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Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#111

Post by DanBC »

itistoday2 wrote: post #80
tokenadult wrote: post #36

You are working on something important, and I was glad to read (and upvote) a lot of the other comments you received, and especially the offers for pro-bono help. One comment below suggested that you read the literature (I presume that means the literature about suicide prevention) and I would second that advice. To expand that advice a bit, I'll note that Martin E. P. Seligman and some other psychologists who have s…

I second the advice to familiarize yourself with the literature, and would like to add a strong word of caution at the same time. A disclaimer: I speak out of personal experience with this topic, and I did not read most of the comments that you've already received (sorry, wish I had the time). So here's my word of caution: You must be aware that you are intentionally brainwashing yourself into a biased worldview by r…

FFS, this is not an anti-euthanasia project. Euthanasia is distinct from suicide, and is usually treated as such by people campaigning or working in the area.

> For your project, I will throw a devil's advocate accusation at you, and call you, and anyone in this thread who supports your cause, a terrorist and/or sadist. I will accuse you of in fact not helping people, but misguidedly (due to complete and utter ignorance on your part) torturing people by encouraging them to experience more suffering.

How does this help discussion?

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#112

Post by DanBC »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #91
itistoday2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to dump your own depressive tendencies on a 15 year old. Jesus. ^-- A perfect example of the ignorance that I mentioned, thank you. To Krish: remember, people who contemplate suicide are constantly faced with such ignorance, and so in the cultures where such attitudes are common, suicide happens unexpectedly (and this is most of the world). Then people "wish they could have said how much they loved them", etc. et…

Ignorance? Oh my. Unfortunately, I satisfy your criteria required for understanding suicide, so I vehemently disagree with your assertion that "Suicide is a very rational reaction to life." Especially when we're discussing teenagers, who haven't even lived one fifth of their expected lifespan.

> Especially when we're discussing teenagers,

...and who haven't finished cognitive development.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#113

Post by aestra »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #48

Don't know what your idea is.. but a thought or plugin is what about an anonymous place for people to vent or answer the question.. Why I wish I were dead: I have 6 toes on my left foot. others can respond anonymously..about that... some sort of peer group online/ facilitated instant support group.

I'm sorry, but this will be overrun by trolls and give out unhelpful/bad advice. Plus, there are already forums for this.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 There's trained people to give support on these very issues. There's other numbers you can call as well. Check them out.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#114

Post by quasque »

itistoday2 wrote: post #80
tokenadult wrote: post #36

You are working on something important, and I was glad to read (and upvote) a lot of the other comments you received, and especially the offers for pro-bono help. One comment below suggested that you read the literature (I presume that means the literature about suicide prevention) and I would second that advice. To expand that advice a bit, I'll note that Martin E. P. Seligman and some other psychologists who have s…

I second the advice to familiarize yourself with the literature, and would like to add a strong word of caution at the same time. A disclaimer: I speak out of personal experience with this topic, and I did not read most of the comments that you've already received (sorry, wish I had the time). So here's my word of caution: You must be aware that you are intentionally brainwashing yourself into a biased worldview by r…

The problem with your argument is that you assume that attempts at suicide are being supported by some sort of logical reasoning that inevitably leads to the conclusion of killing oneself.

This is rarely the case, and is mostly seen in instances of euthanasia where the sufferer has no chance of life improvement due to an irreversible decline in health, and thus requests an assisted suicide.

Whereas those who are suicidal due to depression tend to take the irrational view that their mental anguish will never cease. This is bias towards extreme pessimism, not rationality.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#115

Post by PeterisP »

superuser2 wrote: post #78
tokenadult wrote: post #36

You are working on something important, and I was glad to read (and upvote) a lot of the other comments you received, and especially the offers for pro-bono help. One comment below suggested that you read the literature (I presume that means the literature about suicide prevention) and I would second that advice. To expand that advice a bit, I'll note that Martin E. P. Seligman and some other psychologists who have s…

I'm curious as to what you are saying here. Poor self esteem is healthier? People shouldn't have self esteem, positive or negative? Or they should, but we should ignore it?

There are a bunch of 'positive thinking'-style things that claim to 'increase self esteem', but actually intentionally cause unrealistic expectations - and when those expectations aren't met, then the larger the gap/mismatch between expectations and reality, the greater damage to self esteem.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#116

Post by pbhjpbhj »

harvestmoon wrote: post #98

The response to this post surprises me a bit. Suicide prevention is a great idea. But as described, it really isn't explained well enough to capture my imagination. There's very little description of what it would do beyond that it's an app and it prevents suicide. And that it's a social network. That really isn't enough to describe the idea. I can see the possibility of a social network site for depressed people. Du…

My initial thought: I could imagine a Facebook or Twitter app that analyses posts of all your "friends"/"followed" to establish the mood of the post and to highlight a trend that may look depressive giving a person a suggestion that their acquaintance might be having problems. This may relate well to suicide prevention.

Getting people to sign up for a social network because they're depressed seems like an impossibility.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#117

Post by boha »

simonw wrote: post #52

This is a likely to be a very challenging project. A few things to consider: * Anonymity is vitally important, especially since you are an inexperienced programmer with a high risk of introducing security holes. Don't collect any personal details (including email addresses) that could cause problems for people if they were leaked. Don't implement Facebook or Google signin! * If there are any social components at all,…

Simon's spot-on here as to why Google/Facebook/etc. would be a bad move. The first impulse of most projects is to pull in social, so being mindful of how a user is asked to approach your app is a great place to start.

Cole Stryker has written a couple neat books on the (often constructive) power of anonymous social networks — http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590209745 — although the chasm between Anonymous and a teen support network may be too far to bridge.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#118

Post by aestra »

flippmoke wrote: post #87
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #33

Congrats man, well done! This list of cognitive distortions and how to fix them might be relevant: http://www.apsu.edu/sites/apsu.edu/files/counseling/COGNITIV... This was created by Dr. David Burns and is supported by research in cognitive therapy. The full information is available in his book "Feeling Good". The interactive medium could afford some interesting possibilities. Another thing that I remember reading is…

As someone who has read "Feeling Good" and is married to a therapist, I can not suggest this book enough. The general method is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy The key idea is that our thoughts control how we feel, not the events or surroundings of our lives. A person who is considering suicide often has a very different view of events because of th…

I would recommend Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) over CBT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy As I understand it DBT is better at validation of emotions than CBT.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#119

Post by DanBC »

mindcrime wrote: post #106
EdwardDiego wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to dump your own depressive tendencies on a 15 year old. Jesus.

But he has a good point. I don't think we can say that "suicide" is a universally Bad Thing, and I think it's fair to say that if you want to help prevent suicide, you could benefit from trying very hard to understand the mindset of a person who is contemplating suicide. Reading and understanding the arguments for suicide strike me as a very valuable tool in accomplishing that. You can't really understand suicide unl…

But reading "pro euthanasia" information is going to be very very different from reading "pro suicide" information.

> All of this said, and saying this as someone who has contemplated suicide at least once in my life, I don't know much much any kind of app is really going to help.

I gently agree. I hope it gets some research and oversight. And, if it works I hope it takes off.

> Same deal with "Suicide prevention hotlines". My feeling is that many people who contemplate suicide don't want to be talked out of it, and won't call the hotline

The Samaritans tend to say that they're not a "suicide prevention" hotline for that reason. They even say that they'll stay on the phone with you as you die if that's what you want. They say they just listen. This is for exactly the reason you mention - people don't want preachy "don't do it" advice, but they might want to just talk to someone.

> When you're suicidal, you're in a totally different mental state where the normal rules just don't apply.

Yes. And sometimes all that's needed is a small diversion, a bit of distraction, to allow the person to make it through the night without the attempted suicide, and to thus get help from doctors in the morning.

> Which leads back to my saying that you can't really understand suicide, and why I think the GP post was valuable.

I don't understand my own suicide attempts. I certainly don't understand the completed suicides of friends and acquaintances. I'd be foolish if I pretended to understand the completed or attempted of people in other nations (with different cultural expectations and so on). But GPs post (while it may have had a germ of useful information) is just weird and misleading.

Most people contemplating suicide are not in a position where euthanasia would be considered - they're suffering from some mental health problem. "Wanting to kill yourself" is not a rational reaction to life events. At least, not for most of the people who complete suicide. Some relatively minor interventions (a low interest loan of $4,000; some good debt advice; better lawyers and a decent legal system; housing advice; etc) would prevent many suicides. To suggest that suicide is a rational choice when the person is not capable of making a rational choice about life is cruel.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next?

#120

Post by aestra »

jackpirate wrote: post #102
harvestmoon wrote: post #98

The response to this post surprises me a bit. Suicide prevention is a great idea. But as described, it really isn't explained well enough to capture my imagination. There's very little description of what it would do beyond that it's an app and it prevents suicide. And that it's a social network. That really isn't enough to describe the idea. I can see the possibility of a social network site for depressed people. Du…

I agree. I honestly can't imagine what a successful version of this app would look like from the description. A simple program available in the app store that lists local suicide prevention hotlines is the only thing reasonable I can come up with. This information is all available online, but it may be more convenient for some people if it's in the app store. Maybe there could be an add on to text this information to…

How can it be more convenient? If you Google "suicide" that information is front and center...
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