idea for help for those who have suicidal ideation

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🐺 Raksha

Hi,

 

I've become sort of a mom to a lot of servers, and one thing I have noticed is there has been several members that have ideated about committing suicide. I was wondering if there was the possibility of developing a way to 'report' users who have verbally expressed suicidal ideation, and Discord would send the user a DM with links to various resources available to the individual based off of the location information they have given to Discord when creating their account. That way the individual's PII isn't compromised, but they can be given actual tangible resources to help them.

Is this something that could be further developed? People seem to be much freer when online, as they hide behind a username, so my concern as a fellow human is that they're comfortable telling their online friends that they are going to kill themselves, but no one IRL has actually noticed.

Thank you for your consideration.

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Comments

3 comments

Date Votes
  • Kim (Denieta)

    Something like this could prove beyond helpful when someone is in need. Allowing someone to see the resources available to them and giving them a chance to reach out can literally save a life.

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  • The Kirito
    • Edited

    I personally agree with this, it could prove a huge help and so many servers dedicated to helping others could be made with this option. Think about it, not everyone has enough trust to just randomly search for help and end up with maybe a false one so if discord takes it in their hands and proves the right ones, you could be helping many people.
    However it does have one bad side and that is what if some people falsely 'report' a user for trolling. And as humans there's bound to be some people that would abuse it so i got an idea to add...
    To be able to use said feature you must be verified by discord through a test on forums or something similar to hoe hypesquad works, answering questions in a row and finally agreeing to only use if needed. But if they do the said test for abusing this option, the dm the members receive would have the tag of the reporter, therefore allowing them to report it to discord and if there's more reports to said 'power abuser' discord would take steps to removing the permissions.
    Thanks for reading this and i hope i made it clear enough as im not really good with words :P
    And i also hope you didn't find this offensive or as if im trying to say the idea is bad because its not, the idea is amazing

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  • bastet_of_orion
    • Edited

    The reasons and places from which suicide ideation comes from are often similar but do not always respond to the same actions - this idea can help those who are open to such approaches, but calling this "reporting", along with a highly-automated system, will make others feel significantly more isolated and have an adverse effect.

    To be clear, I think this is a great idea! But it's an idea for a very complex subject that heavily relies on knowing the workings of the human mind, something that we have entire fields of study on and still have difficulty with. Opening this up to others by allowing them to choose this sort of aid will massively help destigmatize people reaching out for help, as well as encouraging those who would receive a message through, say, Clydebot (or a new bot specifically for this), wouldn't feel like it's akin to involuntary psychiatric intervention.

    Were this ever to be implemented, it would require both a lot of work and a lot of outreach from other people/organizations/entities to preemptively close any gaps such at-risk people can fall through (and at the same time, reduce the risk of adverse reactions). I'm not sure if Discord will ever truly be a platform designed for mental health, but plotting out potential partnerships with those skilled in treating suicide ideation and other issues could benefit a great deal of users.

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