Suicide contagion is bunk

Some celebrities have killed themselves and now “mental health experts” say that this may lead to suicide contagion:

Suicide contagion is a process in which the suicide of one person or multiple people can contribute to a rise in suicidal behaviors among others, especially those who already have suicidal thoughts or a known risk factor for suicide.

“If they’re already struggling with thoughts of depression or risk of suicide, they’re already trying to get information about how other people are experiencing it,” said John Ackerman, suicide prevention coordinator in the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Wanting to kill yourself is a moral issue, not a medical issue. Terms like suicide contagion exist to cover up the discomfort people feel at discussing suicide. A worthwhile discussion of a suicide would involve considering a person’s values, what choices that person had or thought he had and that sort of thing. Instead we make up stories about diseases causing suicide:

Moreover, suicide can be preventable — death should not be an acceptable outcome of depression, said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

“When you have heart disease or when you have certain forms of cancer, there’s a profile or a calculator of risk factors that’s done. So with heart disease it’s obesity, smoking, exercise, cholesterol, family history, and age. Same thing for suicide,” Lieberman said.

Heart disease is a fault in a person’s body. Suicide is an action a person takes. An action doesn’t have risk factors. A person takes an action because he has some motive for doing so. If you’re not talking about that motive, you’re distracting people from real problems, not solving them.

The article continues:

The statement noted that many people in the US do not have access to mental health services when needed.