Gilda

I'm ambivilent. On the one hand, people should be free to make their own choices regarding their own lives, and should be free to associate with others with the same interests, so long as those interests don't actively harm others.

So on that level, I agree that the people in this newsgroup had the right to offer support for people who are feeling suicidal.

However, if, as the parents believe, the group encouraged the girl, I find that problematic. Suicidal psychology is a little weird. Depression often leads to thoughts of suicide, but depressed people don't usually kill theselves. In many cases, making the decision to move forward, to actually kill yourself, lifts you out of the depressed state that led to thoughts of suicide in the first place. Making plans, actively moving forward with something important gives you a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning and start moving forward. It can make you feel good about yourself that you're doing something productive, even if that thing is planning to kill yourself. This is what leads to the puzzled reactions by survivors saying that she seemed so happy lately, her mood had improved a lot.

Boards like the one mentioned tend to support this feeling, and I suspect intensify it. The information about methods may increase the odds of an attempt being successful, so I think in that way it's likely that the board did contribute to the girl's death.

So while I see that they have the right to exist so long as we want to protect free speech, and believe that people have the right to choose to kill themselves, I can't really see either as a good thing.

Gilda

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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert