If you’re intent on suicide then you could go searching the web for effective means of doing so. You might find that cutting your wrists isn’t very effective (it isn’t), jumping works (but make sure the building is at least ten stories high), pills take a while and guarantee nothing but a very bad time, etc.
However, in Australia such sites have been banned (enforcement?) with fines of up to A$550,000. Yikes.
In New Zealand it has been illegal, in reporting suicides, to reveal how they were carried out, or even to mention, in the headline, that the death was a suicide. This is now being reconsidered.
Trying to restrict information is generally not a good idea. Some recent research suggests that more information decreases the likelihood of suicide.
There is one site which takes photographic exhibits from coronor’s courts and posts them. If you want to see what someone’s head looks like after they’ve held a gun in their mouth and pulled the trigger, well, here you are. Or how about what you might look like after cutting yourself in two at the waist using a bandsaw? The idea is to show the reality, not the fantasy. None of the pictures are pretty.
If you do commit suicide, chances are that you’re clinically depressed (>95%). The vast majority of those who attempt suicide do not succeed (less than 1 in a 1000), and probably never intended to. People cut their wrists knowing that it’s probably not going to work. If someone really is intent on suicide, blocking a website is not going to stop them.
Finally, unless a potential sucide lives somewhere with a reasonably enlightened social policy, where help is available and marketed, the net can be a useful resource. So, given that someone who really does want to suicide may turn up here as a result of a google (as is the case judging from the queries that I get from time to time), they should probably go here.
There is more to say, suicide and the social means of discouragement / encouragement, but later.
Tags: suicide
