Responding to Anonymous Social Media Expressions of Suicide
What are the best practices for responding to anonymous (and possibly international) suicidal social media posts? Sunday, 10/5/14, 9pm CST our Suicide Prevention Social Media chat will be tackling this complex moral, ethical, and rather technical issue. Are there good international crisis resources? What are best practices? How can any “Good Samaritan” figure out how to do the right thing?
Earlier this summer, I (@DocForeman) received the following Facebook message fromPatricia F. Anderson (@PFAnderson on Twitter), an experienced alum of the Health Care Social Media community:
“Yesterday I was checking out a new-ish anonymous social network service that my son had gotten into. Almost immediately after getting into it I saw a post “I want to die.” To make a long story short, it took 8 hours to get gender, approximate location, prior medical history & suicide attempts, and current medical history (ie. having not eaten in 5 days). We talk about #SPSM, but what on earth do you DO? …I ended up contacting a health care colleague in Scotland for whom I had an email address, who gave me the contact information for an Edinburgh hotline w/ email. This was after trying the National (USA) hotline, who directed me to 911, which took me to our small town police department who had absolutely NO clue and took 4 hours to respond to the call.
“I heard from the girl this AM. That would be afternoon her time. She did attempt suicide again, was caught, and is now in the hospital, planning to sign herself out and try again. I updated the officials in Edinburgh.
“Is there a list of suicide hotlines & email address around the world?”
Not really, @PFAnderson. And that’s not a great system for getting care. It’s like CPR. There should be something simple that ANYONE can do to get help for a suicidal person on social media. @PFAnderson will be this week’s guest expert to facilitate a discussion on this topic.
The World Today: How Mobile We Are!
People change location and adopt new countries more often then we might think.
For a fascinating graphic illustrating the extent of those migrations along with some of their broader impacts click the following link: http://www.feedbacq.com/blog/world-expat-population-the-numbers/
Or check the following preview . . .
Counterpoint 