Dear Mr. Anderson,
My name is Eileen Slattery and I am writing this letter in regards to one of your webpages: Some Odd Exits and Popular Suicide Methods . This is a somewhat lengthy email, but ask you to please read it all and write back to me with your thoughts, which I am very interested in hearing.
I am a twenty-one year old graduate student in university, living with my parents and three brothers in suburban Ohio, USA. In early May of last year, one of my three brothers passed away. He committed suicide at sixteen years of age. He was my beloved brother and best friend. We all miss him incredibly. It is through this tragedy that I visited a specific website in which I came across your name and email address.
While browsing through my late brother Steven’s Internet “favorites” on his computer, I happened to see a website he had book marked and nicknamed “good ways”. The web address was:http://www.asan.com/users/kangaroo/suicide.htm and the name of the site is Popular Ways to Snuff It! After carefully reading through the content of the website, I was much appalled that a person would put information of this nature on the internet, and also by the fact that someone else had not ended this website’s existence. The author(s), who remains anonymous, goes through a lengthy list of different methods one could use to commit suicide. For each method listed, the author assigns catchy names, rates the levels of pain and effectiveness, gives “advice” on how to most successfully execute it, gives personal commentaries, and taunts visitors to the site who may or may not be considering suicide. The website is troubling not because of the information it presents, but in the manner it presents it - a manner of persuasion. Steven used one of the specific methods detailed on the website to kill himself. He was a great kid and had so much to live for.
Recently, I performed a search on google.com and found that the webpage has been copied by other persons onto other servers and person homepages. The information on the website is virtually identical in content and design to that which was being hosted by ASANet. This is where I found this content on your website: englishatheist.org/oamexits.shtml
You claim that you put this information on your website for humor, and you put links to other websites that are kinder to persons who are suicidal. Still, I argue that if a person typed into a search engine "popular suicide" or "ways to commit suicide" or anything of that nature, like I did, to come up with your website as the #1 link to obtain such information. If a suicidal person finds your website, which is very easy to do, he/she is not looking for help. He/she is looking to end it all, as did my Steven.
Imagining someone actually performing these methods as are described in detail on your website is not humorous. They are nightmares and flashbacks from PTSD that I have to deal with everyday, as does my family, and other survivors. There is nothing humorous about suicide. It is a reality for me and many others, and it is distressing that such information is so readily available to suicidal persons to give them the final "push" to actually commit the final act. What if your child had troubling thoughts and happened to stumble on a site listing this information as does yours?
Suicidal persons are not in a mental state that would allow them to form a healthy, rational decision. The information you copied onto your website from ASANet preys upon the young and ill. It does not seek to inform, present factual information, or to promote an opinion that is undamaging to others. Rather, the author attempts to persuade visitors that suicide is the right choice, the only choice for you. By making this information more readily available to suicidal people, you are (inadvertently) only helping the author to fulfill that objective.
For these reasons, I am asking that you discontinue hosting the nformation you copied from "Popular Ways to Snuff It!" (:http://www.asan.com/users/kangaroo/suicide.htm) in the interest of protecting children, the ill, and those unable to make a healthy, rational decision. I am not looking to punish anyone for my brother’s death, but only to ensure that similar tragedy does not happen again. Preventing similar tragedies will require a more multi-faceted approach than the single action of discontinuing to circulate the information. Nevertheless, this should be the first step toward preventing future pains and losses.
If you wish, you can read the eulogy I wrote for my brother at eileen slattery.tripod.com/eulogy.html. I very much look forward to hearing your response to my proposal. My contact information is listed above. Thank you for your time and your concern.
Regards,
Eileen Slattery eileen_slatteryatyahoodotcom
Dear Ms Slattery
I understand completely that there is nothing humourous about suicide and, unfortunately, it is a reality for me also. At the same time, we all know that no one can really stop a person from committing suicide if they are really determined to - I know that from when I was suicidal.
Sadly, there is nothing that we can do or say that will make them change their minds and stay with us. I learnt that, and much more, whilst working on suicide and crisis hotlines and during a stint with the Franciscan monks.
Through desperation and dispair the mind finds the false solution to painful thoughts, unfulfilled wants, bad dreams, failures, hate, cares, fears, the past, future, and all painful relationships: let everything go.
Nothing seems to matter anymore because the deep pain is all that can be felt, and every day it only gets worse and worse. No one cares. They have proven it by how they hurt me and the voice inside says freedom from the pain comes from just ending it, so get it over with.
I know these things and I know how to commit suicide because I've tried it and helped to talk others down from it.
In that state, death seemed the ultimate escape from the pain and shame I was desperately trying to drown with each drink. I don't remember making the conscious decision to kill myself, slowly, deliberately, legally committing suicide, one drink at a time, hour after hour, day after day.
It may have been that, day after day the darkness of my addiction was killing positive thoughts before they transformed into action, bringing an emotional paralysis to my life. Moving deeper and deeper into hopelessness, my silent heart slowly died, unaware, as despair trickled into the cold voids where the dreams once lived.
No matter how much I was admonished or scolded, how much encouragement and understanding I was offered, how much love and concern I was shown, or how ill I became, I thought I would never make the decision to completely stop drinking. I'd quit for an hour, a day, even made it a week once, but I always ended up drinking again.
People did and, amazingly, do still care about me, but during that dark period my drink-addled brain was responding with a legion of proof that what the calm, sober inner voice was telling me was a lie.
By committing suicide, you don’t only hurt yourself, you hurt everyone who loves and cares for you. They are left behind with the questions: "Why did my father kill himself?"... " Why didn’t my husband talk to me?"... "What could I have done differently?"..."Is it my fault?" ..."At who's feet can I lay the blame?"
It is virtually impossible to exist without knowing someone who has committed suicide. We all empathize with anothers loss but when it hits close to home we are staggered by the event. "They had everything to live for"... "That was nothing to kill themselves for" ..."I didn't know they had a problem."
There are no easy answers just as there are no easy answers for the person who chooses this course of action.
Those who loved would never completely recover. They'll feel regret and an unending pain
How do you intervene to prevent someone from committing suicide? Prevention should start long before that question ever arises. Easily said, I know, but the problem is some warning signs are extremely easy to spot but others are very difficult to recognize even in someone you are very close to.
Factors include attitudes and behaviors; things like a person's family history, biology, psychology, and socio-cultural situation. They also include environmental conditions, such as easy access to the means of suicide or easy access to a friendly ear or help and treatment services.
The Internet can be a very disturbing and adult medium and there are parts that should not be viewed by children. Explicit information can be found which is intended for an adult audience but children who have unsupervised access to the Internet have become exposed to this material.
The question is: who is responsible for preventing our children from viewing this material? Censoring the entire Internet is not a viable option. Prevention of children viewing and having access to unsuitable material can be achieved without banning the material from the Internet: once that starts, where does it stop? Should a website be taken down because someone disagrees with the owners political or religious views?
Censorship by the parents for their children: all that is needed is responsibility by the parents. If a parent is willing to provide their child access to the Internet, then they need to take precautions. Most parents would prevent their child from looking at the adult section in a video or bookshop; why would they allow their children access to such material on the internet?
Censoring the Internet would limit what adults could view and communicate. Having the access to the vast information available on the Internet, a responsibility is needed. Supervising and censorship of the Internet is not needed as a whole, but the needs for parental supervision and censorship are understandable. These though, should be the responsibility of the individual user or, if under 18, the users parents.
I've reclassified the page and rated it with http://www.safesurf.com/ as Adult and their coding will recognized by any computers running filtering software, denying access to anyone under 18 and I'll be adding to the number of helpline links on the page. I'd also, with your permission, like to put this exchange on the site.
Best regards,
John Anderson.
Dear Mr. Anderson,
Thank you so much for your reply. You have much experience with that topic, so I can tell that you know where I am coming from. I admire your inner strength to have been able to overcome your addiction, and the temptation to let go of life. I'm sure there are many people around you who also admire you for what you went through because you were able to come back stronger, smarter, and probably far ahead of your peers, because now, you have strengths of character that many lack. It takes a lot of strength, unusual strength, to overcome what you did.
I really appreciate you going to the effort to reclassify that material onto a separate webpage that cannot be so easily accessed. I would love it if you put this exchange on there. Perhaps if someone suicidal does find that webpage, they will realize how suicide really affects those left behind. Depression is in my family, as we have now realized. I thought that me, my mom, and my grandma have had it for years, but I was too afraid to get help and they just denied that they had any problem. Now, we are all being treated for it.
I went through a deep depression in which I was suicidal during high school, and while I realized that people would be impacted by my death, but I didn't realize the scope of the impact until I was hit by it myself. Several years later, after my brother passed away, I was very suicidal, but I could never go through with anything because it is hard to imagine the pain felt after a loved one takes his/her own life until it hits you. And I had been hit. It never goes away. I could never knowingly put pain like that onto other people. Hopefully this could help others see how things really are after a person commits suicide, and I pray that they might change their minds.
Thanks so much for your concern.
Best regards,
Eileen Slattery eileen_slatteryatyahoodotcom