I agree it's a piece of Bayesian evidence, but I wouldn't treat it as conclusive. I don't see that an observer who happens to come across a suicidal person is better qualified to judge the rationality of their decision than the suicidal person. The depressed states are often identified via the suicidality alone, which makes it worthless for judging the decision in the absense of other evidence. I would certainly talk someone off the ledge if I thought they were harming others, or they're clearly hallucinating, or if I knew them enough to know they're not in a representative emotional state for their general outlook on life. However, I would not override someone's decision in the absence of such information, because that may greatly harm them.
I do think that the self-reported suicidality is at least as much evidence against the value of a life as the general statistical restrospective self-reporting of being glad to be alive of formerly suicidal people is evidence for the value of a life. As an observer without further knowledge, I don't see intervention as justified.
The world doesn't lose much if a comparatively small number of individual people choose to die, but it loses much freedom if everyone is deprived of the right to make this decision. But alas, "every human being is infinitely valuable" is a nice-sounding meme that can trump such rational considerations in public opinion.
I would certainly talk someone off the ledge if I thought they were harming others, or they're clearly hallucinating, or if I knew them enough to know they're not in a representative emotional state for their general outlook on life.
That they're attempting suicide is strong Bayesian evidence that they're not in a representative emotional state for their general outlook on life. People who attempt to do so without other symptoms of depression are very much in the minority.
Last month, two people far at the periphery of my social circles have threatened suicide. Seems like a sign for me to learn some ledge-fu.
I reviewed the stuff I'd learned back in high school ("Listen." "Be supportive." "Don't argue." "Etc etc etc.") I have trouble believing that this would work outside of movieland, especially on strangers. More so, in person I'm an awkward, fidgeting introvert---the impact of everything I say is thus diminished, and I sound very insincere or clinical, like I'm following a bad movie script, when I say anything like, "You are not alone in this. I’m here for you." or "How can I best support you right now?" I doubt that this would sound any better in writing.
I suppose I could split my question into two related ones: what would you say to a person threatening to commit suicide, 1. in person, and 2. in an email?
I'm looking for out-of-the-box ideas that don't rely on charisma or compassion shining through. Personally, if I ever need to talk myself out of suicidal thoughts, I apply the "bum comparison principle": if my life is so crummy that I'm willing to commit suicide, then I should be willing to just walk out on everything I value and drift off in a random direction, survive by dine-and-dashing out of cheap restaurants and wash dishes if I get caught, maybe take odd jobs or hitchhike or gather roots and berries or blog from public libraries. I don't see this possibility in a negative light, and yet I still haven't done it. To me, it means that however bad my life may seem, I'm still too attached to it to walk out; therefore, suicide isn't on the menu.
People have different reasons to want suicide, and I understand that what works for me with my first world problems probably won't work for a person who is in too much physical pain from an incurable disease. To the best of my knowledge, the two people I mentioned earlier are both unskilled laborers who had lost their jobs, one of them so long ago that he's no longer eligible for unemployment benefits. I don't think I'll meet these particular people again, but I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts on what I could've said if my brain hadn't frozen.