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Suicide

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Suicide

#31

Post by code_duck »

mynameishere wrote: post #8

The Christmas/suicide link is a myth you know.

I've noticed a lot of people feeling rather dysphoric lately. Myself, I always feel very strange around mid Oct-mid Dec, I think due to the change in seasons and my natural cycle of brain chemistry (which isn't ideal). I'm not concerned about the holidays in particular, but when you do have a drab family or social life, it's hard not to feel confronted by that at Christmas and the New Year.

The economic situation as affected many people negatively, especially trying at a time that one hopes to have extra money for their family. I'd believe that we have more than an average share of despondence these days.

Re: Suicide

#32

Post by dextorious »

I was feeling disconnected from everyone else, and then it dawned on me: well, duh!

So, I closed HN and went to talk to ACTUAL physically present people.

Re: Suicide

#33

Post by _delirium »

maeon3 wrote: post #27

Ive associated suicide as correlated with too much logic. It takes a litle bit of delusion deep in the core of your being to assign value, meaning and purpose to the process of moving molecules from a high energy state to lower energy states. Which is all we are doing. Convincing a logical person that delusion is needed is a tough sell. Ive had the experience of trying to talk some normality into a suicidal person. I…

> Convincing a logical person that delusion is needed is a tough sell.

Hence the large number of densely written words needed by existentialist philosophy and its associates, to attempt to justify it...

Re: Suicide

#34

Post by geoffschmidt »

maeon3 wrote: post #27

Ive associated suicide as correlated with too much logic. It takes a litle bit of delusion deep in the core of your being to assign value, meaning and purpose to the process of moving molecules from a high energy state to lower energy states. Which is all we are doing. Convincing a logical person that delusion is needed is a tough sell. Ive had the experience of trying to talk some normality into a suicidal person. I…

Counterpoint: it takes a little bit of delusion to seek some kind of "ultimate justification" to the naturally pleasuable and fulfilling experience that is life.

My point is only: you can't break the symmetry with logic alone. Ultimately your priors/axioms/experiences come into play.

Re: Suicide

#35

Post by dextorious »

raganwald wrote: post #17
mynameishere wrote: post #8

The Christmas/suicide link is a myth you know.

Yes it is: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/suicide.asp Snopes suggest it falls slightly over the holiday from 34 per million people to 30 per million people and then rises to 41 per million people at New Year’s.

It might be a myth, but but snopes' 2 obscure references to some "studies" that cover a tiny region of the world are hardly compelling evidence.

I want more proof either for or against this notion.

Snopes stories have the same problem that urban legends have: people are quick to believe them without checking it more, and for the same reason, feeling superior to those who don't know (the myth|the debunking).

Re: Suicide

#36

Post by _delirium »

seiji wrote: post #28
mixmax wrote: post #16

This is important, and startup founders are especially vulnerable. The expectations, both from the world and founders themselves, are often impossibly high - afterall there can be only one facebook and one Google. Failure in startups isn't the same as failure in a corporate job. Startups are so much harder that if you make it to the first line of code you've already beat 90% of the people that want to do a startup. I…

You hit the cause in your third paragraph. Suicidal ideation is a process starting with falling short of expectations then blaming yourself for the shortfall. You start incorrectly rationalizing reasons why everything is your fault and how nothing can get better. Negativity permeates every thought. Your world breaks down into tiny logical blocks and you rationalize why everything is hopeless. The only way out is to b…

> The only way out is to break the chain of elevating mental isolation and negativity.

How exactly to do that is the tricky part, though (and not just tricky for individuals, but the subject of much debate in psychiatry). Possibilities include pharmacological intervention, therapy, or some sort of change in circumstances. The latter is a really large set of options, but also poorly understood: there are semi-regular reports of people completely changing outlook after significant changes in circumstances (e.g. changing careers), but it's very hard to come up with rigorous evaluation of the success of that "treatment option", because it's not very easy to run a controlled study, and not always an available option.

Re: Suicide

#38

Post by nyellin »

simon wrote: post #6

Wonderful thought and worthwhile effort. And I see that Facebook is also making similar efforts. I'm glad to see that. My meta-thought about this is how do you make this proactive instead of passive? If you don't visit raganwald or Facebook, how will you get any encouragement this Christmas season? I've often thought that some corners of the Internet could benefit from a virtual chaplain who could approach members of…

I don't think it's that easy to tell, especially not on the internet. A better question might be, how do you reach out to people suffering in silence and convince them it is okay to talk? (An anonymous online suicide hotline which doesn't report cases to the authorities might help, but I suspect it would be trolled.)

What Facebook effort are you referring to?

Re: Suicide

#40

Post by seiji »

raganwald wrote: post #29
seiji wrote: post #20

Posts like these are dangerous. If someone feels horrible, seeing "You may feel like you are alone and nobody is as bad a person as you are" just makes the person feel worse. You can't shove detached, inexperienced logic in the face of someone with temporarily broken brain chemistry. For a more thorough understanding see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4345/is_7_32/ai_n291...

Thank you. What do you suggest?

I've never been entirely sure. A while ago I made http://suicidescale.com/ but the wording still feels awkward to me. You have to strike a balance between explaining and understanding without sounding condescending.

Explaining the temporary condition can help so people know they aren't alone (knowing you are one of millions who have had the same exact thought processes is a wake up call).

Mentioning the processes can be caused by certain foods and medications in some people seems like a good idea too. ("Feeling suicidal? Did you just eat twelve pancakes with half a gallon of syrup? All the sugars have screwed you up for a while. Sleep it off. Did you just start a new antibiotic and now you want to jump off a bridge? Sleep it off. Call your doctor to get different meds. Your brain will reset.")

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