maleficent

Parents: Online newsgroup helped daughter commit suicide

Should an online group be held responsible for what their members do? Should someone have tried to stop this young woman?

I'm not sure I agree with the dad that the group is responsible, they didn't actively seek her out, she came to them. Is inaction just as bad as action though?

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serlindsipity

i'd have to agree with you mal. in my heart i want to say this is horrible, but when it comes down to it, the final action is not taken by the group, it is taken by the person. however, this seems horribly negative for this kind of info to be easily available as well as not including alternative outside help. its very one sided and rather frightening that an entire forum can exist around ending your own life.

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maleficent

I can go both ways on this -- depending on which way i feel like arguing.. there are newsgroups devoted to everything from vegetarian lifestyles (where meat eaters don't contribute saying meat is good) to BDSM lifestyles (where people who don't practice participate) the online world is something for everyone...

This group calling themselves 'pro-choice' bugs me though. Yes, suicide is a choice... and individual's choice... it almost seems as if there's a group mentality where suicide is the groups choice not an individual's choice... there's a distinction there that I'm unable to articulate clearly.

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Jinn

I've always had a problem with the fallacy that by providing someone information, you somehow incite them into using it in a negative way. I see absolutely no fault in giving someone 100 different recipes for suicidal drinks, just as I see no fault in providing directions for making a bomb. I realize this is a controversial position, but I do not think the "messenger" is ever at fault. If I wanted to find bomb making information, I know I could -- but that doesn't mean I plan to make a bomb. Someone giving me the information to do so .. isn't at fault for the resultant use or non-use of a any bomb I make. I, still, would have to make the choice to create the bomb and use it destructively. I don't think information has any inherent value or any inherent harm, only people can create those things. Since I'm quite liberal in my belief that information itself isn't evil, people are.. this is a mixed bag for me.

On one hand, providing her the information, methods, and planning for suicide is completely "OK" to me. However, if they were actively encouraging it, then I have a problem with it.

/torn

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genuinegirly

Parents are just looking for someone to blame. They can't admit that their child was disturbed enough to end her life without the influence of others. She fits the stereotype of "disturbing suicides" - how much pressure did they themselves put on her to succeed?

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ratbastid

Agreed. The parents are saying, "We couldn't have had anything to do with this! It was this EEEEEVIL online group! They MAAAADE her kill herself!"

Which is complete bull. Nobody ever makes anybody do anything. People are motivated by vastly deeper stuff than we'll usually ever understand. ALL we can do, in the aftermath of a tragedy like this, is look to find our own personal responsibility in the matter, as a means to completing it for ourselves. That's pretty simple, but it's hard to do when emotions are on the line. The natural, emotional response is just what these parents are doing: look for whose fault it is.

canuckguy

Agreed that the parents are just looking to blame someone. It must be very hard to loose a child, let alone when the child takes there own life. Not sure I can find any fault in the newsgroup people, unless they kept on encouraging her, by saying she'll love it..etc even then it is still her choice.

Pacifier

I don't know what is ASH (alt.suicide.holiday) today, but I was a regular there for a year or so (years ago). The group does not promotes suicide but it sees suicide as an alcceptable choice and if you are willing to commit suicide you will find a fact file there (sort of "how to").

But the group provides also a place to talk about depressions and suicidal thoughts without the usual shallow responses you get from the "shiny happy people". I still see it as a very useful group.

In my opinion if the Parents failed to realise the condition of their daughter they have no right to blame the group, thats too easy.

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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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ObieX

Chances are pretty good that she was considering suicide long before she went to talk to this group, othrwise she probably would not have been there. The group probably just proveded her with a method that wouldn't be too painful/bloody.

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canuckguy

Gilda, thank you for your post. I had never thought about it in that way before.

snowy

Statistics regarding suicide generally show women choose nonviolent methods. Without this board, it's unlikely the girl would have found a nonviolent method that proved to be so successful. Generally speaking, women choose nonviolent methods because of a subconcious desire to not be successful--meaning, they're making a cry for help.

However, people make choices. While it saddens me that others would encourage someone to take their own life, when it comes down to it, people make up their own minds. Information is just that--information. Influence, however, is another thing entirely, and I hope that's not what happened here.

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feelgood

While everybody is busy playing the blame game, has anybody considered what made her commit suicide?

Its not the method that makes a person commit suicide, its the circumstance that makes a person commit suicide.

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CandleInTheDark

As long as my girlfriend doesn't find this news group, they can do whatever they want.

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MSD

I can practically rewrite the Anarchist's Cookbook from memory, but the most harmful thing I've done is blow up some dirt and grass with homemade fireworks. The information itself isn't harmful, it's what you do with it. Where were her parents and friends when she was doing so badly? They didn't help much, maybe we should blame them instead.

serlindsipity

Thanks for sharing that side. You dont hear that often and i think it is very useful to consider.

And yes, I am curious about the info about her life outside of what this forum is now. Like anything shown on the news, there's always another side and its usually twice as important than what is shown on the news.

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soccerchamp76

There was a Law and Order episode about this exact story.

Alright, other than that, my personal opinion is that the site encourages suicide. Why else would you have methods of doing so? Sure, there is free speech, but you gotta think of the motive of the guy who wrote this.

Answer me this: How likely would she have been at the suicide without the information???

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JStrider

{goin to hell}
I bet that newsgroup has a pretty high turnover rate of its members
{/goin to hell}

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Ardus

Yeah, its true they provided her with the means, but she was the one who made the final decision. Still, that's really fucked up...

analog

For the following sentence, "________ don't kill people, people kill people", substitute any of the following: guns, knives, recipes for explosives, recipes for suicide aids, etc., etc.

People always want a reason. When someone dies, there must be a reason for it. Since the parents obviously aren't blaming themselves for it, and don't know enough about her life where she lives, they need to lay blame to get closure on the death of their daughter.

Here's the quick test for the bullshit factor on this: If she shot herself, could the parents go after the gun manufacturer, for making a tool of suicide available to her? If she drive her car off a cliff, could they attack the car's manufacturer? How about if she set herself on fire, can they sue Exxon Mobile for putting a can of gasoline in her hands?

Nonsense and grieving, pure and simple.

And like MrSelfDestruct said, information does not make a person do something. I know of 10 ways to kill a person using one hand. I have not killed anyone, not likely will I ever. When I took karate, I did not randomly flip out and attack people just because I knew how to, despite my thirst for knowledge on the subject. And in all my years of being a pyromaniac, I have never once burned anything that didn't belong to me, committing arson, though I had a vast knowledge available to me and loved fire with a passion.

This is a blame game. The BBS in question is a red herring at best for the real issue: why.

healer

I feel really bad for her folks. The circumstances of her death are making them act the way they are. They need someone to blame because in their minds, no daughter of theirs would do something like that without some kind of 'influence'. And since there's this board, this intangible thing out there that 'made her do it', blaming them is so much easier than coming to terms with the fact that their daughter wasn't well.

I'm still not comfortable with information of that nature being so freely available, but that's personal opinion. People greatly underestimate the power of information. But I suppose with that power comes responsibility.

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Pip

It's rather hard to remember in these days of the Internet, but you could find plenty of information about dark and evil things like bomb recepies and suicide methods through other ways. I knew the pros and cons about four or five different methods when I was a young teen even though I wasn't that angsty.
Still, suicide can be contagious. At least here, the papers never reports about suicides, because hearing about suicides apparently inspires some people to go and commit suicide themselves. So in that way, 'suicide communities' can be a bad thing. Especially for someone who is mentally unstable, it's hard enough for sane people to properly weigh the relevance of stuff on the Internet.
I do feel sorry for her parents, and I understand why they are lashing out at the online group. I lost a friend to suicide, and that hurt more than anything I'd ever felt before. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to lose a child like that.

soccerchamp76

Well, the reason that you could not blame the gun maufacturer, Exxon Mobile, or the car manufacturer, is because these companies make products that CAN be used for illigal purposes, but their intention is not.
The gun, for example, a rifle, is used for hunting. A car for driving....so on.

Please tell me what other uses this website had??? The gun companies don't say "use this gun to kill yourself, it is painless, quick, and 99% effective." What do you think would happen if they advertised THAT? That is what the suicide page is doing. The defense rests.

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Brian Griffin: Ah, if my memory serves me, this is the physics department.
Chris Griffin: That would explain all the gravity.