
Founder Suicides - wslh
http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/10/founder-suicides.html
======
rdtsc
It is worth pointing out that talking about suicide more than usual (media,
blogs, sharing stories) also has a strange effect of triggering suicides.

Even if it is just raising awareness and just telling people about the suicide
hot line.

It is a rather insidious double edged sword.

~~~
baddox
Do you have a citation for that claim?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide)

and a recent example: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2014/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2014/08/12/what-happens-when-a-suicide-is-highly-publicized-in-the-
wrong-way-the-suicide-contagion-effect/)

Here's how the CDC recommends handling this sort of thing:
[http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00031539.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00031539.htm)

~~~
baddox
I haven't seen any data to suggest that media coverage causes a _net increase_
in the rate of suicide, nor even a clear claim that this is the case. I don't
doubt that coverage would cause clustering of suicide timing and method, or
that certain types of coverage would cause a net increase in rate relative to
other types of coverage. I'm just skeptical that a complete lack of coverage
would be the optimum.

~~~
dang
_I haven 't seen any data to suggest that media coverage causes a net increase
in the rate of suicide, nor even a clear claim that this is the case._

"The suicides that follow these stories are excess deaths. After the initial
spurt, the suicide rates do not drop below traditional levels but only return
to those levels."

[https://fc.deltasd.bc.ca/~dmatthews/FOV2-00074762/S02DB0598....](https://fc.deltasd.bc.ca/~dmatthews/FOV2-00074762/S02DB0598.2/Cialdini%20airplane%20studies.pdf)

The studies Cialdini writes about in that chapter are older, because his book
is older. If anyone can report on more recent work, please do. This is
worrisome stuff.

~~~
thaumaturgy
That is an excerpt from a book about using psychology for the purposes of
persuasion in marketing. It was not a study on the memetic effects of suicide
reporting, which aspects of the reporting might contribute to contagion, or a
treatise on untreated depression or suicide.

I read that PDF. Twice. It makes some ... great leaps of conclusion and
assumption, without much in the way of investigation or data. It concludes for
example that young people _intentionally_ fatally drove their cars into trees
_because_ they read articles about suicide, but it presents no actual evidence
for that case other than a statistical correlation.

As is mentioned frequently on HN, correlation in statistics is tricky:
[http://tylervigen.com/](http://tylervigen.com/)

I don't think we have enough information at hand to suppress discussion of
depression or suicide.

~~~
dang
Of course the chapter isn't _itself_ a study of the effects of suicide
reporting—it's an overview of such studies. It's an excerpt from a well-known
popular treatment of social psychology, written by a researcher and duly
stocked with references [1]. Assuming that Cialdini isn't misrepresenting that
literature, I don't see how anyone without a preconceived opinion wouldn't
take serious pause at the findings he reports. If you're going to dismiss them
you'll need to do a lot better than the usual handwave about correlation.

Let's hear from someone who knows about the latest work on this, or some
evidence that those findings are bogus.

1\. I mean the book, not the pdf. Obviously I would link to the book if I
could; it happens not to be online. The pdf is, and it at least covers the
main points (as I recall them—I read the book years ago).

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _Let 's hear from someone who knows about the latest work on this, or some
> evidence that those findings are bogus._

We won't get to, because every time the subject comes up now on HN, someone
says, "don't talk about this, it's dangerous."

~~~
dang
I know it's tricky, because it's a subject that evokes strong feelings (in me
too), but a substantive post on serious research into this would not be off
topic here.

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robg
A friend just told me six student suicides at MIT this year plus one
professor. We now lose more people to suicides in the U.S. than to car
accidents.

You are not alone.

~~~
selmnoo
> We now lose more people to suicides in the U.S. than to car accidents.

Holy shit, that's unbelievable. I basically don't drive because I have long
believed that driving is an unnecessarily risky thing to do -- indeed, because
it kills so many people. To find out now that more people are lost to suicide
than car accidents is pretty bizarre.

I agree with rdtsc up above by the way that we should just not bring this up
on social media too much. It's one place we should censor ourselves. Merely
even talking about it exposes suicide as an option. Avoiding talking about it
really is the way to go.

~~~
flyinglizard
Unless you have the enviable ability to teleport, driving is probably one of
the least dangerous ways to get from place to place (compared to walking and
cycling).

~~~
solistice
I would imagine that teleporting is actually quite dangerous, in all it's
(fictional) forms.

Imagine it was magical and you just kinda popped into the spot you were
thinking about. But what if there's something occupying that spot now? Would
you just teleport into it? Or would it swap you and whatever was in that spot?
What if there's still more of that object there? Would you suffocate in a
newly built wall or get squished by moving machinery? You could always
teleport only to places you can see, but I imagine that would be quite
disorienting. Zap, your entire field of vision changed without you registering
any movement. You'll proably get dissy and accidentally teleport somewhere
dangerous.

Or let's go with the Star Trek like beaming. Are there transcription errors
that slowly build up? What if the exit node uses a different kind of encoding
than the entry node?

Teleportation seems awfully dangerous.

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jaekwon
I like Erdos's interpretation of death, and probably suicide as well. It's an
action of "leaving". I'm OK with that, and I hope one day to leave with
assisted suicide rather than be forced the burden of staying despite my will.

If we want to make this life an enjoyable experience for as many people as
possible, we should be looking at trends in suicide and trying to figure out
what's wrong. I hope you all stay because the best part is ahead of us, but
it's OK to me if you decide to leave, too.

That said, I can imagine how bad it must be to be a founder in Las Vegas. I
think the place is phony, hot, unsustainable, and lacking in genuine purpose
and liveliness.

~~~
joshschreuder
The problem I have with this is that "leaving" anything most often
inconveniences or displaces people around you. For instance, you probably
wouldn't leave in the middle of an important deadline to go on holidays, as it
would affect the rest of your team.

In the same way, depression-based suicide takes considerable toll on not only
friends and family, but the people who witness / discover you. I don't have
the same opinion on assisted suicide for chronic illness, as I believe it is a
dignified choice, but I personally can't be OK with someone taking their life
in depression as though that is their ultimate will. Depression affects the
will, and as a mental health issue it is something these people need to be
aided with in recovering to full health.

~~~
lmz
Forcing people to continue living who don't want to, just because it might
inconvenience others seems more wrong to me.

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yitchelle
The Australians have [https://www.ruok.org.au/](https://www.ruok.org.au/),
where they encourage conversations and basic social interactions. It started
out for someone to discuss about the basic challenges with life. Someone to
talk to about bringing up a family on a single income, the worries about your
wife/husband health, the looming thoughts about your life of your elderly
parents etc.

I love to see this roll out on a wider scale. Living in Germany, sometimes, I
have a hard time getting social interactions. That is not to say that the
Germans are socially hard to connect with. I have grown up in Australia and
adjustment to the German social environment is quite difficult.

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alecco
How is this not front page with 63 votes and only 7hs? (Better than several FP
entries)

One thing was to put below fold the flagged stories, but this is plain
censorship.

We have to learn about the bad sides of the startup industry to grow. Else
this will keep repeating.

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jhonovich
If suicide is a problem now, what will happen if / when the next downturn
occurs?

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pronoiac
Global suicide hotlines and resources for therapy:
[http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/ThereIsHelp](http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/ThereIsHelp)

(Full disclosure: I run this wiki.)

