” of the ADs can allow for inertia to be overcome enough for the suicide to an action as opposed to a thought/wish “ideation” in the medical terminology.
Even in quotes, I wish people would not refer to suicide as “the easy way” out because in my opinion that blames someone for death from a disease, or a tragic impulsive decision – which may itself (the impulsivity) indicate an underlying illness, even if low level or acute as opposed to chronic.
Lizzy L
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks, Adam. That makes me much happier. I was lazy and only looked at the headlines, always a mistake. Bad Lizzy! No cookie for you.
Re suicide: three friends of mine killed themselves, all men, two with guns. One — he was pretty severely mentally ill (schizophrenia) — did it at a gun range, which I’m told is not uncommon. It was a shock but no surprise to anyone who knew him. The other one who used a gun surprised everyone — his wife, his kid, his dearest friends, his work, his community — and broke everyone’s heart. No one realized the pain was so acute. I have often wondered if he would have done it had the gun not been — right there. No way to know.
eemom
@redshirt:
It is really just unspeakably ignorant to refer to the people who jumped on 9/11 as suicides.
Not to stigmatize suicide victims in any way; but that is just unspeakably ignorant.
Here, maybe you can catch some semblance of a clue from this.
gene108
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
From the link. It makes sense. Suicide will cause you physical harm. Picking a method that has a strong probability for failure can lead to life long disabilities. Drink a bottle of Drano and you may vomit enough back up to hurt your throat. Slit your wrists incorrectly and you do not bleed out, but you may end up damaging muscles or tendons.
Which leads to this point:
If you’ve been on a downward slope and thoughts of suicide pop in and out of your head, you are spending months, weeks or days reviewing the harm various methods can cause your body, until you settle on one you think will work.
You do not want to try the others because you have eliminated them due to downside risk of failure out weighs, in your mind, the chances of a successful suicide.
Guns make all that planning and deliberation moot. Just point and shoot.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@gene108: Exactly the point; thank you for engaging with it. Firearms are almost always a successful means of suicide, and what could have been an impulsive decision at a time of excruciating pain can turn into a final decision. Gun safes can save lives.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): While i do have guns, I never keep ammo in the house. No way an accident or anything else can happen if there is no ammo around.
redshirt
@eemom: Whatever. Ain’t going to argue semantics.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: @Omnes Omnibus: That was my father’s approach as well. Accidents were too easy to avoid that way. He also kept guns in a gun safe to prevent theft; his opinion was that he was responsible for protecting people from his weapons. At least in the hands of others. /Kidding (mostly; he and his game of stud buddies – stakes unscarred by limitations of course – did take some shots at a local motorcycle gang who interrupted their monthly post-trap game by roaring around the clubhouse lot firing handguns in the air.)
Hob
@Feathers: One of the most realistic (to me) depictions of the line between major depression and suicidal behavior was the Luke Wilson character in The Royal Tenenbaums. After walking around in a sad fog for years, one day he finds himself looking in the bathroom mirror and saying “I’m going to kill myself tomorrow”… and then he tries to kill himself about 20 seconds later instead. So much of the experience of depression is about stasis, nothing moving and nothing getting through, that the moment when you find you have the energy to make any kind of decision is a very dangerous moment— there’s a strong rush of validation attached to your thoughts at such a time, no matter what they are, just because you managed to think them.
Ruckus
I’ve stated here before that decades ago I worked in a mental health clinic/suicide hotline for a few years. This was back before someone’s buddy Ronnie fucked up the crappy system we had and made it worse. It was rewarding, scary, necessary, terrifying and in the end helped me make a decision that I’ve looked back upon many times to sort of regret, that of not choosing a medical career. I know that sounds selfish, but my experience taught me that I could not separate my self from the clients. I had, as I’ve related here one suicide call, it lasted for about 45 minutes and I don’t know the outcome after she hung up. I can still hear her voice in my head. I can still fell the panic as I tried to figure out what to do. And I had been well trained. But it was just her and me. I don’t think I failed her but I’m also not sure I helped.
All of the above is to relay that suicide takes a toll on everyone. It rarely actually solves a problem that can’t be fixed in some reasonable way, but for that person considering it, it generally doesn’t feel like an unreasonable plan of action, at the time. People are at the end of their road when they consider it, they don’t see any other way, no fork in the road for them. Some days I’m amazed that the stats aren’t higher than they are. But without a system to help find that road for them to travel on, there is only what they see.
I’ve been there, not from depression, or mental illness but from pain. Like others here I suffer from migraines. I’ve had them so bad that the idea of ending it quickly was appealing. I could think just enough to understand that the pain would subside at some point and that even though it would come back, and it has many, many more times, it is temporary. Also medication came along that helps a lot. But lots of people can’t see pain as being temporary, it hurts too much, right now, whatever that pain is, mental or physical.
Mandalay
@Lizzy L:
Apparently not. There was an article which discussed that in Mother Jones just yesterday: Confessions of a Gun Range Worker:
gene108
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Once you’ve become psychotic and the hallucinations kick in, you maybe thinking suicide is the only humane way out of whatever bits and pieces of life your brain has irrationally cobbled together as its own reality. The alternative, or inhumane, solution would be getting a gun and killing the people you imagine are threatening you.
Hob
@ruemara: This isn’t to disagree, but just to point out that the same self-isolating thought process can occur even when there are frequent reminders of those connections. That is, it’s unfortunately totally possible to hear “I love you” many times a day and see evidence of it every day and still convince oneself that they’re only saying that because 1. they’re just trying to be nice because I’m obviously looking needy, 2. they think they love me but they don’t know the terrible real me, 3. they really love me but they just don’t understand that they’ll ultimately be better off without me, etc., etc., etc. It’s still essential to be there for the person in any way possible, but you can’t really look at it in terms of showing them evidence that they’ll understand— that kind of logic just doesn’t necessarily apply, and then you run the risk of getting mad at them for not taking your word for it. It’s more about just the basic fact of being there, I think.
Hob
@Ruckus: You can’t possibly have been worse than the suicide hotline person I called once when I was 15, who listened impatiently to my inability to talk in complete sentences for about half a minute and then said disgustedly: “Call me back”— and hung up. I’m not kidding. It was so blindingly inappropriate that I think I actually burst out laughing (in a kind of “zombie momentarily shocked into making a noise” way)… to this day I have no idea if they meant it as some kind of therapeutic slap in the face or what, but the main effect it had was just that I didn’t bother calling the hotline any more.
Ruckus
@Lizzy L:
The man who bunked next to me in boot camp tried to slit his wrists one day in the bathroom. Some of the older guys will understand this, he tore apart a band razor cartridge and used that and that is not something someone does on a whim. Someone went in to use the facilities and found him and saved his life. He had confided in me, treated me like a friend and I never saw the signals. Later, once I was trained they were so obvious that I’m sure I could have gotten him help. But I didn’t have a clue at the time, I figured that it was just being in a new environment that was stressful for most of us. Some of us talked, some kept to themselves the first 2-3 weeks so nothing seemed unusual, at the time.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@gene108: That quote from Infinite Jest isn’t used literally or intended – in my opinion – to describe actual psychosis with hallucinations, but as an almost too clever by half (given his own health history) turn of phrase that Wallace used – hence the “so called” preface. Which is not to say I disagree at all with your point w/r/t the humane approach to delusions. But I have to be pedantic about the use of the term out of respect for the author.
Ruckus
@Hob:
And you’re still here. OK sorry, that was a smart ass answer in very bad taste. But it worked.
Not that the person was in any way correct in handling the call, but it worked. I may have worked but I’ll never know. And really we never knew if it had worked. We were supposed to call the police and they would get a search warrant, go to the phone company and have them trace the call, then go to the location and attempt to stop the suicide or get emergency care. All of that took about an hour, while most calls lasted about a half hour. The technology just didn’t exist. Today it does, even for those who have blocked their phone number. But also today you can call from anywhere, have a phone with an area code 2000 miles away from any number of companies to contact. Faster but probably not much better overall.
eemom
@redshirt:
“Semantics”: the last retort of the head so deeply embedded in the ass that one can only conclude that it must be comfy in there.
More generally, following upon your other recent performances, I can only conclude that you’re either dirt stupid or a compulsive troll. Have a pleasant evening.