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U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

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Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#141

Post by PragmaticPulp »

autoexec wrote: post #117
TexanFeller wrote: post #80

I’ve heard people advise not to call such hotlines because their intervention is not limited to just talking to you. It’s said they often cal the police who stop you by force and often make your life even worse than it was.

I also wonder what the impacts of having "Placed calls to the suicide hotline" in your permanent record will be on people's lives if they do choose not to take it. With the state collecting that data, your phone company collecting that data, your cell phone OS collecting that data, random apps collecting that data, and who knows who is on the other end of that call and what they're doing with your data. Will you be t…

Practically speaking, none of these things will happen.

This is actually one of the big hurdles to getting some people into therapy/treatment/medication that they need: They imagine a lot of catastrophic scenarios about what could possibly happen if they get the help they need, which creates a gridlock that traps them in their situation.

From a pure risk management perspective, the highest risk by far in these scenarios is failing to accept help that could improve the underlying problems. If someone reaches the point of considering suicide, it doesn't make sense to refuse help due to hypothetical fears about some future job obtaining phone records and declining someone for a job (which isn't a thing that happens, BTW).

Don't let fear of far-reaching hypotheticals get in the way of making progress on mental health.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#143

Post by [deleted] »

heartbreak wrote: post #100
cmg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hesitant to answer this because a lot of what I'd have to say can't be corroborated except for people who work or worked there. I'll summarize, with the understanding that I left a month after the 2020 election (I gave my notice in October 2020 and stayed on to get the organization through potential security issues around the election). - A culture of internal anti-Blackness. During the uprising of 2020, staff an…

And your new role is as an editorial board member for CovertAction Magazine? https://twitter.com/covertactionmag?s=21&t=zbpg0lQWdYJ70Gbhq...

[deleted]

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#144

Post by [deleted] »

cmg wrote: post #30
Waterluvian wrote: post #21

Policing is in such a horrible state in America that an emergency number that excludes police involvement seems increasingly necessary. I wonder if you can get paramedics through this route or if it just rings and you eventually get a counsellor.

I have experience in this field: I ran technology for one of the only hotlines in the US that didn't engage in non-consensual active rescue [0] [1]. I've written about this a little on this site in the past, when Crisis Text Line was caught sharing data. Many, if not most, of these places give the operator full access to your phone number and whatever geolocation data they can get based on that. They also have polici…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#145

Post by jamiek88 »

cmg wrote: post #69
Kye wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see people recommend Trans Lifeline all the time. Are you able to offer specifics on this?

I'm hesitant to answer this because a lot of what I'd have to say can't be corroborated except for people who work or worked there. I'll summarize, with the understanding that I left a month after the 2020 election (I gave my notice in October 2020 and stayed on to get the organization through potential security issues around the election). - A culture of internal anti-Blackness. During the uprising of 2020, staff an…

You also are on the board of a literal Russian FSB propaganda mouthpiece so your representation of this should be taken with a wheelbarrow of salt. You cannot represent organisations like this and still expect to be taken at your word.

Covert action magazine.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#146

Post by watwut »

fuckcensorship wrote: post #42

Suicide hotlines, on the surface, seem like a good thing. Having a phone number someone can call 24/7 to talk to someone who is trained in helping someone undergoing a mental health crisis seems like an effective way to reduce suicides and benefit mental health overall. However, I think they have the opposite effect in practice. I suffer from pretty severe depression. It runs in my family and it is something I've str…

> Rather than offering advice, help, solace, or anything remotely human, it has become commonplace for social media users to simply paste the suicide hotline number a

Average person has no idea what to say or how to help you. Their impulse will be clumsily say something contraproductive and not having any idea they blamed you or whatever.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#147

Post by mindslight »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #73
morelisp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last ambulance trip in the US was billed at $12000. With my (good!) insurance I still had to pay $500.

$500 for a specialized vehicle on demand 24/7 with somewhat trained workers who have to deal with undesirable work seems pretty good. Assuming that was under the deductible, so the ambulance provider did not get paid anything else, and $500 was the negotiated pricing for members of your insurance plan.

$500 could be a reasonable fee if it were generally predictable, but you're completely ignoring the fraudulent $12,000 bill and the fact that OP had to sign up for "good" "insurance" to access the real price.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#148

Post by godelski »

fuckcensorship wrote: post #42

Suicide hotlines, on the surface, seem like a good thing. Having a phone number someone can call 24/7 to talk to someone who is trained in helping someone undergoing a mental health crisis seems like an effective way to reduce suicides and benefit mental health overall. However, I think they have the opposite effect in practice. I suffer from pretty severe depression. It runs in my family and it is something I've str…

As someone else who has battled depression most of my life I have to make it clear that depression is a broad diagnosis. Robert Sapolsky discusses this in depth and why this makes it such a difficult disease to treat[0]. Hotlines will help some people but not for others. Diet and exercise helps some but not others. Medication helps some but not others. There is no singular solution to depression and framing it that way is one of the worst things we can do. We shouldn't be teaching people that depression looks a certain way because it doesn't. It's why people were surprised by Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain, despite all the signs being there.

Also, we should also be clear that you are talking about toxic behavior. You isolating yourself when depressed probably isn't the best move.

But I do agree with you about how people react on social media. But I think this is because of the issues above. We discuss depression like it is sadness. So the average person feels empathy at their neighbor struggling but don't know how to help. But I'm not convinced this is criticism for the hotlines, but this should be criticism at how we talk about depression.

So let me talk about depression. For me it can be like a filter is over the world. Everything is just more dull (Anhedonia). It can be difficult to start doing anything, including getting out of bed or things I like (Psychomotor retardation). It's not sadness. It can be a loss of appetite. It can be getting angry and frustrated over things I know don't matter. My friend don't notice unless I tell them. I tend to isolate myself too, but this isn't helpful to my mental health.

If your friends suffer from depression be there. Listen to them. Maybe don't let them isolate themselves if this isn't helpful to them. But it's hard to give good advice because depression is personal and what helps a specific person is also frequently personal. Still, I think hotlines can help. They don't have to help everyone, just some.

[0] https://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/depression.html

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#149

Post by pessimizer »

vorpalhex wrote: post #49
fuckcensorship wrote: post #42

Suicide hotlines, on the surface, seem like a good thing. Having a phone number someone can call 24/7 to talk to someone who is trained in helping someone undergoing a mental health crisis seems like an effective way to reduce suicides and benefit mental health overall. However, I think they have the opposite effect in practice. I suffer from pretty severe depression. It runs in my family and it is something I've str…

A lot of suicide attempts describe wanting to be talked out of their attempt. They want someone to help stop them. I've been on the receiving end of a call from someone who wanted to be talked down. I think having a universal number to call if you don't have anyone else is valuable. Will it stop all suicides? No. Will it help reduce suicides in people who are considering but not yet decided? Yes.

> Will it help reduce suicides in people who are considering but not yet decided? Yes.

Is this a made-up statistic? Do we have any good studies that show that a suicide hotline that could loop in emergency services, possibly get you involuntarily committed, and possibly be something that employers and insurers could find out the for the rest of your life reduces mortality, or is that just the kind "common sense" that's so obvious that we don't have to do science?

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#150

Post by autoexec »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #141
autoexec wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder what the impacts of having "Placed calls to the suicide hotline" in your permanent record will be on people's lives if they do choose not to take it. With the state collecting that data, your phone company collecting that data, your cell phone OS collecting that data, random apps collecting that data, and who knows who is on the other end of that call and what they're doing with your data. Will you be t…

Practically speaking, none of these things will happen. This is actually one of the big hurdles to getting some people into therapy/treatment/medication that they need: They imagine a lot of catastrophic scenarios about what could possibly happen if they get the help they need, which creates a gridlock that traps them in their situation. From a pure risk management perspective, the highest risk by far in these scenar…

> Practically speaking, none of these things will happen.

Practically speaking, these kinds of things are happening every day. I would agree that it might be better to take the help and live accepting the lifelong consequences of your actions in seeking that help. A life where you lose your children, lose job offers, or have your deepest troubles exposed to the world might easily still be a life worth living.

The reality is that we've created and enabled a system that hurts people. Our communications are logged forever and we have no power to limit the ways that data can be used against us. It's only natural for people to take that into account before doing something that makes them so very vulnerable.

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