Re:Please read if you have any information about Tony Morris
by lallysingh on Wednesday March 11, 2009 @10:10PM
(#512873)
As someone who spent a long time in that boat, $0.02:
Saying someone doesn't have a right to kill themselves implies that they should be forced to go through with whatever pain is so severe that they don't want to live. It's not fair. Forcing them to live through that is a terrible sentence.
Now, I'm all for getting people out of that situation, but you can't get out of there by force, you have to finish processing the origin/cause of the depression.
As for responding to a suicide message on IRC, it is a call for help. Their compensatory abilities to fight the depression have been exhausted, and they need external help. The proper thing to do is respond.
For programmers it can be pretty bad, especially in open source projects. Most of their daily lives are connected to very distant people with little emotional connection -- it's pretty draining if you don't have other parts of your life to counterbalance. It takes up time and energy that could be used for activities which provide better emotional support. The lack of basic emotional feedback for all the effort put in can really make things worse.
Saying someone doesn't have a right to kill themselves implies that they should be forced to go through with whatever pain is so severe that they don't want to live. It's not fair. Forcing them to live through that is a terrible sentence.
Now, I'm all for getting people out of that situation, but you can't get out of there by force, you have to finish processing the origin/cause of the depression.
As for responding to a suicide message on IRC, it is a call for help. Their compensatory abilities to fight the depression have been exhausted, and they need external help. The proper thing to do is respond.
For programmers it can be pretty bad, especially in open source projects. Most of their daily lives are connected to very distant people with little emotional connection -- it's pretty draining if you don't have other parts of your life to counterbalance. It takes up time and energy that could be used for activities which provide better emotional support. The lack of basic emotional feedback for all the effort put in can really make things worse.