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?
The room to talk completely openly about the topic isn't a public forum that people who google suicide might find. In my time as forum moderator those people who threatened their own suicide usually weren't established members but people who joined the forum specifically for that purpose.
It extremly emotionally challenging to have someone who first writes that they want to kill themselves and then writes that they drunk some poision. Do you try to contact some local authority in some Austrialian town and give them the IP address to handle the issue? Do you write some relative that you determined by looking at that persons facebook page that you got because they registered with their email address?
The best way to escape such issues is to try to convince the person to seek help. Better deal with the issue at an early stage than having to deal with it at a more explicit stage.
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.
If you weren't okay that question might have lead to a discussion with your friend. That discussion might have helped you.
Okay, that is definitely a very good point. I understand that few people are equipped to deal with the reality of suicide and I agree that having a discussion in a public forum is unsettling to a lot of people. I wouldn't want to discuss things with people that they are disturbed by. I also understand the functionality of the disclaimer. I think what I wanted to point out is that people who are prepared to have a discussion need to do a bit of extra work to advertise that they are open for the discussion after the disclaimer if by default we want to assume...
I sometimes have thoughts of suicide. That does not mean I would ever come within a mile of committing the act of suicide. But my brain does simulate it; though I do try to always reduce such thoughts.
But what I have noticed is that 'suicide' is triggered in my mind whenever I think of some embarrassing event, real or imagined. Or an event in which I'm obviously a low-status actor. This leads me to think that suicide might be a high-status move, in the sense that its goal is to recover status after some event which caused a big drop in status. Consider the following instances when suicide is often considered: