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Re:The vanishing, underappreciated prank call by thaumasiotes on Monday June 23, 2014 @05:32AM (#7930978)
It's not so easy to use "person X, who had attempted suicide multiple times, left a note blaming her successful suicide on a prank played on her three days prior" to conclude that the problem was the prank. What do you think the odds are that she would have killed herself anyway?

Just to be clear, I don't endorse prank calling at all; I'm glad it's a dying "art". But the death of Jacintha Saldanha isn't evidence for anything more than "people who are determined to mess up their own lives, can".

Re:The vanishing, underappreciated prank call by DanBC on Monday June 23, 2014 @05:38AM (#7931002)
The point is not that "prank calls kill people". The point is that you do not know the situation of the person you are calling and even these simple fun calls can cause an undue amount of distress or anxiety. Since the benefit is minimal the risks seem to outweigh them.
Re:The vanishing, underappreciated prank call by thaumasiotes on Monday June 23, 2014 @05:42AM (#7931015)
And I'm pointing out that the risk here isn't "person who otherwise would have lived dies", although people seem to want to treat it that way. It's "extremely fragile person, already on suicide watch, makes yet another suicide attempt". That's not a large risk, it's a small one.
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Re:The vanishing, underappreciated prank call by thaumasiotes on Monday June 23, 2014 @07:46AM (#7931369)
edit: this is a response to "That she named it in her suicide note isn't enough?"

No, of course not. People misattribute causes all the time. She had already attempted to kill herself twice, but we can be certain that the prank call wasn't involved in those. I estimate that the responsibility for the successful suicide can be attributed nearly 100% to whatever it was that caused the other attempts, and less than 2% to the prank call, humiliation at work, national visibility, etc, that resulted. The prior suicide attempts have so much explanatory power that almost nothing is left over for the prank call, no matter what one of her suicide notes said. She left another suicide note (same suicide, separate note) complaining about the management at her hospital, with whom she had had ongoing difficulties. Should we conclude that you shouldn't adopt policies that some employees don't like, because someone might kill themselves?

Rough impression of where I picked numbers like "nearly 100%" and "less than 2%": two questions. First, of the people who become nationally notable in some minor but arguably humiliating way (she wasn't even the staffer primarily targeted by the prank call; it's not clear to me whether anyone outside the hospital would have known she was involved), how many attempt to kill themselves? Second, of the people who attempt suicide twice, how many attempt it a third time?