Every show with a suicide now has a disclaimer with a suicide hotline at the beginning. Is there any evidence that these warnings make a positive difference?

dudinax , 2 hours ago

Legend is the first suicide hotline was created after a girl killed herself because she had her first period.

People kill themselves for lots of reasons, but some of those reasons are just ignorance. I feel certain any suicide hotline could have helped her out if she’d called one.

LainTrain , 2 hours ago

When I was suicidal the thing that helped me most was lostallhope dot com.

"55% success chance, 15 minutes and 80-something agony for something as drastic as slicing one’s neck? Fucking hell there’s no getting away from it is there. " - 8?I thought.

Think it got taken down a long time ago, last I checked it didn’t load anyway, prolly cuz of the shady shit happening on SS

These helplines ain’t shit, I’m not even suicidal and it makes me want to an hero seeing that patronising cringe shit. There better be some solid proof it works on the masses, I can’t imagine how much actual mental health service funding in the UK could’ve been done from the budget of all that social advertising.

mayo , 4 hours ago

I can’t imagine they’d be helpful to me, if anything it makes me feel lesser or condescended to. It’s not the right way to talk about suicide with people who are suicidal.

scbasteve7 , 2 hours ago

Suicide comes in many different flavors. The most common in my limited experience is desperation. If you are so utterly desperate for literally anyone to listen to you, I don’t see how it would hurt. Especially since there’s such a positive stigma surrounding the hotline. I personally know a couple of people that the hotline helped.

mayo , 2 hours ago

I like the hotline

Hawk , 4 hours ago

I would like to think that these hotlines are helpful.

I have experience with somebody calling a sexual abuse hotline and being told to " Work less and go outside tomorrow".

This was a crisis situation and the advice was woefully inadequate and unhelpful.

Overall, I’m sure access to a hotline that is monitored with people who are experts at dealing with these situations is a good thing. I doubt they’re funded very well though.

FireTower , 5 hours ago

I remember my college had a suicide awareness day where among other things they told people to tell their suicidal friends to call the hotline if they felt suicidal.

Now imagine you are that person and you reach out to a friend for help only to have them tell you to call someone else in a canned speech you were told to tell others.

quixotic120 , 7 hours ago

There’s evidence that trigger warnings actually worsen anxiety and are counterproductive

The way to treat anxiety is to face the source of anxiety to try and change your relationship and reaction. The best way to do this is via controlled access that exposes one to the trigger gradually in a context that has no risk of harm (eg a media depiction, discussing the concept, building up to discussing the source of trauma that led to the phobic response if applicable)

Trigger warnings enable active avoidance. This sensitizes one to the aversive stimuli and makes the phobic response stronger. As a result when one encounters the stimulus (eg a friend, family, celebrity etc commits suicide, suffers an eating disorder, etc) your resilience to the trigger is now even lower and the response is more likely to be more significant than it was before.

That said education on access to resources like 988 or other warm lines can lower suicide rates, maybe. Research is more mixed here because it’s difficult to prove causation

november , 6 hours ago (edited 6 hours ago)

There’s evidence that trigger warnings actually worsen anxiety and are counterproductive

I’d be interested in seeing these studies.

The way to treat anxiety is to face the source of anxiety to try and change your relationship and reaction. The best way to do this is via controlled access that exposes one to the trigger gradually in a context that has no risk of harm (eg a media depiction, discussing the concept, building up to discussing the source of trauma that led to the phobic response if applicable)

Trigger warnings enable active avoidance. This sensitizes one to the aversive stimuli and makes the phobic response stronger. As a result when one encounters the stimulus (eg a friend, family, celebrity etc commits suicide, suffers an eating disorder, etc) your resilience to the trigger is now even lower and the response is more likely to be more significant than it was before.

These two paragraphs seem to contradict each other. Controlled access in a safe setting like a media depiction sounds great. That’s exactly what trigger warnings are for. How can you possibly do controlled exposure without knowing if the content is there or not?

Trigger warnings enable active avoidance.

Incorrect. Trigger warnings inform you that the content is present in the media you’re about to watch. What you do with that information is up to you.

quixotic120 , 5 hours ago

journals.sagepub.com/doi/…/2167702620921341 - the bigger takeaway from this one is that trigger warnings reinforce trauma as a central part of the traumatized individuals identity but they did find some incidence of drawback/harm

journals.sagepub.com/doi/…/21677026231186625 meta finding no benefit and actually can cause an anticipatory reaction making the person more engaged with the material

There are others, this is just what grabbed from 30 seconds on google scholar. Its been a bit since I’ve done more serious lit review and it’s not like I keep a directory of papers I’ve read

The issue is the culture surrounding trigger warnings. Let’s be real here, people looking for trigger warnings are generally (perhaps overwhelmingly) not looking for material to help with their exposure therapy. They are looking for a “warning” to help them screen material to avoid. The issue is that this creates an unrealistic expectation that is incompatible with the real world. You can avoid suicide, sexual assault, eating disorders, or whatever in your media (maybe) but real life won’t sanitize itself or warn you. You will encounter these topics, whether through the news, careless speech from friends, or even intrusive thoughts of your own. Research continues to show that avoidance of upsetting topics can worsen anxiety and ptsd symptoms

To your final point the idea of it helping to create a choice isn’t even as clear cut as you describe

journals.sagepub.com/doi/…/21677026221097618 content warnings actually increase the likelihood someone will view problematic content. This point is further reinforced by similar findings in the meta linked above

So you have a system that ultimately makes creators feel like they’re doing something noble, that is likely at best useless and potentially harmful. Said system increases the likelihood that a person will view the problematic content but also enables the reality that a person will simply avoid the things that provoke their anxiety which again is more strongly established as harmful

www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0005796712001064 - ptsd worsens with avoidance

www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0962184904000290 - anxiety disorders do the same

ada , 7 hours ago (edited 4 hours ago)

I’ve lost too many people in my life to suicide, and it’s a really hard topic for me to watch on screen.

So even though I’ve got no use for a hotline, just knowing that the show will center suicide as a theme is important to me being able to decide if/when to watch it.

user224 , 7 hours ago

Based on what I’ve heard about the US’s 988, it may rather be negative.

Oh, you’re thinking of killing yourself, let us reinforce that by being absolutely rude, or better yet, time to get taken away by cops into a psych ward.

Let’s see what’s out there with some example (Reddit)
Summary: Person called 988, police showed up 90 minutes later, got taken for mandatory psychological evaluation, forced to stay 2 days in ER, ended up getting billed $6,470.

Kecessa , 4 hours ago

Well that last part is a US specific issue and people have the right to refuse treatment

prole , 4 hours ago

Not if you’re “deemed at threat to yourself or others”

dsilverz , 7 hours ago (edited 7 hours ago)

My comment is meant to bring the perspective of someone who’s facing depression so to try to answer the main question (“a warning with suicide hotline really make positive difference?”) through that perspective. It’s not to seek mental help for myself.

For context, I’m a person facing depression, and my depression has broad and multifaceted reasons, from unemployment, going through familiar miscommunication (my parents can’t really understand my way of thinking), all the way to my awareness of climate change and transcendental concepts that lead myself to existential crisis. I’m unemployed to seek therapy (it’s a paid thing) and I don’t really have someone face-to-face capable of understand the multitude of concepts and ideas that I face in my mind (even myself can’t understand me sometimes).

That said, every depressive person has different ways to cope with depression. While some really need someone to talk to (and the talking really helps in those situations), it’s naive to think a conversation will suffice for every single case. I mean, no suicide hotline will make me employed, nor will magically solve the climate changes we’re facing.

So how I try to deal with my own depression? With two things: occult spirituality (worshiping The Dark Mother Goddess) and writing poetry and prose. I use creative writing as “catharsis” for my suffering, in order to “cope” with the state of things that I can’t really control (I can’t “employ myself” or “sell my services to myself”, I can’t “befriend myself”, I can’t stop temperatures from rising till scorching temps, nor the other already-ongoing consequences of climate change; I try to make some difference but I’m just a hermit weirdo nerdy nobody among 8 billion people, and I have no choice but to accept it).

I’m no professional writer (I’m just a software developer), but thanks to The Goddess, I can kinda access my unconscious (dark) mind and let it speak freely (it’s called stream-of-consciousness writing style). Sometimes I even write some funny surrealist prose/story, but sometimes it takes a darker turn, such as dark humor, or nihilistic, or memento mori. Doing this relieves the internal pressure inside my unconscious mind. After writing, I sometimes decide to publish it through fediverse , but when I do it, I constantly feel the need to “self-censor”: sometimes the stream-of-consciousness can lead to texts that people could interpret as some “glorification of suicide/self-harming” (especially when my texts take a nihilistic/memento mori turn), so I often censor myself and change the way I wrote the text. Well, it’s kinda frustrating not being able to fully express it, but I kinda understand how these texts could trigger other people also facing depression.

The fact is: when I write, it’s really relieving, way more than talking to people because, with poetry/prose writing, I can express symbolic things, I can have multiple layers of depth, I can use creative literary devices such as acrostics and rhymes, I can learn new English words while being a Brazilian, I can blend scientific concepts with esoteric and philosophic (my mind really thinks this way, blending STEM, philosophy and belief/esoteric/occult/religious concepts) without the need to fully explain them (because it’d take several hours and it’d be boring to anybody else other than me).

So, in summary (TL;DR): it depends on how multifaceted is the depressive situation. It won’t work for me. It surely can work for others that just need to talk to someone. Not exactly my case.

OhmsLawn , 7 hours ago

Optics.

Sooner or later someone will commit suicide while watching your show, no matter what you do. If that episode happens to contain a suicide scene, and somebody rightly or wrongly connects the dots, you want the disclaimer to be there.

some_guy , 7 hours ago

That’s it, the next show that I really hate that has a suicide episode is the one where I’m killing myself watching it to get it canceled.

RightHandOfIkaros , 8 hours ago

To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a major peer reviewed study to show whether these warnings make any difference.

Now, my own anecdotal non-peer reviewed personal opinion would be that they probably make no difference at all. Businesses likely began adding them only to waive potential liability and not to actually do anything helpful. They can be frustrating because they spoil upcoming events in media that may have been unexpected or unknown, but because of the warning are now definitely known and thus feels “ruined” when it happens. They can also reinforce ideation of suicide because a person may feel like the ones that added the warning did it as a token thing, treating the person like they are a badge of honor or some kind of selling point. Whether that is true or not doesn’t really matter, a person that is suicidal is almost never “in their right mind,” and if they feel that way, they feel that way. Nobody can tell them how to feel, not even themselves sometimes.

stoly , 8 hours ago

It’s really about not being sued by someone’s family for claiming that they got the idea from the show.

SirDerpy , 8 hours ago

All the lukewarm attempts to help, rooted in shallow understanding, reinforced my suicidal ideation. What’s the value of false love from a paid hotline worker one will never speak to again? It’s negative.

Be ready to love the shit out of someone yourself. Share their sorrow. Don’t try to fix it. Just try to understand. It’ll fucking suck. The other person knows it sucks for you. Tell them it sucks and that you’re choosing it.

friend_of_satan , 4 hours ago

If you have read the content on afsp.org/im-having-thoughts-of-suicide/ I’d be interested to hear your take. After my brother committed suicide I found their content for suicide loss survivors to be very helpful, but as a suicide loss survivor I can’t judge the content they have for folks who are considering suicide.

BarrelAgedBoredom , 3 hours ago (edited 3 hours ago)

I’m not the person you replied to but I’ve been passively suicidal for about a decade. I read this article. It seemed a bit prescriptive and patronizing to me. I get the impression that the article is targeted towards people who are acutely suicidal. As someone who’s been chronically suicidal, I’ve noticed that there aren’t many resources that are similar to this for people in my situation. These suicide hotlines seem to be targeted at people who are experiencing acute distress over someone who’s been struggling with mental health for extended periods of time. I’m not going to say these resources are worthless, but they’re worthless to me and I would assume at least a few people who have similar problems. I’ve never felt compelled to reach out or search for resources like this. They’ve always felt insincere, similar to corporate PR speak or celebrity “apologies”. Like these hotlines are there so that people who aren’t suicidal can go “well, we gave them a phone number. We don’t need to feel bad that people are suffering cause we did what we could.” I’m sure these hotlines have helped people and they should stick around. I’m just jaded and cynical.

I asked my wife about suicide hotlines too, she has periods of suicidal ideation and has attempted suicide when she was younger. She said it’s a coin flip for her. They either made her feel more distressed and therefore more suicidal, or they made her slightly less suicidal (enough to not act on it). She said in the moments they helped, they served as a reminder to not provide a permanent solution with a temporary problem. She also hates that phrase but couldn’t find a better way to word it haha.

I’m not sure if what we said will help or hurt in your processing, but those are our honest perspectives

an_onanist , 8 hours ago

I predicted in about 10 years disclaimers at the beginning will include, ‘This show depicts murder. Neither the show’s creators producers or actors condone the taking of another human life.’

solrize , 8 hours ago

They need “This show depicts stupidity” but they will never have it.

thethirdobject , 8 hours ago

It’s funny I litterally just finished an episode of Search Engine, the ‘new’ PJ Vogt podcast, where that’s the actual question. It was the May 3rd episode, and they’re interviewing a researcher on the topic, etc.