what on earht are you all doing wih tis suiceide stuff

I tend not to read them FAQ - but that's not the point, I still have an opinion on it.

No, it's not that.

It's about this place not being the right place for it.

I think those threads are dire. They are mawkish, like car crash threads. Like someone else said, they generate their own drama. It's attention seeking to the highest level and they BREED.

The people that post are SICK, properly sick, and in more than one case, they feed off the responses and then they develop a NEED for mumsnet. An unhealthy need. When what they should be doing is accessing real life support. Not starting it all off on here.

I'm sorry if that offends you but that's the way I feel.

Good post Dittany. Symbolic removal.

Personally, I don't get involved with the suicidal threads. I worry how the suicidal person will read my words, iykwim. I don't know about pulling them though? I've been suicidal in the past - years and years ago now, thank god. Had I been a MNer then, I might just have used it for support.

JeremyVile - if you don't want to read the threads - then don't - they're usually pretty clear from the title what they're about so just ignore.

Do the unsure here 'get' that if non scarey, not your mum,dp, brother or aunt type people who may hold judgement against in RL for years to come, listen to you when you are on the brink then you may claw back some self worth.

A recurrent feeling is that the world would be a better place without you or even that most people wouldn't bat an eyelid if you were gone.

So, reading 3 '[hugs]' responses gives you a little bit of value in this life.

That isn't the whole deal but it is part of how one benefits from getting a response - any response - to your pain. Again, as I said, from people you can hide from forever if you want to when you make it the other side of despair.

I would like to see the threads pulled as soon as possible.

Fox - I've just tried to type a reply to last post -but can't find the words to say what I mean.

Basically though, as someone who has (recently) used MN for support when feeling suicidal and having genuine thoughts of self harm I couldn't have coped had my threads been pulled straight away.

Completely agree with Foxinsocks and others.
I feel for anyone that feels they want to die (cant understand it, but I know it cant be a good place to be). But I think if you are seeking help of some sort - which surely coming onto MN and announcing your intention, is - then go to the right people, The Samaritans etc, those who actually can help you.

It is unfair to make a whole load of strangers feel responsible for you decision between life or death.

FAQ, the point I am making is that if you are involved in a thread you have made a choice to involve yourself in it.

What we do not know is if 'offline' mners want to be involved in helping someone with depression or who is considering suicide.

I have a fair few offline mn frinds, and the levels of 'committment' if you like to those friends are different. I speak to motherinferior occasionaly but only about bakewear and silicon cake moulds we have a friendship based souly around cake.

If I got an urgent message asking for details or for me to become involved because she was unwell (in whatever capacity) I would be very "whoah there lesley". I don't know her at all (apart from her taste in cupcakes) and as such would be quite uncomfortable in such a situation. If you have been 'named' on a mn thread (even with your nickname) it does somewhat compell you to help.

Sorry if that sounds harsh MI.

Absolutely, DaddyJ

oh and agree with janni re training for my advice thingy

It was really about seeing if you were already the kind of person who, with a little more help, could take calls well

we actually did pretty much no training on, say, spotting depression. Not our job. Our job was to listen.

Thank you for that post, objectivity.
And can I just say how glad I am that you posted on MN. Really glad.

Janni, do I understand you correctly:
The core skill that a Samaritan brings to bear is to listen patiently and sympathetically?

ok I have scanned this thread but surely MNHQ can't track down posters or phone the samaritans on their behalf? I mean there is the data protection act if nowt else

everone knows the samaritans are there, people posting on here are choosing to avail themselves of the help here and I can see a lot of good reasons to do that. Different sorts of counselling suits different people and MN is a very non-threatening environment.

I have, incidentally, got experience of working on an adviceline along the same line as the samaritans though prob best not to say which. And I would say that for some people, calling or even emailing an adviceline is not right at that stage, they just aren't ready for it, so without MN they quite possibly wouldn't seek any help

(look this thread is HUGE and so no I haven't read all of it, oooh isn't that annoyin )

DaddyJ - I'm a bit out of date re. Samaritan training, but it involved a few weekends, that's all. Most Samaritans are lay people, not mental health professionals. The main thing was that you could listen, refrain from giving advice, hear difficult things and not get too upset by them, access help for yourself after a difficult call and, ultimately, accept that unless a caller was evidently mentally ill and needed to be sectioned against their will in a psychiatric hospital, that the decision about whether they wanted to take their life having talked through all the options, was theirs.

I think it's possible to pull them straight away...may get a few posts before they get pulled

I also think if mumsnet had a policy of not keeping suicide threads running then people would be less likely to post threads along those lines madamez. So you might get people asking for hugs rather than threatening to top themselves which imo, generates a WHOLE different response, and quite rightly so.

I appreciate that MNHQ may be taking legal advice on this, and may have to take certain steps having received legal advice. And I think that even, supposing some hypothetical person did top themselves following an online doomwatch, and the bereaved brought a court case, that MN would not be fined or shut down or anything, because there would be enough of a legal defence of having acted in good faith or at least not been deceiving anyone about professional qualifications or anything (ie posters trying to help, it not being their fault if they couldn't) even if someone or other posted something profoundly unsympathetic on such a thread.
But other than that, I don't think it's possible let alone ethical to pull the suicide/despair threads as soon as they start. At what point does someone saying 'I feel lousy, I wish I was dead, give me virtual hugs MNers' tip over into unacceptable? Given that sometimes people posting the above really do mean 'give me virtual hugs MNers' not 'I am lining up the pills@ and it would be a wretched shame to cut off the support that is very helpful when people are feeling, not actually suicidal, but miserable and in need of some online comfort and reassurance.

Where is the line drawn though?

When a Woman comes on to say she seriously self harms, is being beaten senseless by her DP, can't stop violence towards her DC or DP. These are all extremely serious potentially life threatening situations. Should these kinds of threads be pulled too? and how would one assess these nuances of emotion in the person/poster.

the thing is dittany, I reckon that, by the time you are suicidal, you are not rational (because suicide isn't a rational outcome even if it feels like it) so therefore coming on here and discussing it with people is incredibly false. It isn't real because you are not having real thoughts. You are in a place where you need proper medical intervention. And no-one on here should be expected to give that and no website should afaik.

And it isn't my experience that makes me feel uncomfortable.

and my point is you can't GUARANTEE supportive

I didn't post on the thread yesterday (as I was out) but have no objection to getting home and finding a phone message and MSN messages (not to mention the emails) asking if I had various people's contact details (as others knew that I had off-mn contact with some that may have known the OP).

Surely if MN'ers have RL contact details for other users in most cases this means that they have some form of "offline" friendship - and I would never object to any of my friends (from MN or in RL) involving me in something which I previously wasn't involved in.

If I didn't want to help - then I'd say so.

The Samaritans also get loads of crank calls, but they still listen sympathetically because they realise the person needs attention. As a Samaritan I spent lots of time talking to cross-dressers wanting to tell me what they were wearing, as well as to the genuinely suicidal. We didn't really differentiate, we just accepted that people needed to hear a sympathetic voice and that if they'd had a good experience with us they would feel comfortable to call again if they were at a very low point in their lives.

Just to feel the concern and support of fellow human beings when you want to end it all should never be underestimated.