
Assessing Sweden's ‘Vision Zero’ Plan for Suicide Prevention - danso
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/vision-zero-suicide-sweden/394994/?single_page=true
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MichaelCrawford
(I haven't read the article yet.)

I once volunteered for the Suicide Prevention Service of Santa Cruz Count, in
California.

I never lost anybody.

All I ever required to convince someone to disarm the implement of their own
destruction, get a good night's sleep then consult a mental health
professional the very next day was an hour or so of "Active Listening".

I quickly came to the conclusion that most suicidal people get that way
because they feel no one ever listens to them.

Active listening is very helpful in many other situations, for example when
someone is violently angry active listening can lead them to be happy and
friendly.

~~~
dllthomas
_" I quickly came to the conclusion that most suicidal people get that way
because they feel no one ever listens to them."_

At least, most suicidal people who call a Suicide Prevention Service.

Thank you for your efforts volunteering, incidentally!

~~~
MichaelCrawford
Thank you for your kind words.

Unfortunately it is quite common for people to commit suicide without
mentioning their plans to anyone, without anyone even suspecting. For example
during our training we were told of a college student who committed suicide in
his dorm room. No one missed him until the smell of his decaying corpse
disturbed the other students on his hall.

It's also commonly asserted that suicidal people attempt suicide to manipulate
others, for example to win sympathy or to send a message. In my experience
that is not the case. I've met lots of suicidal people; a former employer of
mine, Chris Schefler - a cofounder of the world's first web hosting service -
actually did commit suicide. In my whole life I've only met one person who
attempted for reasons of sending a message.

"Self injury" is a different thing from suicide attempt. That's commonly
practiced by people with Borderline Personality Disorder. A psychiatrist
explained to our training class that people with BPD do not experience
feelings, so they cut themselves in hopes of feeling something.

~~~
jaredhansen
Just to chime in here on BPD as well (for source, see comment above - I spent
a couple of years fairly immersed in BPD literature as my wife was studying it
pretty intensely for school/work, and I also had a personal interest as a
result of some family members who had been diagnosed):

fiatchamp's right: that description of people with BPD is waaaay off the mark,
and for what it's worth is a prime example of the stigma against BPD sufferers
within the psych community. The best research on BPD (see generally the work
of Marsha Linehan and subsequent) indicates that far from being "without
feelings", people with BPD suffer from an over-intensity of feeling.

It's often compared to being without emotional skin -- just as a person who
just had their skin badly damaged will experience extreme sensitivity there,
people with BPD are abnormally sensitive to emotional pain -- and end up
engaging in self-harm __not __, generally, as a way to seek attention or
manipulate others, but rather to distract themselves from the inner turmoil.

It's a rough disease, made worse by pervasive condemnation from most of
society, including many in psych. Thanks again for your work on the suicide
line -- and if still you're interested in the topic, please read up on the
post-1990s research on BPD. It will be worth it.

------
callesgg
Problem: people are "unhappy" and cant/wont fulfill their needs by them self.

Solution: fulfill their needs.

\--------

Problem: Their needs are unsolvable with money.

Current solution: Put the problem to the side using medicine.

Solution: Create a society where the state has powers other than money.

\--------

Problem: That society would be what we call pure communism.

Solution: Cleans all "evil" from the communist state.

\--------

Problem: how to cleans all "evil".

Solution: ?????

\--------

I dont belive it is posible to stop all suicides if we want a society where
free thoughts is allowed.

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
I'm probably in the minority who believe we should not be actively trying to
prevent suicides. I hope I have the freedom to take my own life some day when
I feel done with it

~~~
aaron695
> I hope I have the freedom to take my own life some day

This is different to actively trying to prevent suicides.

What most people want is to stop bad irreversible decisions.

~~~
zeeed
> What most people want is to stop bad irreversible decisions.

Not so sure about this one. Isn't it that, from the point of view of a
healthy, well socialized human, it's quite a horrifying thought of someone
killing themselves? Isn't it that, if you have the gift and the will to give
someone something so substantial as "being listened to", and this would save
them from killing themselves, that is a human deed that we should offer for
free, willingly and with compassion?

In my belief system suicide prevention is (for the most part) an emotional
issue rather than an intellectual one.

