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Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

nytimes.com

41–50 of 160 posts

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#41
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those are physical differences. Good; we agree differences in a patient/customer may require special training/handling. > Should we have different prisons for gays? Again, this wasn't a different hotline. Just a phone tree option. I suspect prisons, at times, have to manage things specific to gay inmates. Seems like it could cause roommate situations to be accounted for, as an example.

> I suspect prisons, at times, have to manage things specific to gay inmates. doubtful. There's no customer service in prison nor the ability to speak with the manager.

Of course there is.

https://doccs.ny.gov/file-complaint

> Incarcerated Individuals can contact OSI directly by dialing 444 from any incarcerated individual phone Monday through Friday between the hours of 8:00 am and 5:00 pm.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/inmate-g...

> Every jail must develop a clear and responsive prisoner grievance procedure, including a formal means of delivering complaints and concerns from a prisoner to the administration and the procedures by which the prisoner receives a written response. However, the prisoner should not be able to use the procedures to avoid institutional rules and regulations.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#42

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…

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.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#43
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> however take at least as much care for your grandparents, they are apparently at extreme risk, of forming intent and, acting especially grandpa.

What if allowing suicide is taking care of one's grandparents? After all, if I was diagnosed with a awful condition like Alzheimer's, ALS, etc.. I am absolutely going out that way once I start having more bad days than good days.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#44
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?

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#45

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.

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.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#46
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

That account has a -10 karma. It is just a gibberish bot.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#47

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…

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.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#48
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

Yeah when you redefine the term to be "active shooter" I guess, something tells me that the American public still doesn't want to die in a mass shooting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

It's a sick society when you have one for nearly every single day of the year. But hey this is the result of neoliberal economics so why should we get too upset at the societal rot when corporatists are increasing shareholder value?

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#49
post #48
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah when you redefine the term to be "active shooter" I guess, something tells me that the American public still doesn't want to die in a mass shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_... It's a sick society when you have one for nearly every single day of the year. But hey this is the result of neoliberal economics so why should we get too upset at the societal rot when corporatists are…

Ok sure, mass shooting (400) vs active shooting (100). It is still the same order of magnitude, and two orders of magnitude off of suicides (50,000).

I'm not sure how that changes the point I was making, which is that suicides don't seem obviously less important.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#50

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?

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