= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Jack comments on Is suicide high-status? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (81)
If suicidal ideation is a sign of clinical depression, does that mean that we can take the contrapositive and say that healthy people think about suicide very infrequently? I guess I understand that it's not meant to be read as a pure logic statement, but is there room to talk about suicide without that "maybe get help plz" disclaimer? Does this mean that healthy people can participate in a discussion about suicide on an internet thread and put it out of their heads immediately?
I posted something about suicide on a personal journal (actually in response to this happy whale article) and had a well-meaning friend ask me if "I was okay" in this weird perfunctory way. Because her question wasn't really enough to do any good if I wasn't. Confuzzled!
Sure, probabilisticly: healthy people probably think about suicide much less, on average. There are exceptions, obviously.
Talking about suicide is not at all the same as suicidal ideation. Also, I'm not at all averse to this discussion. A disclaimer doesn't prohibit a conversation.
Talking about suicide implies thoughts about suicide, and the definition of suicidal ideation Vaniver quoted says such thoughts demonstrate suicidal ideation. If so, talking about suicide implies suicidal ideation.
There are narrower definitions of suicidal ideation (e.g. the two you cited earlier) but I worry that broad definitions like Wikipedia's prime people to interpret discussion about suicide in general as a reliable sign of suicidal ideation or being mentally unbalanced. jooyous might have a similar concern.
(I'm not saying you're doing that in this case. Someone mentally simulating suicide on an ongoing basis clearly is engaging in suicidal ideation.)
I guess that makes sense. I've either always interpreted those as conversation stoppers or they've actually been conversations stoppers in other situations I've observed them.
It's still weird to me to think that it's somehow "normal" to come away from conversations like this and not think about them later.