I think you’re definitely right that suicide prevention is a crucial and underfunded public health issue. I think, however, that this post could use some more input from empirical work on suicidology.
You express some doubt about approaches that reduce access to means, because these merely “delay the irreversible action . . . it does not fix the issue we care about—people not valuing their own lives.”
I am skeptical about this. Consider: “Between 1963 and 1975 the annual number of suicides in England and Wales showed a sudden, unexpected decline from 5,714 to 3,693 at a time when suicide continued to increase in most other European countries. This appears to be the result of the progressive removal of carbon monoxide from the public gas supply.” (Clarke and Mayhew, 1988) Note that these potential suicides were not displaced to other means, or delayed—they simply never happened at all. The low-hanging fruit in suicide prevention are similar interventions on means, in country-specific ways: gun control in the United States, pesticides in large parts of rural China, etc.
One might respond that these interventions don’t really touch the fundamental issue, which is whether people value their own lives or not. I’m inclined to argue the other way around: the fact that suicide rates shift so profoundly in response to availability of means suggest that they are not a good proxy for the value people place on their own lives. When we are concerned with the value people place on their own lives, we are most concerned with their stable and reflective judgments, and it is doubtful that suicide is revelatory of these.
One book that I found extremely helpful on summarizing and extending our best understanding of the psychology of suicide is Thomas Joiner, _Why People Die By Suicide_.
I think you’re definitely right that suicide prevention is a crucial and underfunded public health issue. I think, however, that this post could use some more input from empirical work on suicidology.
You express some doubt about approaches that reduce access to means, because these merely “delay the irreversible action . . . it does not fix the issue we care about—people not valuing their own lives.”
I am skeptical about this. Consider: “Between 1963 and 1975 the annual number of suicides in England and Wales showed a sudden, unexpected decline from 5,714 to 3,693 at a time when suicide continued to increase in most other European countries. This appears to be the result of the progressive removal of carbon monoxide from the public gas supply.” (Clarke and Mayhew, 1988) Note that these potential suicides were not displaced to other means, or delayed—they simply never happened at all. The low-hanging fruit in suicide prevention are similar interventions on means, in country-specific ways: gun control in the United States, pesticides in large parts of rural China, etc.
One might respond that these interventions don’t really touch the fundamental issue, which is whether people value their own lives or not. I’m inclined to argue the other way around: the fact that suicide rates shift so profoundly in response to availability of means suggest that they are not a good proxy for the value people place on their own lives. When we are concerned with the value people place on their own lives, we are most concerned with their stable and reflective judgments, and it is doubtful that suicide is revelatory of these.
One book that I found extremely helpful on summarizing and extending our best understanding of the psychology of suicide is Thomas Joiner, _Why People Die By Suicide_.