damn_registrars's Journal: Welcome back to DrudgeDot

We had a pretty interesting front page article today on preventing suicide by making it harder to pull off. I noticed that one suggestion in the summary would be particularly hard to pull off in this country as too many people here defend the "right" to be irresponsible with weapons.

This angered two different conservative camps here on slashdot. The first was not surprising, being the people who defend irresponsible gun ownership. The second was a little more surprising, though, being the Randians. It didn't take long for them to come out in droves and proclaim their pro-suicide stance.

The pro-suicide stance probably shouldn't surprise me much, considering how much people still expend great amounts of time and energy into discrediting mental health treatment at every opportunity. What does surprise me though is how proudly people will come out in favor of suicide, and how proudly they will show how little they understand about mental health. It leaves me to wonder what they would say if their idols were themselves diagnosed with mental health issues; I would wager they would suddenly start singing a different tune.

It is also worth adding that this has been another opportunity for slashdot conservatives to proudly display their participation in the conservative war on literacy, which they did not let slip by.

At least it IS being discussed ...

[BarbaraHudson]

Discussing mental illness is needed before attitudes change. Up here tonight news included a report on the failures of the military in dealing with a soldier's suicide, then a round table on mental illness, specifically depression and how wide-spread it is. There are PSAs for mental health on a regular basis. It wasn't like that a decade ago, but when you have an average of one in 40 people who miss work on a given day due to mental health issues, that's a tremendous cost to business, to governments, and t

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[Zontar The Mindless]

Yes, this. Compassion makes sense.

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[fustakrakich]

Discussing mental illness is needed before attitudes change.

Blame dualism and other religious fantasies. Mind and brain are not separate things they want you to believe they are. Mental illness is a physical thing, with physical causes.

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[BarbaraHudson]

I wouldn't put all the blame on that, though it certainly doesn't help. There are far too many who have no religious convictions who still see the mind as not even a ghost within a machine ... and that mental illness is a character flaw or you're just not trying hard enough to get over it.

They've really never had to give it any thought, so they just go along with the assumptions of the world at large, same as they never ask why the sky is blue, won't try cheese on the beans and franks, and think that dippi

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[fustakrakich]

Well, I do have to go along with them on the cheese and mayo thing, and the Tabasco too, for that matter. Hummus is okay. You should dip your fries in guacamole and eat real habaneros for breakfast.

My main lament on this entire issue is that too many people are playing the 'spiritual' angle (mostly for profit) instead of looking for something much more 'simple', like what Dickens says may be an "undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato..." And I am not tr

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[BarbaraHudson]

I guess it depends on what you mean by the "spiritual" angle. Therapy directed to helping someone get a handle on the actual problem, rather than being overwhelmed by the effects, can be useful. "Pray to be healed" isn't, except to the faith healer's bank account.

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[fustakrakich]

I guess it depends on what you mean by the "spiritual" angle.

Denial of the physical cause of an ailment due to fanaticism. I used 'religious' as the generic term. Every single thing that happens inside the brain has a discoverable physical reason. It's all chemistry and electricity. Mind = brain

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[BarbaraHudson]

I remember one sci-fi story that made that point very well. A man couldn't remember anything new because his brain had stopped changing. Everything we do causes electrical activity and chemical changes in the brain - otherwise we would have no memory.

Drugs work by affecting the chemical processes of the brain (ask any drunk :-)

However, since every thought and sense also affects the brain's chemistry, certain psychotherapies can also work. For example, learning to focus on the idea that whatever caused the

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[fustakrakich]

Speak of the devil [slashdot.org]...

You're talking aboiut this little gem, I guess?

[Zontar The Mindless]

http://science.slashdot.org/co... [slashdot.org]

Thanks for providing a better answer than I did, BTW.

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[damn_registrars]

You're welcome, and thank you as well. That is one of several pro-suicide comments that came out in that thread but it was particularly one of the most crass of the lot. I wish I could just write it off as people trolling but it makes too much of a pattern to suggest that to be the case. Perhaps semi-random population control is part of the conservative plan to reduce health care costs?

Maybe it's the entire plan?

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[unitron]

I think a certain Florida congressman summed up their health care plan quite succinctly.