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Bleach should also not be allowed near suicidal teens.

But how do you tell before it matters?



Plastic bags shouldn't be allowed near suicidal teens. Scarves shouldn't be. Underwear is also a strangulation hazard for the truly desperate. Anything long sleeved even. Knives of any kind, including butter. Cars, obviously.

Bleach is the least of your problems.


We have established that suicidal people should be held naked (or with an apron) in solitary isolation in a padded white room and saddled with medical bills larger than a four-year college tuition. That'll help'em.

One problem with treatment modalities is that they ignore material conditions and treat everything as dysfunction. Lots of people are looking for a way out not because of some kind of physiological clinical depression, but because they've driven themselves into a social & economic dead-end and they don't see how they can improve. More suicidal people than not, would cease to be suicidal if you handed them $180,000 in concentrated cash, and a pardon for their crimes, and a cute neighbor complimenting them, which successfully neutralizes a majority of socioeconomic problems.

We deal with suicidal ideation in some brutal ways, ignoring the material consequences. I can't recommend suicide hotlines, for example, because it's come out that a lot of them concerned with liability call the cops, who come in and bust the door down, pistol whip the patient, and send them to jail, where they spend 72 hours and have some charges tacked on for resisting arrest (at this point they lose their job). Why not just drone strike them?


What is "concentrated cash"? Do you have to dilute it down to standard issue bills before spending it? Someone hands you 5 lbs of gold, and have to barter with people to use it?

"He didn't need the money. He wasn't sure he didn't need the gold." (an Isaac Asimov short story)

> More suicidal people than not, would cease to be suicidal if ...

I'm going to need to see a citation on this one.


> We have established that suicidal people should be held naked (or with an apron) in solitary isolation in a padded white room and saddled with medical bills larger than a four-year college tuition. That'll help'em.

It appear to be the only way


The one dude that used the money to build a self-murder machine and then televised it would ruin it for everyone though. :s

The reality is most systems are designed to cover asses more than meet needs, because systems get abused a lot - by many different definitions, including being used as scapegoats by bad actors.


Yeah, if we know they’re suicidal, it’s legitimately grippy socks time I guess?

But there is zero actually effective way to do that as an online platform. And plenty of ways that would cause more harm (statistically).

My comment was more ‘how the hell would you know in a way anyone could actually do anything reasonable, anyway?’.

People spam ‘Reddit cares’ as a harassment technique, claiming people are suicidal all the time. How much should the LLM try to guess? If they use all ‘depressed’ words? What does that even mean?

What happens if someone reports a user is suicidal, and we don’t do anything? Are we now on the hook if they succeed - or fail and sue us?

Do we just make a button that says ‘I’m intending to self harm’ that locks them out of the system?


Why are we imprisoning suicidal people? That will surely add incentive to have someone raise their hand and ask for help: taking their freedoms away...


Why do we put people in a controlled environment where their available actions are heavily restricted and their ability to use anything they could hurt themselves is taken away? When they are a known risk of hurting themselves or others?

What else do you propose?


Not putting them in controlled environments, but rather teaching them to control their environments


Huh?

To be clear, people in the middle of psychotic episodes and the like tend to not do very well at learning life skills.

Sometimes pretty good at stabbing random things/people, poisoning themselves, setting themselves on fire, etc.

There are of course degrees to all this, but it’s pretty rare someone is getting a 5150 because they just went on an angry rant or the like.

Many are in drug induced states, or clearly unable to manage their interface with the reality around them at the time.

Once things have calmed down, sure. But how do you think education in ‘managing the world around them’ is going to help a paranoid schizophrenic?




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