Furthermore, I’m disturbed by the cavalier attitude here. Suicide isn’t a predestined thing that we’re helpless to prevent as a society. There is real suffering and we can do something about it in aggregate. Framing it as something “they’ll do anyways” is both factually incorrect, and absolves society of any responsibility to help prevent suicide.
0 - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survi...
I agree with most of your comment but somewhat disagree with this. Suicide is not, itself, suffering. It's the result of suffering. David Foster Wallace compared suicide to jumping from a burning building; it's not that necessarily that jumping seems like a way out, it's something you are driven to because of your fear of the flames.
Speaking only for myself, as someone who has been depressed to the point of being suicidal before and still has recurrent bouts of strong depression, I find the obsessive focus on the issue of suicide unhelpful and hurtful. It is, so to speak, putting bars on the windows so that we have to face the flames instead. It is hard to convey to someone who hasn't experienced depression how it can turn every second of living into pure agony.
I agree that taking away easy routes to suicide is a good thing. I accept the research which says that most people attempt it rashly, though I don't think you can say that a low re-attempt rate indicates a rash decision. Suicide hotlines are good things. I do believe strongly that people have a right to die, including for persistent depression, if they so wish.
If anyone out there actually cares about depressed people, the best way to help them is to help fix the depression; give us a better way out than suicide and we'll take it. This means fixing healthcare in America, for example; a top-class universal healthcare system with support for mental health would do a world of good. Secondarily, making sure people have financial security - lift people out of poverty and homelessness. Give them access to community resources and activities. The fact that people are so willing to take on suicide as a problem, but not willing to resolve its causes pains me.
That wasn’t the point that people were making. The point they were making is that removing fans doesn’t address the underlying mental health issues. If anything, arguing that everyone is ok now because fewer people are dying is the cavalier attitude because it overlooks the daily struggles that many will still be having.
Thus regardless of the points you’ve put excellently in your first paragraph, the students mental health issues do also need to be addressed too.
So I see your rebuttal as complimentary to the other points rather than fully dismissing them (ie it shouldn’t be “either/or” but rather “both things needs doing”).
That is a fair argument, but not how I interpreted GP. In the context it seemed like they were arguing against any measure that removes means of suicide away from people because “they’ll just do it regardless”.
> If anything, arguing that everyone is ok now because fewer people are dying
Literally nobody here is saying this. Everyone here has acknowledged that this doesn’t solve the underlying mental health issues (or material issues, per a now dead comment), but might be a good band aid (over a “bullet wound” per another commenter).
What’s more common here is the acknowledgment that this doesn’t solve the mental health issue, and the grim realization that the university won’t do anything about it either way.
