Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 160 posts

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#131

Post by ButlerianJihad »

b3ing wrote: post #128
umpalumpaaa wrote: post #67

A while ago I was seriously sick + in a hospital (for a few months). The doctors told me that I won't be able to resume my regular job (software engineer). At the same time I was in a lot of pain – unable to sit, walk, stand. It was not really clear how it all would end. I got deeply depressed and just wanted to die. The pain was just too much - even with controlled pain medication in a hospital setup. I called the G…

In the US they try to get you off the phone after 5 min and you can hear it in their voice, I know there is a lot of traffic but still it doesn’t help

Imagine if you and 1,000 of your neighbors called the 9-1-1 dispatch for a little heart-to-heart.

This number in the USA is designated for people in crisis, and a crisis responder is going to be under time pressure to resolve your crisis or hand off the situation to some other team as it de-escalates.

My county also has a “Warm Line” that everyone is encouraged to call, but they do set timers. Once your timer runs out, they tell you how long to wait, and then you can call back.

If your case is so involved that it requires extensive discussion, then they can refer you to a clinic or local professional who can help, you know, during normal business hours.

Mental health care often involves long conversations, but the mentally ill can also chew up enormous airtime by talking, and talking to the wrong person. The crisis operators are not therapists and they’re not paid to establish relationships.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#132

Post by ButlerianJihad »

Frieren wrote: post #125
umpalumpaaa wrote: post #67

A while ago I was seriously sick + in a hospital (for a few months). The doctors told me that I won't be able to resume my regular job (software engineer). At the same time I was in a lot of pain – unable to sit, walk, stand. It was not really clear how it all would end. I got deeply depressed and just wanted to die. The pain was just too much - even with controlled pain medication in a hospital setup. I called the G…

I hope that you feel better now. And I am very happy that you got help. Mental help is never a cost for society, it is an investment.

> Mental help is never a cost for society

At the risk of going “No True Scotsman” on this assertion, I would point out that providing such services has been increasingly lucrative and it is a growth industry where new providers are arising constantly, and existing ones are expanding vigorously.

That means that the space for fraud, waste, and abuse is gigantic. I have, on occasion, perused the FOIA lists of de-licensed providers, and this list reads like a watchlist of dangerous religious cults, because that is literally what they are.

Imagine if the state and taxpayers could fund a variety of new religious movements in efforts that would be lauded as “health care”. It is absolutely amazing.

Many unlicensed or unscrupulous recovery facilities have been scooping addicts off the streets, because you taxpayers are funding “housing” and “treatment” that is so attractive to client and provider alike. Drug-addled Indigenous men willingly hop into unmarked vans that cross state lines to drop them into homes (literally looking like private homes in residential neighborhoods) where they supposedly get treatment “for free”.

Those outpatient facilities that are invisible only need to get a patient hooked so they keep coming back every month, and that’s a guaranteed paycheck. Everyone you see living under bridges and in sewers, they represent billable hours for outpatient clinics. They are far more valuable than they appear because of the taxpayer dollars that support their ongoing “treatment” and “recovery”. It’s probably not worthwhile to get them off the streets, because of how valuable they already are!

Reagan moved to close the asylums after One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but if you drive through the cities today knowing what to look for, you’ll see enormous BH facilities going up like mu$$$hrooms, literally.

Not to mention the unspoken costs to sanity of the workers themselves. BH is always hiring and there are always job openings, even for the mentally ill themselves to be “peer support”, so often your treatment will involve one or more people with mental illness already. Nurses and doctors burn out. Have you ever seen Harry Potter and how many teachers for Defence Against the Dark Arts he had? It’s exactly like that.

In fact, the new national crisis line is established as a funnel, to funnel new and existing clients back into the “treatment and recovery” systems, because there is so much profit in keeping them there.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#133

Post by mothballed »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #131
b3ing wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US they try to get you off the phone after 5 min and you can hear it in their voice, I know there is a lot of traffic but still it doesn’t help

Imagine if you and 1,000 of your neighbors called the 9-1-1 dispatch for a little heart-to-heart. This number in the USA is designated for people in crisis, and a crisis responder is going to be under time pressure to resolve your crisis or hand off the situation to some other team as it de-escalates. My county also has a “Warm Line” that everyone is encouraged to call, but they do set timers. Once your timer runs ou…

I wonder what they can really achieve in 5 minutes beyond sending the police to do a mental health hold on you? I always thought these lines in the USA were just ways to rat yourself out to get a mental hold (imprisoned, at your own astronomical cost) and then your civil rights (guns) revoked.

Having been imprisoned at a hospital, though not for mental health (falsely accused as drug smuggler by insane cops), I think I'd rather risk suicide if I were in such a state, rather than alert someone who would send the authorities.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#134

Post by mothballed »

defrost wrote: post #129
fhn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in your opinion, what policy should be made because whatever policy you make won't do much as long as guns exist?

Australian policy on guns (princially unifying existing gun regulation across all of Australia including Queensland, Tasmania, and the Territories) had a significant impact on mass shooting, individual shooting, gun suicides, etc throughout the 30 years following the Port Arthur massacre. During the period legitimate gun ownership (people with guns) has sharply declined in larger urban areas, remained about the same…

18 casualties at Croydon park (2025), 57 at Bondi Beech (2025), and a rough survey[] looks like the period proximal before Port Arthur doesn't look much different than after.

The largest one before Port Arthur was Milperra, armed motorcycle gangs, which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market.

Much fewer than USA, but the Port Arthur changes don't seem to have had much effect.

[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Aust...

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#135

Post by defrost »

mothballed wrote: post #134
defrost wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australian policy on guns (princially unifying existing gun regulation across all of Australia including Queensland, Tasmania, and the Territories) had a significant impact on mass shooting, individual shooting, gun suicides, etc throughout the 30 years following the Port Arthur massacre. During the period legitimate gun ownership (people with guns) has sharply declined in larger urban areas, remained about the same…

18 casualties at Croydon park (2025), 57 at Bondi Beech (2025), and a rough survey[] looks like the period proximal before Port Arthur doesn't look much different than after. The largest one before Port Arthur was Milperra, armed motorcycle gangs, which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market. Much…

As noted, no poilcy is perfect or works forever .. hence the need to adapt as time passes.

Yes, we had decades without mass shootings and suppressed casual crime gun usage to near zero.

> which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market.

Yeah, the taxes were smart and worked, continuosly increasing them to chase diminishing returns was not smart and once a threshold was crossed it spawned an entire new criminal network that had old school motorcycle gangs shaking their heads for crossing various prior "lines" ( family retribution, etc ).

> but the Port Arthur changes don't seem to have had much effect.

Aside from substantially less gun crime, deaths, injuries per capita than the US.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#136

Post by WarmWash »

ryandrake wrote: post #58
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how we try to prevent people from shooting themselves by sending people with guns to help them People with guns are still people. Having anyone there will reduce harm in more cases than it escalates. Suicide is usually an impulse a lonely person who is otherwise perfectly sane carries out in the absence of intervention.

Replace the phrase "people with guns" with "institutional violence" because that's what the police are. When police are called to the scene, the intention of the caller is violence, not to help. If the intention was help, then actual helpers would be called instead.

If you watched random police encounters for 6 hours a day (pretty much everything is bodycam'ed nowadays), every day for the rest of your life, you would see about 1 police killing video per decade, and probably never see a police murder.

Don't let headlines and internet rage detach you from reality.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#137

Post by mothballed »

defrost wrote: post #135
mothballed wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18 casualties at Croydon park (2025), 57 at Bondi Beech (2025), and a rough survey[] looks like the period proximal before Port Arthur doesn't look much different than after. The largest one before Port Arthur was Milperra, armed motorcycle gangs, which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market. Much…

As noted, no poilcy is perfect or works forever .. hence the need to adapt as time passes. Yes, we had decades without mass shootings and suppressed casual crime gun usage to near zero. > which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market. Yeah, the taxes were smart and worked, continuosly increasing the…

The USA is an invalid control group for comparing the before/after of Port Arthur era gun law changes of the sorts of events you noted in Australia.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#138

Post by krapp »

defrost wrote: post #129
fhn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in your opinion, what policy should be made because whatever policy you make won't do much as long as guns exist?

Australian policy on guns (princially unifying existing gun regulation across all of Australia including Queensland, Tasmania, and the Territories) had a significant impact on mass shooting, individual shooting, gun suicides, etc throughout the 30 years following the Port Arthur massacre. During the period legitimate gun ownership (people with guns) has sharply declined in larger urban areas, remained about the same…

Australia doesn't have the Second Amendment.

In the US, any gun legislation that could possibly be effective at eliminating gun violence would also by definition be unconstitutional, since there is no way to prevent gun violence to any significant degree without infringing on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

And a Constitutional amendment to repeal or change the 2A is existentially impossible as it would require the cooperation of Southern states and would threaten the billion dollar gun lobby.

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#139

Post by cybercatgurrl »

mothballed wrote: post #133
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if you and 1,000 of your neighbors called the 9-1-1 dispatch for a little heart-to-heart. This number in the USA is designated for people in crisis, and a crisis responder is going to be under time pressure to resolve your crisis or hand off the situation to some other team as it de-escalates. My county also has a “Warm Line” that everyone is encouraged to call, but they do set timers. Once your timer runs ou…

I wonder what they can really achieve in 5 minutes beyond sending the police to do a mental health hold on you? I always thought these lines in the USA were just ways to rat yourself out to get a mental hold (imprisoned, at your own astronomical cost) and then your civil rights (guns) revoked. Having been imprisoned at a hospital, though not for mental health (falsely accused as drug smuggler by insane cops), I think…

it would be interesting to see if there was increase in involuntary hospitalisation and that’s what actually made the difference

Re: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline

#140

Post by ButlerianJihad »

cybercatgurrl wrote: post #139
mothballed wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what they can really achieve in 5 minutes beyond sending the police to do a mental health hold on you? I always thought these lines in the USA were just ways to rat yourself out to get a mental hold (imprisoned, at your own astronomical cost) and then your civil rights (guns) revoked. Having been imprisoned at a hospital, though not for mental health (falsely accused as drug smuggler by insane cops), I think…

it would be interesting to see if there was increase in involuntary hospitalisation and that’s what actually made the difference

No, I don't think that the establishment of crisis lines or putting more resources to work, will result in such an increase. It is a question of moving the funnel and allocating better resources.

The MH Crisis Line may prevent unfair arrests and jailings. It may prevent certain altercations with law enforcement. It may prevent, or at least accurately predict, domestic violence incidents and so forth. The problem with 9-1-1 is that calling for an Emergency resulted in the dispatch of armed police and/or paramedics and firefighters who were poorly equipped to deal with the autistic ADHD non-verbal manchild having a meltdown. Also, many communities are filled with hatred for cops and other first responders in uniform. Sending them can cause secondary incidents and violence.

So if you've got a Crisis Line with people equipped for mental health stuff, then you can send the correct responders. Many municipalities have already established teams like in a "Care Van" who can connect with citizens, establish rapport, and get them referred to services, non-violently, but really urgently.

That will make all the difference. Perhaps it will result in more, or fewer, involuntary hospitalizations, but it represents a solid funnel into those services and allocates more resources to deal with incidents that would only be exacerbated by armed and militarized police/fire/EMTs.

Post reply on HN