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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

#321

Post by Meltiono »

Doyce wrote: post #309
Meltiono wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no logic to your argument. There is no inherant reason to life. The biggest issue with this topic is, that it spits in your face if someone else doesn't think lifing is the only answer after becoming aware of yourself. But lets take a view which YOU might understand: Imagine yourself without arms and legs. Only way to move around is by asking someone else. Every means of eating or switching the tv channel is…

Which medics is that? I served in the US Army and while not a 68W I did run the 10 day medic course the Army offered and at least to the US branch, I can assure you no one is being told to try to envision surgical, prosthetic, and rehabilitation success rate ratio. Medics are masters of two things.....they can stop bleeding and keep air flowing while maintaining suppressive fire with their other hand and plan out wha…

there was a documentary about a person (in german) who survived without arms and legs and i beliefe no hip/parts missing of his hips.

The doctor in this documentary said that in these cases its prefered to give pain relieve medication instead of helping surviving further.

I was not able to find it thou.

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

#322

Post by morelisp »

reaperducer wrote: post #207
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.

I find this hard to believe. I work in healthcare, and occasionally see billing numbers as part of my job. Even when we send an air ambulance helicopter to a remote part of the desert, it doesn't cost $12,000. Related to the rest of this thread, a family member was hurt at work about six months ago and needed a 12-mile ambulance ride. The ambulance company billed the company's insurance $1,400. The company's insuranc…

I don't know what to tell you, it's what the bill said. Like everyone has already mentioned, I'm sure my insurance didn't pay that much but that doesn't make the situation make any more real sense; and even at the minimum of $500 the unfavorable comparison to a worst-case situation in Canada remains.

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

#323

Post by prvit »

marvin wrote: post #142
heartbreak wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I know pro-Russian propaganda when I see it.

Can you provide more details on what you're thinking here?

cmg is on the editorial board of a pro-Russian propaganda operation. It probably makes sense to not trust anything they say.

cmg is directly involved in pushing disgusting lies like “Is Russia’s Bombing of the Mall in Kremanchuk Another False Atrocity Story Being Used to Justify Ongoing Military Intervention in Ukraine?” (https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/07/01/is-russias-bombi...)

As a member of the EB, cmg apparently approves of interesting stories like “ Calls By Western Socialists For A Russian Retreat From Ukraine Amount To De Facto Support For NATO Aggression” (https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/05/22/calls-by-western...)

cmg has also been involved in stories such as “Remember the Maine: The Alleged Russian Atrocity at Bucha Looks Like Another in a Long Line of False Pretexts for War” (https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/05/13/remember-the-mai...)

From reading these articles, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that cmg is actively working to support the genocide in Ukraine. Perhaps you should treat his words like as if they were coming from William Joyce.

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

#324

Post by mschuster91 »

brian_cunnie wrote: post #260
TechBro8615 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if someone has lost their motivation to live, that is the fault of the community around them, and it’s the responsibility of society to fix the failures that led to that loss of motivation. The path to fixing these failures is not to offer state-sponsored (or at least state-sanctioned, as your comment implies) lethal injection for anyone who asks for it. That’s sweeping the problems under the rug. I’m not religio…

> if someone has lost their motivation to live, that is the fault of the community around them, and it’s the responsibility of society to fix the failures that led to that loss of motivation Sometimes it's not the community that failed; sometimes the person wanted to die. My friend Andy Ettelson killed himself by swallowing a bottle of aspirin and pulling a plastic bag over his head. He was sure he wanted to die. His…

> He also was bipolar, and refused to take his meds. He didn't like the side effects.

Most psychiatric medicines have horrible side effects. The problem is we don't invest anywhere near enough money into researching how our brain actually functions, what is wired wrong in people with more severe diseases or how to minimize adverse effects. Hell, most of "getting a person on meds" isn't based on science, it's "cycle through medications and dosages and find out what doesn't make the problem worse".

Not to mention getting access to psychologists, psychiatrics and other mental health care is a hellish experience on its own because supply doesn't even come close to demand and insurance to cover for that is an utter PITA even here in Europe.

We as societies fail people with mental health issues immensely. Instead, we waste our best brains on advertising, penis enlargements and iterating on insulin and epi-pens to continuously bleed people and insurances dry.

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

#325

Post by lotsofpulp »

freeflight wrote: post #306
lotsofpulp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not claim anything about what should or should not be subsidized by taxpayers. My comment was simply about the actual cost of providing ambulance services. The fact that the insurance company can negotiate the bill to $500 indicates what the real price is. The $12k number is just fantasy numbers that healthcare providers throw out to start the negotiation.

> The fact that the insurance company can negotiate the bill to $500 indicates what the real price is. That really depends on your definition of "real price", particularly considering how in a lot of developed countries that'd still be considered a pretty outrageous price to pay for such a situation, particularly while even having insurance.

I am using price in the economic sense of price, where the supply and demand curve meet. Such as the price of a good when you go to a market and haggle with various vendors.

It does not depend on who pays for it.

I did not intend to comment on who should or should not be liable for paying this price, simply that $500 seems like a reasonable price for an ambulance service.

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

#326

Post by cge »

dangrossman wrote: post #90
vorpalhex wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your view of 911 is incorrect. You should attend a safety briefing from your responders (or if in a smaller region, call their office number). To loosely rephrase: "911 is if you need assistance now. Non-emergency is for the paperwork the next day."

There is no global rule about when 911 vs a non-emergency number is correct. I've lived in a city where 911 is the only way to reach police dispatch, and police dispatch is the only way to get a police report taken, even if it's just for insurance reasons the day after a fire or something. I learned this by calling the city's non-emergency line, and they told me to call 911. What's the non-emergency line for then? St…

Cities can be completely inconsistent on this. At a building in a mid-sized city in California, we had the police department advise us to call their non-emergency number for emergencies and let the dispatcher know that we actually had an emergency, because this would reach the department directly, whereas calling 911 would usually reach the CHP, and there were apparently problems with communication between the CHP and the department. They said that their non-emergency line reached the same dispatchers that 911 calls routed to the department would reach.

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

#327

Post by nicoburns »

yellowapple wrote: post #240
nicoburns wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm uncomfortable (to say the least) with disarming the very working class most impacted by said socioeconomic inequality at all, let alone before actually addressing that socioeconomic inequality. Does that imply you'd support an armed insurrection? That seems pretty extreme! And if not, then why exactly do these people need guns?

> Does that imply you'd support an armed insurrection? That seems pretty extreme! It implies that I support the right to self defense - including against an oppressive regime and the enforcers thereof. Specifically, it implies that I support the exercise of that right among the class of people typically excluded from it. Violence is the last resort, but it is a resort nonetheless. "Under no pretext should arms and am…

> when seconds count, the police are an hour away

I can potentially see this in rural areas. Not so much in urban areas, where the police are much nearer and it seems that the guns are the main conveyer of harm.

I don't think you can ignore that they are also used in offence, not just defence. I live in the UK and I don't need a gun to defend myself, because any attacker is extremely unlikely to have one either (because the penalty for even being found carrying one is so severe that it's not worth the risk for them). One of the best ways in which a government can protect its' citizens from each other is removing dangerous weapons from their possession!

I guess my question is: what are you scared of? To my mind the most likely thing to be a victim of is burglary, in which case isn't it much better to just let the robbery take place (and then claim on insurance) while being safe and unharmed than to risk being shot in an armed conflict? Seems to me you make yourself less safe not safer by bringing guns into the equation.

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

#328

Post by aperson_hello »

Banana699 wrote: post #291
throw321501508 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the only reason people want to kill themselves. My dad had cancer, and basically got locked into a ruined and barely usable body (in that he wasn't fully bed ridden but couldn't take care of himself or speak). If he lived in a place with compassion he could have ended it cleanly. He didn't. Where he lived killing himself would be illegal, and would have been much harder dealing with the legality than other…

I'm sorry about your parents, there is nothing that makes me more uncontrollably sad and incapable of holding my tears than the slow decline of aging and disease, even more so when the decline happens to those who raised you, the ones that have been your earliest memory of what healthy and adult humans look like. You appear to have a very different mental model of assisted suicide than the comment you're replying to.…

There are people whose brain chemistry is so screwed up that no amount of treatment is going to fix their depression. Treatment-resistant severe depression is a big issue. Is it society's role to prevent that person from doing what they want to do to when that thing would also avoid the constant pain that they're currently undergoing? Why isn't it up to that person to make the choice to end their own suffering? I'm not proposing this as the best path for all or even 98% of cases...but I'd claim for those 2%, it's akin to torture to force those people to stay alive when they don't want to consistently and for a long period of time.

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

#329

Post by cmg »

Georgelemental wrote: post #290
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…

> A culture of internal anti-Blackness > I had a bug in some software I wrote […] met with absolute hostility - shouted at in meetings, labeled a white supremacist and removed from leadership I wasn't there, don't know all the details, but this sounds like a classic case of Woke Monster eating itself.

It was very much performative anti racism. All the right words, none of the actions.

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

#330

Post by zahma »

TexanFeller wrote: post #275
zahma wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're viewing this rather myopically. If someone texts us, we're operating under a valid presumption that they value their life, otherwise why text for help? We can't call EMS on someone we're unaware even exists.

My views are based on personal experience, so they may be biased, but they’re not ignorant. Years ago I was at the height of a decade of misery and spent months convincing myself that God and hell did not exist so that I would have the option of killing myself. I then spent months when I would decide every day whether I wanted to keep living. My life is top 1% awesome now, but if I had to go back knowing what I know…

I respect your position on autonomy and letting people control their bodies. However, I am not sure if I personally am prepared to take it to this extreme. It's not how I was raised, and something is deeply unsettling to me to be a part of such a destructive action. I need to think on it some more.

No counselor on CTL will say it's wrong to end his/her life. That's because one of the core values is to treat each person without judgement (on any issue they bring up, from abuse, to self-image, to drama with parents, to rape).

For example, if someone says "I am having thoughts about suicide." No counselor would respond, "Oh that's awful, you shouldn't be having those. What's wrong with you?"

Or if someone says, "I just don't see the point in life anymore." No counselor would respond with, "Oh well life is sacrosanct and you're lucky to be here, so how could you possibly think about killing yourself? Your pain can't be that bad -- just think about your family who will be so sad."

These tropes are obviously harmful in a therapeutic setting, and the judgement is so counterproductive to keeping people engaged and finding solutions within themselves, which is key because we are not authorized to act in a medical capacity or advise people on what to do.

I have had many conversations with people who are clearly in lasting and profound pain and who just don't want to continue. Chats such as these are probably the hardest to endure because some people are just so resigned to their misery, and major depression just can't be treated by text. I'd give them a hug, but well...

I just want to end on a bitter note that while it seems like a lot of growth has happened in treating mental health, unfortunately many services have gotten a bad rap or are viewed suspiciously for the fact that previous generations of healthcare workers and society writ large did not give credit to the pain and difficulty in surmounting these conditions. It is a very dark morning in America, and we must be willing to listen to and validate each other's pain. CTL is one such location where that is possible.

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