Izabel Laxamana Suicide and Public Shaming

[wolfie]

Anderson says that suicide is an overwhelmingly impulsive act. He cites a study of survivors that said only 13 percent reported thinking about committing suicide for eight hours or longer; 70 percent said they thought about it for less than an hour; and a whopping 24 percent said the idea had occurred to them less than five minutes before their attempt.

Anderson is a novelist, not a doctor and again, suicide doesn't just occur in a vacuum. Suicide is *not* an overwhelmingly impulsive act. Only about 1 in 4 could be considered impulsive

Not only that, but he's treating "trimmed" data as if it were indicative of the full set. After all, he only interviewed those who SURVIVED their attempt. Did those who thought about it for longer plan things out to make sure they succeeded, resulting in him only being able to interview the impulsive ones?

[Canarr]

Not only that, but he's treating "trimmed" data as if it were indicative of the full set. After all, he only interviewed those who SURVIVED their attempt. Did those who thought about it for longer plan things out to make sure they succeeded, resulting in him only being able to interview the impulsive ones?

Granted. Still, there are strong indications that a lack of easily accessible means for committing suicide actually reduces the number of suicides. In the UK, the number of suicides dropped 30% after they began switching ovens from coal gas to natural gas in the 1970s. In Sri Lanka, suicide rates halved from 1995 to 2005 after certain pesticides that had previously been used were outlawed.

So, I would say that at least a certain percentage of suicides is spontaneous.

Anderson is a novelist, not a doctor and again, suicide doesn't just occur in a vacuum. Suicide is *not* an overwhelmingly impulsive act. Only about 1 in 4 could be considered impulsive and, here's the thing, the more impulsive a person is, the more likely they are to impulsively commit suicide if they are in a suicidal state. Its correlation, not causation. Also, the more impulsive a suicide attempt is, the less serious it tends to be, medically speaking.

Well, 1 in 4 is about the rate that Anderson gives (24%). Also, I would say 1 in 4 is high enough a rate that one cannot easily claim it never happens.

[s_stabeler]

Actually i think the lack of easily accessible means to commit suicide changes things because it means that it is harder to commit suicide - so it takes longer before they are in a position to make a suicide attempt, going more time either for someone to figure out they are going to attempt suicide and get them help, or for them to have second thoughts.

and the thing is, even f someone suddenly decided to commit suicide, what is rare is an otherwise happy person deciding "screw this, I'm going to kill myself"- in other words, the classic idea of someone committing suicide with no hint they were going to. It's usualyl people who are depressed, feeling isolated, etc.

And again, even if her suicide could not currently have been predicted, it is worth trying to figure out if it could have been- so that, in future, someone else who is in a similar situation can get help before their suicide.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I would say that most of these teenage suicides are not a genuine attempt to end their lives, but a cry for help. For example, a teenage girl who hangs herself in her bedroom when her family is downstairs might be thinking, "If they really care, they'll come and save me before I die". Sadly, since she's completely ignorant of how efficient a method of taking life hanging is, she's dead before anyone can come and save her. It's a rather disturbing thought that to many teenagers, suicide (or attempting it) is seen as a perfectly logical response to problems.

[Andara Bledin]

In this specific case, it appears that the girl thought she was a burden to her family and that she wouldn't be able to stop making the kind of mistakes that led to her haircut. It was shame over her own actions and not her father's that seem to have been the driving force. In this case, it was about flirty pictures she had sent over social media to a boy in her school; she had been told not to use social media and the punishment for doing so was the haircut. Her father found out about the pictures because the school had contacted him over them.

Strangely enough, based on the timeline, it may have been people's attempts to help her after the haircut that led to her choosing to end her life at that time. She wrote her suicide notes and jumped the day after the school called CPS to talk to her about what had happened to her hair.

[s_stabeler]

yes and no. It might well have been shame over her actions that led to her committing suicide, but that actually argues overzealousness on the part of the father- not realizing that his punishments were making her think she couldn't behave in the way her father expected her to. ( basically, what I mean is that the punishments were making her think that the problem was something inherent in her- that she was nothing but a screwup and her family would be better off if she was dead) It ties into what I said about how it's a good idea to think of what the consequences of the more extreme punishments can be. For instance, if this was a pattern of behaviour, I wonder if he ever looked into why she might have been behaving like that.

[Gravekeeper]

Well, 1 in 4 is about the rate that Anderson gives (24%). Also, I would say 1 in 4 is high enough a rate that one cannot easily claim it never happens.

I think you're misunderstanding something here. I never claimed impulsive suicide never happens. What I said is that suicide doesn't happen in a vacuum. IE, a perfectly normal, healthy person doesn't just impulsively decide to swallow a shotgun one morning. There's always some factors that lead to it. Suicide is a process. Not a random inclination that strikes you morning over breakfast.

Also no, Anderson's statement was "overwhelmingly impulsive". This is simply not true. Even from the numbers he himself presents in the exact same paragraph. The 1 in 4 rate I gave was for impulsive suicide. The 1 in 4 rate he gives is for survivors that thought about suicide for 5 minutes or less before attempting it.

As I indicated in my last post, the more impulsive a suicide attempt, the less medically severe it is and thus the higher rate of survival. His sample pool of survivors would thus, ironically, be skewed towards impulsive suicide attempts. If only 25% of suicide attempts can be classified as impulsive, and those have the highest rate of survival, then his "overwhelmingly impulsive" theory is complete bunk.

[Gravekeeper]

Strangely enough, based on the timeline, it may have been people's attempts to help her after the haircut that led to her choosing to end her life at that time. She wrote her suicide notes and jumped the day after the school called CPS to talk to her about what had happened to her hair.

Ugh, CPS getting involved could add a new level of emotional distress to the situation. But, its interesting that her classmates say she was being bullied and the school is adamantly denying it. If the school was aware of the photos that means they were being shared by the boy in question at school. There's no way she wasn't being bullied/shamed over that by her peers. ( Teenagers are assholes ).

That would certainly put a burden of shame on her and fit with her saying she feared it would haunt her for the rest of her life.

All that said cutting her hair still seems kinda fucked up. Especially if this is what it was over. Considering forcibly cutting a woman's hair to slut shame her use to be a thing in in the wonderful middle ages.

[s_stabeler]

the school saying she wasn't being bullied and her peers saying she was makes me suspect the school was ignoring the bullying deliberately as well. Again, chipping away at her ability to believe there was anyone to turn to.

[Canarr]

I think you're misunderstanding something here. I never claimed impulsive suicide never happens. What I said is that suicide doesn't happen in a vacuum. IE, a perfectly normal, healthy person doesn't just impulsively decide to swallow a shotgun one morning. There's always some factors that lead to it. Suicide is a process. Not a random inclination that strikes you morning over breakfast.

Ah, okay; then I misunderstood you. Sorry about that. And while I agree that a perfectly happy person doesn't just kill themselves after one bad day, I do believe that whatever previous factors they have been might not have been visible to that person's friends and family. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many cases of surprising suicides.

Of course, whether or not the previous factors *should* have been noticed is a different matter.

[HYHYBT]

A side question: how would changing from coal gas to natural gas cut down on suicides?

[s_stabeler]

it'sd harder to kill yourself with natural gas- and I think it takes longer as well, so there's a higher chance someone will find and rescue you.

[Andara Bledin]

For those interested in the statistics on suicide from just about any angle, here is a good place to start: http://lostallhope.com/suicide-statistics

Note: The site operator suffers from depression and is one of those who has attempted and failed at suicide. He built the site as a way to reach out to others who might find themselves in the same place he did and give them options, whether they choose to try another path or to come to the end of the one they're already one.

[wolfie]

A side question: how would changing from coal gas to natural gas cut down on suicides?

Suicide by gas is the stereotypical "shut off the pilot light and stick your head in the oven" method.

Coal gas is a mixture of gases produced by the destructive distillation of coal (basically, burning it in an oxygen-poor environment). One of these gases is carbon monoxide, which binds to hemoglobin roughly 100x as strongly as oxygen does. It doesn't take a very high concentration (double digits parts-per-million) to do damage in long-term exposure, and higher levels will do damage in a shorter time. Because it "takes out" hemoglobin, removing a victim from the contaminated environment doesn't help.

Natural gas is pretty close to being pure methane (with a bit of ethyl mercaptan added so that leaks can be detected by smell). It's not toxic, but can still kill by displacing oxygen. This takes MUCH higher concentrations (you'd need to get well into the double-digit percentages before it would bring the oxygen content down to a non-survivable level), and (so long as the victim is still alive when found) removing them from the contaminated environment (i.e. getting them back to the normal 20% oxygen concentration of regular air) will help.

[Hyena Dandy]

. It was shame over her own actions and not her father's that seem to have been the driving force.

Potentially, yes and no. I've been suicidal and I've had what I think are unreasonably harsh punishments. Yes, I felt bad, and it was self-directed. When I tried to hurt myself, though, it was not a feeling of "I hate my parents, they fucked me over," it was a feeling of "I hate myself, I can't do anything right." Even when what I had done was fairly innocuous and it's just that my mother was in a bad mood, so she decided that the punishment would be fit to whatever she felt. I spilled an energy drink and was forbidden to talk to friends outside of school for a week, and was insulted, and called an idiot and a failure. I broke a car window and had to try to clean the glass out of the back seat so it could be taken in. The latter made me super determined not to ever do that again, while the former made me feel like a failure. Yes, it was my feeling that I couldn't stop my actions. But it's not so simple as that.

So yes, she thought "Oh no I will never be able to stop doing this!" But that doesn't take into account the possibility that the method of punishment enforced the idea that 'You are a problem' rather than 'You need to stop doing this because it is a problem.' When you get a forced haircut, every day you're reminded that you did something bad.

There are ways of disciplining children that are effective and positive. Children NEED to be disciplined sometimes, especially at certain ages (teen being one of them) when they are prone to testing boundaries. So knowing what's going to be effective in one or the other is hard to do.

In disciplining children, being authoritative, but not authoritarian, is the most effective way to go about it. Making sure that consequences are understood ahead of time, that the child understands why what they did wrong was wrong, and that the child is always given respect even in the punishment. That is, that they understand that you are punishing them, but you still care for them, and that this punishment is to help them, rather than to hurt them. If you make it a punishment about "You never get this right" rather than "Here's why this has to happen," then it's good.

Another thing is that once your child's punishment has occurred, that needs to be the end of it. Punishments shouldn't, in general, last more than a few days. Cutting someone's hair is not generally a good idea as a punishment, unless hair cutting is a logical result

(For example: You don't take care of your hair, you never wash it, you're not doing anything with it and it's starting to smell terrible - You're forced to get a haircut. We told you to get a haircut before, you didn't, now we do it for you.)

Cutting someone's hair, especially if they're proud of it, can be a humiliating act. It takes away part of their self-image, and if they really LIKE their long hair, it takes away one of the things that makes them pleased with themselves. THere's a reason it's a very old punishment in societies around the world, because it's an effective way of drawing attention to someone's failure. It constantly reminds you that you've messed up, if it's done as punishment.

I don't think that necessarily the father is a bad father. I think I could say this is not a good way of punishing someone, but I don't believe I can go beyond that. Maybe this was a one-time, rare thing where he decided constantly reminding her every day (via looking in the mirror) would be the BEST way to parent. I think a lot of psychologists would disagree with that, but that doesn't mean he's not a good parent 99% of the time. I can't judge anything about their parenting style from just a few minutes in their lives, because sometimes people do stupid stuff, and if this isn't how punishment usually goes down, then no problem.

Additionally, forcing someone to have their hair cut off is not in and of itself going to lead to them committing suicide. If they have a healthy self-esteem, then they can shrug that off and direct any frustration only at their parents, rather than themselves, which is not where it should be. Whereas if they don't, then they already didn't. Bullying takes place over a long time, and this may have contributed to it, but wanting to put the blame only on her father is wrong. Because even if this was, so to speak, the straw that broke the camel's back, it's not like she was perfectly healthy and this one thing caused it.

Using shame as punishment may only lead to shame over thei r own actions. But I feel it's a little bit shortsighted to say that the punishment doesn't at all contribute to it. If you call me an idiot when I mess up, and I feel like an idiot, then I don't think it's fair to say "Oh, he feels like an idiot because he messes up, not because we called him that."