
I interviewed 60 people less than 24 hours after they attempted suicide. AMA - RoboTeddy
http://anyasq.com/41-i-interviewed-people-less-than-24-hours-after-they-attempted-suicide
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tptacek
I stopped reading after the first question, where the interviewee states that
people are "rarely" forced into inpatient treatment against their will. Maybe
it's an insurance thing and they kick out the indigents by rationalizing their
"commitment to outpatient treatment", but I have multiple friends who sought
psychiatric help proactively, got talked into conceding suicidal ideation, and
ended up stuck in worthless inpatient prisons for days and days.

This is real, serious problem with how we handle mental illness; anybody savvy
enough to know what emergency help is available should unfortunately be savvy
enough to know to avoid showing up anywhere in person.

~~~
j_baker
I think there's a more practical reason behind it. In the United States, it's
actually pretty hard to get someone committed against their will, and plenty
of psychiatrists have argued that it should be easier to do so (and not
completely without merit). I mean, how many people on the streets are there
because they're incapable of taking care of themselves? How many people have
committed crimes that could have been prevented with a mental hospital stay?

~~~
todayiamme
>>> How many people have committed crimes that could have been prevented with
a mental hospital stay? <<<

Isn't this essentially equivalent to pre-emptive punishment? If you abstract
it you could say, how many murders will stop if we lock up anyone who has ever
been in a violent altercation? It is compelling in some ways, but this list
also includes anyone in a very stupid bar fight. The real problem isn't even
the haziness of the line, it's _where_ do you draw the line.

Is being gay evil? Not too long ago it was viewed as that, and feminine boys
were quite often put through hell. I really don't want to live in a world like
that. This led to atrocities like these;
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aversion_therapy#In_homosexuali...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aversion_therapy#In_homosexuality)

The problem with a lot of psychiatry is the game of vested interests. For
example, people making the DSM have a vested interest to categorise deviations
from the social norm into disorders which require their own unique brand of
"therapy". If you add in the fact that most of psychology research lacks
proper scientific methodology, and its often used as a platform to prove a
point, which somehow always agrees with the researchers prejudices, you get
people juggling grenades on a glass slop, while balancing on a wet soap bar.

~~~
joe_the_user
Also, it is far from a given that a mentally ill person is especially inclined
towards crime. My mother worked as a psychiatric social worker for an extended
period and her opinion was that schizophrenics were less dangerous than just
average people.

Certainly, many mentally ill people could use some help and will engage in
behaviors "disturbing to the public" (talking loudly to themselves etc). But
it seems to me that serious criminality requires a certain confidence and
competence maybe not a lot but more than, say

~~~
cosgroveb
Actually, it has been shown that in the absence of substance abuse,
schizophrenics are no more violent than the general population.

I have a family member with mental health problems. It annoys me to know end
when I see yet another episode of Criminal Minds where the killer has paranoid
schizophrenia. People with mental health issues need support not alienation
from society.

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paulnelligan
I attempted to sign in to ask a question, and got the following message:

This application will be able to:

    
    
        Read Tweets from your timeline.
        See who you follow, and follow new people.
        Update your profile.
        Post Tweets for you.
        Access your direct messages until June 30th, 2011.
    

Who the in their right mind would sign into this ???

~~~
GraffitiTim
I couldn't find a way to ask for fewer permissions. All we need is ability to
post tweets since there's a checkbox to post to your followers when you ask a
question or start an AMA.

We don't use any of the other permissions and won't do anything unexpected.

For what it's worth, we've run the Graffiti app on Facebook since the launch
of the platform, and have never spammed anyone or their friends, or misused
any data or permissions.

~~~
paulnelligan
Hi Tim

I wasn't actually expecting a personalised response from the AnyAsq creator.

It was more a general comment, and the question still stands I think - read my
DM's?, no frickin' way!! - that's a serious invasion of privacy ...

I understand that you have to do what you can to spread your product, but
there's a trade-off between being able to tweet, and asking someone to
basically give up their twitter accounts to you ... you're going to lose more
potential customers than gain with this method IMHO ...

How about: asking someone to sign in twitter, and asking their permission to
just tweet their questions? - could you limit it to that ?

~~~
GraffitiTim
I appreciate the feedback, and we're still thinking about how best to do it.
I'm hoping at some point twitter will implement a more granular way to ask for
permissions.

As for direct messages, I believe twitter will stop asking for that either
today or tomorrow.

~~~
paulnelligan
I'm super surprised they haven't implemented it already, i mean, it's not that
difficult to build a granular permission system, what they have in place right
now is a disaster ...

~~~
GraffitiTim
I'm wondering if they might be planning to transition to a more granular
permission system like Facebook, since they recently started displaying the
permissions more granularly and it would make a lot of sense.

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fezzl
I was looking for the transcripts of the interviews she did with the suicide
victims. I was a bit disappointed.

~~~
btmorex
She wouldn't be able to release those without consent or major editing /
censorship due to patient privacy laws.

------
cromulent
"Rarely do people without a serious mental illness attempt to take their own
lives."

I wonder if she considers voluntary euthanasia to be a form of suicide, or
whether these simply were not part of her study (maybe due to their success).

------
jessor
Check out her blog, interesting stuff there, too:
<http://taradeliberto.blogspot.com/>

------
rokhayakebe
Where I am from when someone says _I am tired, I am going to commit suicide_
(and they could sound a bit serious), the most likely answer you get is _Sure.
Go ahead. We'll only cry for one day and eat well at your funerals_. I have
never known anyone who went through with it.

~~~
pstack
The problem is that you never know when someone is just talking, just seeking
attention, or is serious. Often, the most serious don't talk about it. They
just do it. But even attempting it is bad enough and while many might make
light of someone's threats about it as nothing more than lame attempts at
milking attention, that alone denotes a fairly serious concern. There are
several levels before the point of actually attempting or committing the act
which are deserving of serious notice.

I haven't known anyone who went through with it, either (though I know many
who know those who have). I'll tell you, however, that I'd sure rather know
someone that made threats that I took serious and tried to get help for than
know someone I didn't take serious and will regret not taking serious for the
rest of my life.

------
pstack
From the site: _Where interesting people say: "Ask me anything."_

You know the author is interesting, because there's a giant photo of them in a
dress cut down to their navel, right above the questions about interviewing
dozens of attempted suicides.

~~~
skermes
Please do enlighten us: what is the correct clothing to wear on a website when
you discuss attempted suicides? Should we make sure to stick to earth tones so
that we respect the solemnity of the topic, or do we want to add some bright
colors in to make sure no gets even sadder? This is one area where I sure
wouldn't want to make a misstep. What's your opinion vis a vis a pipe for
added gravitas? I think it might go too far. Maybe when you're done with
suicide-related topics, you could compose a manual for other scenarios, so
that we can be sure to never again offend your sense of fashion.

tl;dr, cut the fucking body policing, jackass.

~~~
derefr
I think the "serious answer" would be "you don't put a photo of yourself, or,
in fact, anything related to yourself that could be misconstrued as egocentric
or status-serving, in an article related to suicide; you just let it speak for
itself." However, that sort of goes against the whole point of the site's
format, which is, basically, to status-affiliate [through social learning]
with people who have done things that have made them high-status in one way or
another.

I think the "serious answer" to _that_ would be "then they shouldn't have done
the interview" (or "they should have made some special exception to their
normal site formatting," which through interview prioritization basically
amounts to the same thing) which has interesting implications for the ethics
of free speech.

~~~
pstack
I could understand if it were just a little user icon off in the corner, but
to have a huge 200x300 photo in the article is a little obnoxious, though
probably not intentionally crude. If it's an automated function of the site
that puts it there for, then maybe a more tasteful choice of photo is called
for when one posts several articles about working with suicide patients.

I should edit this to add that the author being an attractive young women is
irrelevant and that a similar photo with a male author would be as
unfortunately distasteful. And as the other poster mentioned, they
thoughtfully changed their photo. Maybe it's just a cruddy way the site
automates the use of people's photos in a sort of template?

