A while ago I was seriously sick + in a hospital (for a few months). The doctors told me that I won't be able to resume my regular job (software engineer). At the same time I was in a lot of pain – unable to sit, walk, stand. It was not really clear how it all would end.
I got deeply depressed and just wanted to die. The pain was just too much - even with controlled pain medication in a hospital setup.
I called the German crisis hotline almost every night and they were usually very very helpful. They listened - sometimes for 1-2 hours. In 90% of my calls I felt way better after calling them. They really are well trained and some of the personalities I talked to were pretty impressive and interesting… They have seen a lot…
That's understandable. I went through a period of chronic pain and, had it continued, I likely wouldn't be alive today.
The mechanisms protecting us from non-existence by millions of years of evolution can be eroded by pain. It's not something you realize you even have to lose until you've experienced it firsthand. I certainly never expected it, and it's hard for me to imagine what I'd intended while going through it.
I bet there is so much more we could do to reduce suicides, which are a massively big problem. I wish we paid as much attention to suicide as we do to very rare mass shootings, which kill a tiny fraction of the people.
It's important to remember that the majority of gun deaths are suicides.
It's also important to remember that any blocker between a potential suicide victim and the weapon of choice reduces rates greatly. A gun locked in a safe where the potential suicide knows the code - reduces rates.
the data from CDC agrees with you, and agrees that a firearm is most common method.
but also indicates age correlate with freq of suicde by firearm.
guess who the least frequent group is, kids.
now that might fly in the face of stats, but suicide is an "intentional" thing.
[that rides on the idea that you are competent to form intent when suicidal]
so yes if you keep your guns secure, and gun proof your kids to mitigate accidents that should improve things, for kids.
however take at least as much care for your grandparents, they are apparently at extreme risk, of forming intent and, acting especially grandpa.
> It's also important to remember that any blocker between a potential suicide victim and the weapon of choice reduces rates greatly. A gun locked in a safe where the potential suicide knows the code - reduces rates.
RAND found that minimum age requirements and child-access prevention laws reduced suicides and unintentional injuries/deaths and violent crime:
Interesting. What causes this? Could it have to do with the type of person to keep a gun in a safe (has kids, is more cautious in general, etc) or have studies shown that this minor friction is actually enough?
the Israeli military did a study about ~15 years ago where they looked at soldier suicide rates after they had enacted a policy of leaving the weapons at base over the weekend and if I recall correctly it cut the rate of suicides by 40-50%.
It doesn't have to be a competition, and similar things, like making it harder to get a gun, introducing/enforcing laws around locking up your weapon, making mental healthcare more available (including a hotline), etc., will greatly reduce both.
this is a really weird comparison to make given that the US has basically made no material progress on policy that could prevent mass shootings.
they're both really really bad things. they both deserve as much attention as we can afford (which is more than they get).
not to just jump down your throat -- i agree with you about more needing to be done to prevent suicides though. i think it's a good thing that hotlines are available but it's clear that putting the onus on people who are considering suicide to reach out for help is not enough. we gotta get better at reaching out and checking on our friends, loved ones, coworkers etc and help them carry the load more than we're culturally accustomed to.
> I bet there is so much more we could do to reduce suicides
I am absolutely certain that is the case, however, society operates with such demands from individuals that a majority of necessary changes would be adamantly fought against by those which stand to benefit from the suffering.
Having been through the whole mental health treatment gamut in the USA, I am convinced the only goal of the system is to patch people up just enough that they can be churned back into the capitalist machine. What makes things even sicker, is that one's health insurance is often tied to their employment, so in order to receive basically any treatment, one is typically required to be employed and working.
I don’t see how. Have you ever tried calling one of these lines in a suicide emergency? Things I’ve learned in California:
- an ambulance will not be dispatched unless you physically witness someone trying to kill themselves
- otherwise, they send the police
- the police arrive without training and severely escalate the situation
- the person having an emergency will be taken into custody and stripped of rights until being medically evaluated (not arrested)
This is the program of an allegedly progressive state. After 2 experiences like this, adding trauma to already traumatic situations, I would never recommend these hotlines.
... services that use force against individuals. Never ever, ever tell a social worker of any kind that you think of suicide, or that anyone else does. ESPECIALLY not if you're young. Help, or social worker's kind of help, does not help. And getting rid of social workers ... I almost killed one before that happened.
All the lip service they make to that force is not the answer. It's lies, cheats and deception on their part, nothing more. Once on a forced youth services vacation I locked, with an entire group, a social services worker into a room. She became instantly educated why locking the rooms was a bad idea, why not even having a lock on the inside was an incredible mistake, and why youth workers ignoring screaming in the facility was an incredibly bad idea. All these people want is to be the big man (yes, including the 19 year old women who join), and you cannot explain it to them. After she eventually got out, we never saw her again, and the others were a LOT more flexible.
And that wasn't even close to the worst that happened.
These things is what social services calls "protection". They purposefully create situations where Gandhi would eventually beat up his own mother, and call it protection. Don't do this to people.
I have called this line in particular during a sever major depression episode.
I tried calling my fraternities mental wellness hotline first but it went unanswered which I thought was quite funny at the time.
The rep was able to talk me down through my spiraling thoughts. Told me that "no your therapist was not egging you on when he said well why don't you commit suicide what's holding you back". He was instead trying to figure out my reasons for living.
They do not automatically call the police and telling people they do is harmful. My anecdotal evidence has been a much better experience, and others I know who have called have said the same.
I'm not sure what would cause them to send the police but having a safe line to call when you have nothing else is important. Maybe the change that should happen here is having social workers or other mental health representatives respond, not getting rid of the phoneline.
These hotlines are for providing support. They are trained not to escalate to sending someone unless they absolutely deem it necessary (and the caller agrees). My wife has been working the hotline as a volunteer for 6 years and has not once escalated to sending someone.
As others noted, my California county has a dedicated team to respond to this.
A fact I've noticed is that suicide rates are higher in areas with lower population density. For example, Alaska's suicide rate is 4x what New York's rate is.
Perhaps just human connection, even momentarily, is enough to break the pattern of behavior that has lead to the ideation.
Also worth noting that suicide rates among the elderly are higher than they are for anyone other than teens. If you have someone you love that doesn't get out much, make sure you give them a call now and again.
> how we try to prevent people from shooting themselves by sending people with guns to help them
People with guns are still people. Having anyone there will reduce harm in more cases than it escalates. Suicide is usually an impulse a lonely person who is otherwise perfectly sane carries out in the absence of intervention.
They're crisis services, not emergency services. Anyone who is an immediate danger to themselves or others needs to be attended to by the first available emergency services. The attending services should be trained to deescalate, definitely, but I don't think this is an indictment of the crisis lines themselves. Less than 1% of calls to the crisis line result in any sort of emergency service dispatch.
One sad fact I learned about adolescent suicide (12 to 18 years of age) is that it's seasonal. It picks up during the school year and drops precipitously during summer and winter vacations.
Being in school has a profound impact on whether or not a child wants to kill themselves.
I wasn't suicidal when I was in high school, but I absolutely understand people's depression around the school year.
I actually don't hate school as much as an adult, but I really did view school like a prison when I was a teenager. I didn't like homework, I didn't like most of my teachers, I liked learning but due to the fact that schools have to go at a pace slow enough for the dumbest person they want to pass, I would get very bored during class, and so high school in general was existentially dreadful every day. Even when I got home, I would dread the fact that in about ~15 hours, I would have to go back to school again.
It didn't help that there was a dread with grades in general; I wasn't abused or anything, and I think my parents in general were pretty ok at parenting, but as report card season came nearer and nearer, I would get more and more depressed, because when I would inevitably get middling-to-bad grades, I would get a lecture and/or grounded by my parents. This meant no computer, no games, I wasn't allowed to hang out with my friends, and they hoped that it would force me to study more. It's not dumb logic, but it just didn't work. I would just be sad and angry and still wouldn't do the homework.
No doubt a large chunk of this was just hormonal, but I really think that the typical American school system is not a good fit for a lot of people, myself included. I don't think anyone has ever seriously called me stupid, but I would be in camp that endlessly frustrated teachers: I would do well on the tests, I would do well on the AP exams, no one disputed that I understood the course material well enough, but I just didn't care enough to do the homework so they would be forced to give me bad grades. I don't blame the teachers for this at all, they're just doing their jobs.
Despite being in AP classes and having skipped two grades in math, I was seriously considering dropping out of high school and just trying for the GED so I wouldn't have to go anymore, and I probably would have done that if I didn't think that my parents would freak out.
I didn't want to kill myself, but very few things brought me more joy in my life than knowing I wouldn't ever have to go back to high school again. I know a lot of people say that these are the best times of their lives, and power to them for that, but they were decidedly not for me.
Something I read recently really stuck with me: giving people methylphenidate or other stimulants may lower the risk of a second suicide attempt by around 25%.
It's good to celebrate this... but, looking forward, it's worrying to think whether kiddos these days are going first to ChatGPT instead, of, well, the hotline (or real people!) I think there's genuine value in going to an AI -- as long as you think of it as "interactive journaling", and not a human relationship. But, will they encourage struggling kiddos to make the leap and ask for support from an actual person?
What's it going to do, help them avoid passive voice in their suicide note? Encourage them to carry it out? Hype them up about suicide? Tell them they're absolutely correct?
> The Trump administration on Thursday afternoon officially terminated the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s LGBTQ Youth Specialized Services program, which gave callers under age 25 the option to speak with LGBTQ-trained counselors.
I'm sorry, but I beg to differ here. LGBTQ are people too. There's nothing unique that requires "training" to handle their cases any more than Black or Asian or Indian cases. There doesn't need to be a specialist for every group, or worse - some groups.
A national hotline that can handle anyone is clearly the right way.
Trying to engage in good faith: would you likewise say that the notion of sports medicine is irrelevant? That even though professional athletes have unique stresses on parts of their bodies that are not common in a general population, unique levels of societal pressure around accelerating their recovery time, and a need for rapid real-time diagnostics... a generalist physician would be as effective as a specialist?
Now imagine you're running a massive sports team, and you have a budget for medical care. But then a government entity comes and says: regardless of outcomes, you're not allowed to hire specialists or allow your team members to elect to go to specialists, because that could be seen as unfair... regardless of whether statistics point to improved outcomes if you were allowed to have certain specialists.
Looping back to suicide hotlines: even if the administration had increased funding to the hotline to compensate for the ended specialist program (which is highly unlikely, and that this was more likely a net funding loss) - it's a similar restriction on whether a lifeline program can allocate resources to specialists. And the stakes here couldn't be higher.
(And if statistics pointed to other groups benefiting similarly from specialization, I’d want a clinician-led organization to evaluate that research and determine budget allocation towards those specialists, too.)
> A national hotline that can handle anyone is clearly the right way
The data suggest otherwise [1].
Which makes sense. “For LGBTQ youth, risk factors such as bullying, abuse, negative family treatment, as well as negative emotions caused by anti-LGBTQ legislation have also been identified” [2]. If you’re in a community that’s tolerating all of that, your trust in generic institutions will be low.
> any more than Black or Asian or Indian cases
If a population is disproportionately committing suicide, they should be disproportionately resourced. “Native Americans and non-Hispanic White Americans” have “the highest suicide rate in the United States” [3].
Different people face different challenges, and helping them requires different strategies. You really don't think that there's anything unique about the challenges LGBTQ people face?
What is this assumption based on? It sounds political.
Are LGBTQ people at a higher risk for suicide? Could hotline staff reduce suicide attempts with special training? Seems like you could measure this.
Thinking about other groups with a higher risk--veterans, abuse survivors, gambling addicts--are there suicide prevention programs for these groups and are they effective?
> There doesn't need to be a specialist for every group, or worse - some groups.
Why? The struggles different groups generally face are not the same. For a hotline for veterans, wouldn't it make sense to have counselors who are either veterans themselves or have worked extensively with veterans and their specific patterns of issues?
By that logic, pediatricians and gynecologists shouldn't exist.
> A national hotline that can handle anyone is clearly the right way.
Absolutely. That describes this setup. You call the number. You get help. Sometimes that means a person trained in, say, talking to rape victims. (If you go to the ER, they'll have a nurse trained in it too!)
Per the article: "Also known as the 'Press 3 option,' the program gave 988 callers the option to 'press 3' to connect with a counselor trained to assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youths and young adults (they could also text 988 with the word 'PRIDE'). Nearly 1.5 million contacts were routed to the LGBTQ service since its launch, according to data available on the SAMHSA website."
Do what you can to support marginalized folks out there. When I do any kind of political / charitable donation, my wife gets to make an equal one to any organization of her choice and often chooses the Trevor project which makes me incredibly proud of her.
Personally I never called any such hotline; my assumption
was that suicidal thoughts originate from one's own brain
and way of thinking - adjust that and these issues would
go away. Unfortunately, while this can work (for me it
worked extremely well, though I should also say, I don't
have suicidal thoughts to begin with, even more so as one's
lifespan is finite anyway - but I do understand those who
have a terminal illness, to not have to go through more
suffering when something is uncurable), there are people
for whom it can not work, often in the way how their
brain works. Just like some people have seizures, brains
are different too.
It puts some responsibility on those who receive such
calls, because the caller may be in a state where any
additional negative input could push that caller over
the edge, due to their current state of mind. So this
kind of requires more training even of casual people,
just as people are expected to know the basic steps
necessary for first aid (on a fresh accident site,
for instance). It seems pretty clear that those on
the national hotline, must have had professional
training too. So if there is a decline of suicides,
this is most likely - and logically - due to the work
by those who take up the phones.
> my assumption was that suicidal thoughts originate from one's own brain and way of thinking - adjust that and these issues would go away. Unfortunately, while this can work (for me it worked extremely well, though I should also say, I don't have suicidal thoughts to begin with
You're, in this comment and the part I quoted, saying that adjusting your thinking worked well for you (with the implication that it worked well in dealing with suicidal thoughts), but you say you don't have the problem (suicidal thoughts or ideation) under discussion. This is like saying, "I've heard that you can walk it off when you break your leg, and that's worked for me, but I've never actually had a broken leg." Complete nonsense.
This is bootstraps by another name. “Just (don’t) do it” belongs in nike commercials, not in discussions surrounding behavioral health. If it were that simple then we wouldn’t have these issues at this scale in the first place.
A while ago I was seriously sick + in a hospital (for a few months). The doctors told me that I won't be able to resume my regular job (software engineer). At the same time I was in a lot of pain – unable to sit, walk, stand. It was not really clear how it all would end.
I got deeply depressed and just wanted to die. The pain was just too much - even with controlled pain medication in a hospital setup.
I called the German crisis hotline almost every night and they were usually very very helpful. They listened - sometimes for 1-2 hours. In 90% of my calls I felt way better after calling them. They really are well trained and some of the personalities I talked to were pretty impressive and interesting… They have seen a lot…
I’m glad that it helped and that it worked for such a seemingly somatic issue. I wouldn’t have thought that.
That's understandable. I went through a period of chronic pain and, had it continued, I likely wouldn't be alive today.
The mechanisms protecting us from non-existence by millions of years of evolution can be eroded by pain. It's not something you realize you even have to lose until you've experienced it firsthand. I certainly never expected it, and it's hard for me to imagine what I'd intended while going through it.
gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/science/988-youth-suicide...
I bet there is so much more we could do to reduce suicides, which are a massively big problem. I wish we paid as much attention to suicide as we do to very rare mass shootings, which kill a tiny fraction of the people.
It's important to remember that the majority of gun deaths are suicides.
It's also important to remember that any blocker between a potential suicide victim and the weapon of choice reduces rates greatly. A gun locked in a safe where the potential suicide knows the code - reduces rates.
https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html
the data from CDC agrees with you, and agrees that a firearm is most common method.
but also indicates age correlate with freq of suicde by firearm.
guess who the least frequent group is, kids.
now that might fly in the face of stats, but suicide is an "intentional" thing. [that rides on the idea that you are competent to form intent when suicidal]
so yes if you keep your guns secure, and gun proof your kids to mitigate accidents that should improve things, for kids.
however take at least as much care for your grandparents, they are apparently at extreme risk, of forming intent and, acting especially grandpa.
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> It's also important to remember that any blocker between a potential suicide victim and the weapon of choice reduces rates greatly. A gun locked in a safe where the potential suicide knows the code - reduces rates.
RAND found that minimum age requirements and child-access prevention laws reduced suicides and unintentional injuries/deaths and violent crime:
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-acce...
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/minimum-ag...
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy.html
Interesting. What causes this? Could it have to do with the type of person to keep a gun in a safe (has kids, is more cautious in general, etc) or have studies shown that this minor friction is actually enough?
2 replies →
the Israeli military did a study about ~15 years ago where they looked at soldier suicide rates after they had enacted a policy of leaving the weapons at base over the weekend and if I recall correctly it cut the rate of suicides by 40-50%.
3 replies →
So yeah, why not?
Choosing to end thyself IS the penultimate "my body, my choice".
We have immediate "no money, lost job, destitute" (insert temporary issue). And we have chronic, everpresent, or terminal problem.
We could fix the first one, but socially we choose not to. Either way, we should have the right of bodily autonomy.
I guess the american answer is, for a suicide help call, show up with pigs with guns, and shoot them for disorderly conduct?
The phrase "suicide by cop" didn't create itself out of thin air.
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It doesn't have to be a competition, and similar things, like making it harder to get a gun, introducing/enforcing laws around locking up your weapon, making mental healthcare more available (including a hotline), etc., will greatly reduce both.
this is a really weird comparison to make given that the US has basically made no material progress on policy that could prevent mass shootings.
they're both really really bad things. they both deserve as much attention as we can afford (which is more than they get).
not to just jump down your throat -- i agree with you about more needing to be done to prevent suicides though. i think it's a good thing that hotlines are available but it's clear that putting the onus on people who are considering suicide to reach out for help is not enough. we gotta get better at reaching out and checking on our friends, loved ones, coworkers etc and help them carry the load more than we're culturally accustomed to.
> the US has basically made no material progress on policy that could prevent mass shootings
Mass shootings vary significantly state to state, in part —I think—due to different gun and mental health laws [1].
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/mass-shooting-rat...
in your opinion, what policy should be made because whatever policy you make won't do much as long as guns exist?
1 reply →
> I bet there is so much more we could do to reduce suicides
I am absolutely certain that is the case, however, society operates with such demands from individuals that a majority of necessary changes would be adamantly fought against by those which stand to benefit from the suffering.
Having been through the whole mental health treatment gamut in the USA, I am convinced the only goal of the system is to patch people up just enough that they can be churned back into the capitalist machine. What makes things even sicker, is that one's health insurance is often tied to their employment, so in order to receive basically any treatment, one is typically required to be employed and working.
Well the Republicans aren’t causing mass suicides. The obliviously mass shooting are more important. I’m want to not get shot.
I mean... important by what metric?
Active shootings in the US kill like 100 people a year (as of 2024 I guess: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/reports-and-publications...)
Suicides is more like 50,000/yr
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I don’t see how. Have you ever tried calling one of these lines in a suicide emergency? Things I’ve learned in California:
- an ambulance will not be dispatched unless you physically witness someone trying to kill themselves
- otherwise, they send the police
- the police arrive without training and severely escalate the situation
- the person having an emergency will be taken into custody and stripped of rights until being medically evaluated (not arrested)
This is the program of an allegedly progressive state. After 2 experiences like this, adding trauma to already traumatic situations, I would never recommend these hotlines.
I have a loved one who used the 988 hotline several times.
None of them resulted in police intervention. Our county has a mobile crisis team of social workers who show up and get you connected to services.
... services that use force against individuals. Never ever, ever tell a social worker of any kind that you think of suicide, or that anyone else does. ESPECIALLY not if you're young. Help, or social worker's kind of help, does not help. And getting rid of social workers ... I almost killed one before that happened.
All the lip service they make to that force is not the answer. It's lies, cheats and deception on their part, nothing more. Once on a forced youth services vacation I locked, with an entire group, a social services worker into a room. She became instantly educated why locking the rooms was a bad idea, why not even having a lock on the inside was an incredible mistake, and why youth workers ignoring screaming in the facility was an incredibly bad idea. All these people want is to be the big man (yes, including the 19 year old women who join), and you cannot explain it to them. After she eventually got out, we never saw her again, and the others were a LOT more flexible.
And that wasn't even close to the worst that happened.
These things is what social services calls "protection". They purposefully create situations where Gandhi would eventually beat up his own mother, and call it protection. Don't do this to people.
1 reply →
Very much disagree and I am in California.
I have called this line in particular during a sever major depression episode. I tried calling my fraternities mental wellness hotline first but it went unanswered which I thought was quite funny at the time.
The rep was able to talk me down through my spiraling thoughts. Told me that "no your therapist was not egging you on when he said well why don't you commit suicide what's holding you back". He was instead trying to figure out my reasons for living.
They do not automatically call the police and telling people they do is harmful. My anecdotal evidence has been a much better experience, and others I know who have called have said the same.
I'm not sure what would cause them to send the police but having a safe line to call when you have nothing else is important. Maybe the change that should happen here is having social workers or other mental health representatives respond, not getting rid of the phoneline.
If you want an ambulance dial 911.
These hotlines are for providing support. They are trained not to escalate to sending someone unless they absolutely deem it necessary (and the caller agrees). My wife has been working the hotline as a volunteer for 6 years and has not once escalated to sending someone.
As others noted, my California county has a dedicated team to respond to this.
And yet the data shows that they did decline. I'm sure they could be much better, and the response will vary from state to state.
A fact I've noticed is that suicide rates are higher in areas with lower population density. For example, Alaska's suicide rate is 4x what New York's rate is.
Perhaps just human connection, even momentarily, is enough to break the pattern of behavior that has lead to the ideation.
Also worth noting that suicide rates among the elderly are higher than they are for anyone other than teens. If you have someone you love that doesn't get out much, make sure you give them a call now and again.
An alternative explanation is that cold places with long winters are depressing, and because they are depressing fewer people want to live there.
Alaskan winters are hard regardless of how many friends you have.
2 replies →
I find something darkly depressing and comedic about how we try to prevent people from shooting themselves by sending people with guns to help them.
> how we try to prevent people from shooting themselves by sending people with guns to help them
People with guns are still people. Having anyone there will reduce harm in more cases than it escalates. Suicide is usually an impulse a lonely person who is otherwise perfectly sane carries out in the absence of intervention.
4 replies →
They're crisis services, not emergency services. Anyone who is an immediate danger to themselves or others needs to be attended to by the first available emergency services. The attending services should be trained to deescalate, definitely, but I don't think this is an indictment of the crisis lines themselves. Less than 1% of calls to the crisis line result in any sort of emergency service dispatch.
One sad fact I learned about adolescent suicide (12 to 18 years of age) is that it's seasonal. It picks up during the school year and drops precipitously during summer and winter vacations.
Being in school has a profound impact on whether or not a child wants to kill themselves.
http://basilhalperin.com/essays/school-and-teen-suicide.html
I wasn't suicidal when I was in high school, but I absolutely understand people's depression around the school year.
I actually don't hate school as much as an adult, but I really did view school like a prison when I was a teenager. I didn't like homework, I didn't like most of my teachers, I liked learning but due to the fact that schools have to go at a pace slow enough for the dumbest person they want to pass, I would get very bored during class, and so high school in general was existentially dreadful every day. Even when I got home, I would dread the fact that in about ~15 hours, I would have to go back to school again.
It didn't help that there was a dread with grades in general; I wasn't abused or anything, and I think my parents in general were pretty ok at parenting, but as report card season came nearer and nearer, I would get more and more depressed, because when I would inevitably get middling-to-bad grades, I would get a lecture and/or grounded by my parents. This meant no computer, no games, I wasn't allowed to hang out with my friends, and they hoped that it would force me to study more. It's not dumb logic, but it just didn't work. I would just be sad and angry and still wouldn't do the homework.
No doubt a large chunk of this was just hormonal, but I really think that the typical American school system is not a good fit for a lot of people, myself included. I don't think anyone has ever seriously called me stupid, but I would be in camp that endlessly frustrated teachers: I would do well on the tests, I would do well on the AP exams, no one disputed that I understood the course material well enough, but I just didn't care enough to do the homework so they would be forced to give me bad grades. I don't blame the teachers for this at all, they're just doing their jobs.
Despite being in AP classes and having skipped two grades in math, I was seriously considering dropping out of high school and just trying for the GED so I wouldn't have to go anymore, and I probably would have done that if I didn't think that my parents would freak out.
I didn't want to kill myself, but very few things brought me more joy in my life than knowing I wouldn't ever have to go back to high school again. I know a lot of people say that these are the best times of their lives, and power to them for that, but they were decidedly not for me.
Something I read recently really stuck with me: giving people methylphenidate or other stimulants may lower the risk of a second suicide attempt by around 25%.
It's good to celebrate this... but, looking forward, it's worrying to think whether kiddos these days are going first to ChatGPT instead, of, well, the hotline (or real people!) I think there's genuine value in going to an AI -- as long as you think of it as "interactive journaling", and not a human relationship. But, will they encourage struggling kiddos to make the leap and ask for support from an actual person?
> will they encourage struggling kiddos to make the leap and ask for support from an actual person?
Where's the profit in that?
> I think there's genuine value in going to an AI
What's it going to do, help them avoid passive voice in their suicide note? Encourage them to carry it out? Hype them up about suicide? Tell them they're absolutely correct?
About a year ago:
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/trump-shuts-down-lg...
> The Trump administration on Thursday afternoon officially terminated the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s LGBTQ Youth Specialized Services program, which gave callers under age 25 the option to speak with LGBTQ-trained counselors.
As with the USAID cuts, this killed people.
I'm sorry, but I beg to differ here. LGBTQ are people too. There's nothing unique that requires "training" to handle their cases any more than Black or Asian or Indian cases. There doesn't need to be a specialist for every group, or worse - some groups.
A national hotline that can handle anyone is clearly the right way.
Trying to engage in good faith: would you likewise say that the notion of sports medicine is irrelevant? That even though professional athletes have unique stresses on parts of their bodies that are not common in a general population, unique levels of societal pressure around accelerating their recovery time, and a need for rapid real-time diagnostics... a generalist physician would be as effective as a specialist?
Now imagine you're running a massive sports team, and you have a budget for medical care. But then a government entity comes and says: regardless of outcomes, you're not allowed to hire specialists or allow your team members to elect to go to specialists, because that could be seen as unfair... regardless of whether statistics point to improved outcomes if you were allowed to have certain specialists.
Looping back to suicide hotlines: even if the administration had increased funding to the hotline to compensate for the ended specialist program (which is highly unlikely, and that this was more likely a net funding loss) - it's a similar restriction on whether a lifeline program can allocate resources to specialists. And the stakes here couldn't be higher.
(And if statistics pointed to other groups benefiting similarly from specialization, I’d want a clinician-led organization to evaluate that research and determine budget allocation towards those specialists, too.)
> A national hotline that can handle anyone is clearly the right way
The data suggest otherwise [1].
Which makes sense. “For LGBTQ youth, risk factors such as bullying, abuse, negative family treatment, as well as negative emotions caused by anti-LGBTQ legislation have also been identified” [2]. If you’re in a community that’s tolerating all of that, your trust in generic institutions will be low.
> any more than Black or Asian or Indian cases
If a population is disproportionately committing suicide, they should be disproportionately resourced. “Native Americans and non-Hispanic White Americans” have “the highest suicide rate in the United States” [3].
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30109965/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBTQ_people
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#S...
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Different people face different challenges, and helping them requires different strategies. You really don't think that there's anything unique about the challenges LGBTQ people face?
What is this assumption based on? It sounds political.
Are LGBTQ people at a higher risk for suicide? Could hotline staff reduce suicide attempts with special training? Seems like you could measure this.
Thinking about other groups with a higher risk--veterans, abuse survivors, gambling addicts--are there suicide prevention programs for these groups and are they effective?
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> There doesn't need to be a specialist for every group, or worse - some groups.
Why? The struggles different groups generally face are not the same. For a hotline for veterans, wouldn't it make sense to have counselors who are either veterans themselves or have worked extensively with veterans and their specific patterns of issues?
By that logic, pediatricians and gynecologists shouldn't exist.
> A national hotline that can handle anyone is clearly the right way.
Absolutely. That describes this setup. You call the number. You get help. Sometimes that means a person trained in, say, talking to rape victims. (If you go to the ER, they'll have a nurse trained in it too!)
Per the article: "Also known as the 'Press 3 option,' the program gave 988 callers the option to 'press 3' to connect with a counselor trained to assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youths and young adults (they could also text 988 with the word 'PRIDE'). Nearly 1.5 million contacts were routed to the LGBTQ service since its launch, according to data available on the SAMHSA website."
Same hotline, just a phone tree option in it.
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Look, I get that you are approaching this in good faith, assuming that they cut these specialists because it was redundant and inefficient.
If this were 10 years ago, this would be an understandable assumption, but today there is absolutely zero reason to reach this conclusion.
The words of our own elected representatives make it very clear why these specialists were cut: because of hatred for the LGBTQ+ community.
That decision should be left to the people who study and understand psychology, not laymen, podcast hosts, and politicians.
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Incredibly sad to see and watch.
Do what you can to support marginalized folks out there. When I do any kind of political / charitable donation, my wife gets to make an equal one to any organization of her choice and often chooses the Trevor project which makes me incredibly proud of her.
Personally I never called any such hotline; my assumption was that suicidal thoughts originate from one's own brain and way of thinking - adjust that and these issues would go away. Unfortunately, while this can work (for me it worked extremely well, though I should also say, I don't have suicidal thoughts to begin with, even more so as one's lifespan is finite anyway - but I do understand those who have a terminal illness, to not have to go through more suffering when something is uncurable), there are people for whom it can not work, often in the way how their brain works. Just like some people have seizures, brains are different too.
It puts some responsibility on those who receive such calls, because the caller may be in a state where any additional negative input could push that caller over the edge, due to their current state of mind. So this kind of requires more training even of casual people, just as people are expected to know the basic steps necessary for first aid (on a fresh accident site, for instance). It seems pretty clear that those on the national hotline, must have had professional training too. So if there is a decline of suicides, this is most likely - and logically - due to the work by those who take up the phones.
This is a fantastically ridiculously comment.
> my assumption was that suicidal thoughts originate from one's own brain and way of thinking - adjust that and these issues would go away. Unfortunately, while this can work (for me it worked extremely well, though I should also say, I don't have suicidal thoughts to begin with
You're, in this comment and the part I quoted, saying that adjusting your thinking worked well for you (with the implication that it worked well in dealing with suicidal thoughts), but you say you don't have the problem (suicidal thoughts or ideation) under discussion. This is like saying, "I've heard that you can walk it off when you break your leg, and that's worked for me, but I've never actually had a broken leg." Complete nonsense.
This is bootstraps by another name. “Just (don’t) do it” belongs in nike commercials, not in discussions surrounding behavioral health. If it were that simple then we wouldn’t have these issues at this scale in the first place.
Nancy Reagan “just say no” comes to mind.