This is for a continuation of the discussion about the ethics of calling the police when a friend is suicidal that started here.
No trolls, no MRAs, etc etc. Trigger Warnings for discussion of suicide.
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We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
but having your trust and bodily autonomy violated by your so called friends totally helps
@kittehs
yeah, cuz taking away people’s aunotomy is so much better. ///SARCASM
LOL. A Brit friend of min summed up the Eastenders thusly:
“Good morning, so-and-so”
“IS IT?!?”
Marie and Fade: what the hell good is autonomy if you’re dead?
As a friend to people who’ve battled with depression (and wrestled with the black dog a little myself), the best thing I’ve been able to do for people is be there and let them know I’m supporting them.
As a health care worker, if someone has suicidal ideation and a plan, I don’t care if they’re going to hate me or feel imprisoned, my first priority is to make damn sure they don’t do irreversible physical harm to themselves (or others).
There is sometimes tension between these two drives, I’ll admit. And there’s A LOT wrong with mental health care and its overlap with the judicial system that needs changing. But I find it pretty hard to argue with trying to save a life being the highest priority.
Just my two cents.
Marie and Fade, doesn’t it occur to you that people are responding to an emergency and trying to save someone’s life? Do you really think they’re sitting down and sussing out these things in a crisis?
What happens if you’re ill – not suicidal, but ill, in a coma or something. Do you expect that people should sit on their hands because you aren’t in a position to give consent to anything?
What really gets me is the way you two are universalising your own, horrible experiences, and seemingly expecting people who are distraught and trying to help to make absolutely perfect decisions on the spot, then jumping on anyone who has done things in their situations that you don’t like.
You think EastEnders was miserable, try Brookside.
In Canada, there’s a very high threshold doctors have to meet to justify involuntary institutionalization. A person’s Charter rights are paramount unless there’s strong evidence that person is in imminent danger of self-harm or harming others.
I’m with Leum on this one. My friend/boss committed suicide a few weeks ago. The cracks were beginning to show a few months before that. He was getting help but it wasn’t adequate and his death was the result. If I’d had the slightest inkling of his intentions, I wouldn’t have hesitated to call for help. I’d have called 911 and it would be up to them to decide which service(s) to dispatch.
Robert and Leum, hugs to you both.
That’d fit perfectly in a lot of the shows I watch!
I just reread Leum’s original comment, and it didn’t seem like he HAD other options than calling the police.
::passes extra hugs to Aunti Alias, Robert and Leum::
Never watched Eastenders or Brookside. Crime dramas + Yorkshiremen and Geordies (see: Dalziel and Pascoe, Morse, Lewis) are dour enough. Even with lots of tea.
Brookside? I’m not familiar with that one. One more good thing about moving back to Seattle is that we’ll get CBC, and the two PBS stations there have a lot of British shows.
Up to a point, taking away someone’s autonomy is better than letting them kill themselves. I’m not a fan of forcing someone to live forever when they really don’t want to, but for most attempts, it is a resource available.
Also, having been on both ends of the whole ‘oh God oh God’ ambulance thing, I can say for absolute certain that very, very few people conduct themselves with perfect clarity during a life or death situation. Someone who loves someone who is suicidal is not always going to be able to make a good call because they are going to be in a dreadful state themselves. Things I have seen have ranged from people forgetting where they live (“I don’t know my address!”), to forgetting their own names (“Uhhh…my name’s Bob. Last name…I DON’T KNOW!”), to only being able to stammer out a local hospital address (“Something’s wrong, HOSPITAL NOW THIS ONE.”)
People in panic go for whatever solution they have right there and then, and sometimes ringing a number is the best thing they can manage while running around freaking out. Not everyone panics, but it’s not something they can be blamed for. Especially if blood is visible, it just happens. It’s a normal human reaction.
strivingally: That is a better summary of how I feel.
Plus Red Green, one of my all-time favorite Canadian comedies.
@kittehs
how the heck am I universalizing my experience?
And tbh, not much to say, other than I’m totally disgusted with the number of people here going ‘oh yeah, take away their autonomy’
@ hellkell
The last Brookside plot that I remember well is when one of the characters who was being sexually abused by her father killed him with the help of her mother, and then they buried him under the new paving in the back yard. Which of course was later discovered. That show made EastEnders look like the Mickey Mouse Club.
I guess I just find the notion that calling emergency services is a violation of autonomy very strange. If you saw someone get hit by a car would you stop and ask them first if they’d mind you calling 911? Or would you just call?
When my aunt that I discussed in my above post got very sick it was because of a police welfare check that she was found still alive. She didn’t show up for work which was very unlike her. Her coworkers called the police to check on her because they knew she’d been having serious health problems (ulcers and internal bleeding. She eventually caught an antibiotic resistant infection that killed her). As it happened she never regained consciousness and was finally taken off life support. But at least she was given a chance by being hospitalized and we were able to say goodbye to her. Preferable to finding her rotting corpse on the bathroom floor isn’t it? Also she had a cat and a dog and that intervention saved them from running out of food and water and also dying. Both animals are doing well. The cat is with my dad and the dog is with my uncle.
Marie: you’re thinking that every single person who has emergency services called will be treated like you were, and that’s not necessarily the case. Everyone’s experience will be different.
Go be disgusted. I’m not thrilled with you yelling at two people trying to do right by their friends and children.
Robert and WWTH
I am sorry I hope you guys and your loved ones are gonna to be ok.
If I was far away and couldn’t get to someone who was about to commit suicide I would prefer to call an ambulance because they have more experience but if I had no other choice I would call the police.
I had a friend in school who said that she was going to kill herself. I got scared and told her that I would be very sad that she did. Afterwards I told the principle and told him to send her to see a counselor. So she started to see her and shes still alive today. I’m happy to see her happy with her new boyfriend. I know that he is taking care of her.
What leum did was great and I just hope that leum’s friend is gonna to be ok.
I didn’t know about being institutionalize after trying to commit suicide.
“The reason many institutionalizations are “voluntary” in certain US states is because once you’re taken in, you’re required to sign a form that says you’re there of your own free will. If you don’t, you will have to go before a judge at the end of 72 hours and it’s widely known that people don’t win those cases, and involuntary commitments will end up on your record.”
Like scott1139 said that is messed up.
Bodily autonomy violated? That’s what we do when we use CPR on someone who’s gone into cardiac arrest. For all I know I might have been the first one to crack my husband’s ribs when he was dying at my feet. He doesn’t remember any of that of course, but he does remember, a bit, the pain of the cracked ribs persisting for several weeks following.
When someone’s already poisoned themselves, it’s all too likely that they’ll be unconscious or so near it that they’re physically and mentally incapacitated by the time someone gets to them. I get the impression that you think everyone, friends, professionals, emergency services should wait until that point before acting – so that the issue of agency has been superseded by unconsciousness approaching death.
Most of us don’t want to wait that long when someone’s life is in the balance. Even when it’s not a life and death matter, plenty of us will act to override a friend or relative’s stubborn refusal to go to the ER when they’re in real trouble with a sprained-but-most-likely-broken arm or ankle.
Thanks, kitteh. It was such an unnecessary and tragic end. I am certain this wasn’t what he would have wanted. It was a case of sudden emotional pain that he couldn’t cope with in his already fragile state.
@Weirdwoodtreehugger
uhh…. I wasn’t talking about calling emergency services. I was talking about when people end up foricibly instantutionalized
I’d like to say that I’d appreciate if people didn’t jump on Marie, her position makes sense to me and was something I considered when trying to decide what to do, especially because my friend is a lesbian and therefore at more risk for police abuse. I also really really don’t like that the first responders for suicidal threats are police officers and not medical professionals.
Without giving away too many of my friend’s details, I have access to her only via gchat and tumblr and she lives over a thousand miles away from me. In hindsight I could have asked for her phone number and tried to talk her down, but she had already rejected my offer to guide her via IM through grounding exercises (which is what I’d’ve done by phone as well). She had a plan, the means to carry it out, an intent to do so, and when I told her that her chosen method would take hours and be horrifically painful, she said “Good.”
I don’t know what her experience with the officer who found her was like, whether zie was trained or not in dealing with mentally ill people (some officers in her city are), or whether she went with zir voluntarily or involuntarily.
I also want to say that I’ve been voluntarily hospitalized several times for suicidal depression, which isn’t strictly relevant, but some people have been talking as though I have no idea what it’s like to fear involuntary committment and that is emphatically not the case. The only reason I had any idea at all of what to do is because of my experiences as a mentally ill person.
Marie, because you’re treating your history of being institutionalised by your parents, and your reactions to that, as if they dictate or are relevant to everyone else’s situation and actions and responses.
I’m pretty disgusted with people jumping on members who have tried to save their loved ones’ lives.
Cassandra – shite, that sounds like the Fred and Rosemary West murders!
Bloody html!