Can we have or do we have a suicide thread policy for how MNetters should respond?

Heady. Are you kidding? You've actually been asked to announce that ?

well i don't agree with anyone starting threads threatening suicide, saying goodbye, etc.

tbh I honestly think they should be reported and deleted.

I am not saying the op in this case is genuine or not, but look what it creates. And I don't think it saves lives necessarily. It can create a hell of a lot more trauma for those who inadvertently get drawn into it.

Prepares to be flamed

I'm going to disappear now and name change.

That's fair enough Eddie.

To be honest had this gone on my FB page I would have been devestated. Dd1 and ds are both on my FB as are my parents and sister. The fall out would have been huge.

I think the guidelines already stated by HQ are good. I would offer links to SANE or MIND too. They both have helplines.

Memoo - it's hard to understand how someone can feel as desperate as you did when you posted that first thread...unless you have been there. That lack of empathy causes the cynicism. Ignore it. It is just cynicism - it''s not about you. They do not know you.

I think the other thread was full of good intentions and that should be recognised not treated as ghoulish or rubber necking.

Whether it is the best course of action is a very good question, so thank you to the OP here.

Memoo's reaction to the attention suggests it hasn't helped her. I still wish to reiterate that the people who posted with the best of intentions shouldn't be vilified.

Memoo - this time will end. You will be calm, peaceful and happy again. Please get help. I am terribly sorry that you feel the way you do. Please name change (if you feel you need to) and ask for support through these forums. People do care. Your family and friends would be devastated if you took your life. (I speak from experience of this)

But I've tried so dam hard today. I've tried to be strong and be a good mum. But then I come on here and some of the comments are just crushing.

see, this is the problem, sadly. posters who need support will stop posting, especially when they are having a bad day, because they are scared of the responses and being told they are attention seeking (and lets be honest, aren't we all? noone starts a thread hoping that it wont be seen/get any replies)

this is why we should have guidelines and policy in place.

Oh memoo :( Don't go - you need support. Maybe hide threads like this though?

memoo, please dont do that. we are here to help and support you, but you do need to see your CPN asap.

I need to clarify a few things.

I did not just post and go to bed. I got in bed with my phone with the intention of talking but the sleeping tablets I had taken combined with the bottle of wine meant I feel asleep and the next thing I knew Plonker was calling me. I was really disorientated and it took me ages to come round properly.

I am truly sorry if I have caused any upset. I am NOT attention seeking though. I'm desperate for some relief from this pain. It is constant and I can't find any way out. I actually do want to end my life. I guess I just don't have the balls to do it.

I'm terrified of being outed now. I know I'm going to have to leave MN and FB because of all this upset I have caused. I was just after help but it seems I have kind of shot myself in the foot.

I really really am sorry.

Bibbity - the memoo thread was at the top of active convos without being stickied. People are obviously ghoulish anyway. I just thought that if it was stickied the ghouls wouldn"t need to keep posting "bump" which is what made up the vast majority of the thread.

If a thread is genuine (and we have to assume it is), surely it is better for the genuinely helpful advice to be easily accessible to the OP, rather than scrolling through pages of bumps.

I agree stickying seems really distasteful, but it would address a few of the problems with such threads.

I think, to an extent, that support from Mumsnetters on threads like these is rather enabling and overall not helpful, except of course for the one instance mentioned by Soupy upthread.

I DO NOT think they should be stickied by mnhq - how ghoulish.

If you really must post on them, do you not think repeating the mantra to ask for help in rl, or call the Samaritans is truly the only sensible and helpful thing a mumsnetter can do?

I hide them because I do not think there is a single thing I can do or say to help. There will be other people in the poster's rl who should be made aware of how that person is feeling.

I'm glad I missed all this.

It was linked on the Mumsnetters Group Page on FB, I've seen.

the thing with fb/twitter though is, even if there are guidelines that suggest linking to fb/twitter is a bad idea, there isn't actually anything you can do to stop people doing so. And once one person does, others will follow suit, and then it gets out of control. Whereas if threads are just deleted, even if someone sees it and tweets it, by the time most people click, the thread will be gone and there will be nothing to see...

"Your comment that people were just looking for excitement is a bit off." I don't think it is. I absolutely think that many posters bumped that thread out of genuine concern. But there were several posters marking their places and others that simply posted "bump" even when there had been clarification that the op was ok, so had clearly not actually read the thread with any level of concern - clearly there are people who do want to be a part of what goes on.

Lissie I think it was one poster who had likened it to cvq. I think that was on the basis that cvq would post dramatic threads and cause a stir and then come back and say everything was fine, and this op apparently has done the same. People will draw conclusions from those types of behaviors - rightly or wrongly, if someone habitually posts a suicide thread and then someone comes on and says they're fine there is going to come a point where people will either question whether the poster is just attention seeking, or whether they are even real. This is the internet, you can't prevent people from questioning - especially when there is A previous history on the part of other posters, and B, the poster in question has a similar history.

Iirc the poster who was saved knew people from here in rl. it was by no means the same as trying to get mn hq to track someone down/sending a viral campaign via facebook/twitter.

And yes, I do think that far more people could be damaged by these types of threads than could be helped.