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	:::That dead person, ] became a symbol for the tragic, brilliant artistic genius who perished under a non-understanding world, and that image does highly romanticize it(as was the artist's intent).<br>		:::That dead person, ] became a symbol for the tragic, brilliant artistic genius who perished under a non-understanding world, and that image does highly romanticize it(as was the artist's intent).<br>
	:::Another image you could use would be Manet's Le Suicide. Using the image of Chatterton is POV because it might seem like we are suggesting those who commit suicide are usually geniuses who are misunderstood by the world(instead of depressed, upper middle class white males).] (]) 20:24, 18 August 2010 (UTC)		:::Another image you could use would be Manet's Le Suicide. Using the image of Chatterton is POV because it might seem like we are suggesting those who commit suicide are usually geniuses who are misunderstood by the world(instead of depressed, upper middle class white males).] (]) 20:24, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
			::::It's supposed to be an academic article on suicide. Including any depiction of a person who is supposed to be dead, via suicide or any other means serves no valid purpose. People who are having suicidal ideations have a tendency to look up "suicide" on the internet, an example is the author ]. The article gets on average 5k hits a day.. It's not a far stretch of the imagination to say a large majority of those 5k visitors may be contemplating suicide. If any article requires tact and common sense this one does.
			:::::When a person is suicidal there is a tendency to try and find external sources to give validity to a course of action, whether or not they should die. An image depicting a dead person may seem innocuous to many, but to a person who is suicidal it can become an object of fixation....A negative one. ] (]) 19:01, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

	== Pending changes ==		== Pending changes ==

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To-do list for Suicide: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2013-02-06

Add suggestions here...

evolution of suicide, why do we have suicidal feelings at all? whats the science behind it?
add section summarizing History of suicide.
Clean up the introduction, which is currently disjointed (reads like a list of loosely-connected facts about the subject) and has bad style (excessive passive voice, tense changes, etc.)
Smoking as being correlative to suicide might come across as quite misleading. It's much more likely that those who are stressed, perturbed or contemplating potential suicide might actually turn to cigarettes as a vice........ there would be correlation in that way, rather than assuming that cigarettes causes some sort of suicidal reaction, which would be farfetched. the comments in this section are obviously not parallel to the other problematic addictions / disorders leading to extreme actions.

Citation

In the "Substance Abuse Section" it is claimed that "Up to 25% of drug addicts and alcoholics commit suicide". This seems to be an outrageously high number; I have known many alcoholics and drug addicts and not a single one has committed suicide. Such a dramatic claim should be supported by a proper citation; however, there is no citation to substantiate the claim that one in four addicts will kill themselves. I tried to remove the line, but I don't think I am able to edit this page, so if anyone can edit this page please remove the line or provide a proper citation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.128.166 (talk) 21:36, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Grammar correction

In the "Murder-suicide" subsection of the "Classification" section, the phrase "... the in part successful kamakazi attacks..." should be changed. "in part" should be "partially", or at the very least, should be "in-part".

Picture

Debated image. Person depicted(Thomas Chatterton) became a symbol of the "tragic genius" after his suicide and depictions of him in art(multiple poems and paintings) is usually heavily romanticized.

I'd like to suggest that the picture of Thomas Chatterton be removed, or at least displayed less prominently in the article. The article is not about suicide in the romantic movement, romantic literature, or other such subjects - it's about suicide in general. A picture of a Romantic poet is hardly appropropriate to an article about a mental health care issue of this kind. It also runs the risk of glamorizing suicide, making it look exciting, sexy, romantic or whatever. Surely it's obvious that we shouldn't be doing that? UserVOBO (talk) 23:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

It is the best image there is currently on the page thus returned it. I do not know have an image of a dead person glamorizes suicide. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:16, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

That dead person, Thomas Chatterton became a symbol for the tragic, brilliant artistic genius who perished under a non-understanding world, and that image does highly romanticize it(as was the artist's intent).

Another image you could use would be Manet's Le Suicide. Using the image of Chatterton is POV because it might seem like we are suggesting those who commit suicide are usually geniuses who are misunderstood by the world(instead of depressed, upper middle class white males).Wikiposter0123 (talk) 20:24, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

It's supposed to be an academic article on suicide. Including any depiction of a person who is supposed to be dead, via suicide or any other means serves no valid purpose. People who are having suicidal ideations have a tendency to look up "suicide" on the internet, an example is the author Iris Chang. The article gets on average 5k hits a day.. It's not a far stretch of the imagination to say a large majority of those 5k visitors may be contemplating suicide. If any article requires tact and common sense this one does.

When a person is suicidal there is a tendency to try and find external sources to give validity to a course of action, whether or not they should die. An image depicting a dead person may seem innocuous to many, but to a person who is suicidal it can become an object of fixation....A negative one. 7mike5000 (talk) 19:01, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes

This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Misplaced Pages:Pending Changes system on the English language Misplaced Pages. All the articles listed at Misplaced Pages:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

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Many of the articles were selected semi-automatically from a list of indefinitely semi-protected articles.
Please confirm that the protection level appears to be still warranted, and consider unprotecting instead, before applying pending changes protection to the article.

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Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 00:12, 17 June 2010 (UTC).

AfD

This AfD may interest some of you.--Epeefleche (talk) 14:29, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Human suicide only?

Some animals commit suicide too; shouldn't we mention that? Tisane /_stalk 06:33, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

A The article is on human suicide. There are many instances of self destruction in the animal kingdom. Whales and dolphins occasionally take part in mass beachings, when they are put back into deep water they turn around and beach themselves again and die. Is it suicide in the human sense? Did they all lose their jobs at the same time? Black widow spiders kill the male after mating, so do praying mantis' etc. Somehow putting in that salmonella commit suicide is comical in a dark sort of way. 7mike5000 (talk) 07:56, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

What is "the human sense" of suicide? If it is being human, then that's circular reasoning. If this article is about human suicide, then why does it include "living beings" in its opening sentence? Evidently other editors would support a broader definition, so it is conjectural. These articles question the notion that animals can not commit suicide. What sources can you provide that state that suicide is exclusively a human phenomenon? ArtistScientist (talk) 09:12, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

It says "living being" because I changed it yesterday. :) But aside from that, perhaps it will help suicidal humans, and anyone else interested in human suicide, put things in perspective if they understand the role of suicide in the animal world? We can eventually split off human suicide to suicide (human) or human suicide if necessary, or break off suicide in animals or suicide in non-humans into a separate article or heading if needed. Tisane /_stalk 15:49, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree, except for the Suicide in non-humans part. Marcus Qwertyus 16:04, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Rationale? (I ask as I work on animal suicide in another browser tab) Tisane /_stalk 16:10, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

I was hoping for an article on suicide in animals (humans included). Also you mistakenly included salmonella in your article, a bacteria. Marcus Qwertyus 02:25, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Regarding animal suicide: most of the examples appear to fall into the area of self-sacrifice, which is explicitly excluded in the definition of suicide in this article. Perhaps they'd be more appropriate there? Dcoetzee 17:59, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

The problem is, if self-sacrifice and suicide are deemed to be mutually exclusive, where do you draw the line and say that killing oneself is self-sacrifice rather than suicide? Suppose someone kills himself in order to draw attention to a political cause. Does that count as self-sacrifice or suicide? I would argue that it would be both, and most sources that I'm finding on Google Scholar seem to support that view. Plus the articles on animal suicide call self-sacrifice "suicide." Tisane /_stalk 18:33, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Leave the section where it is it's perfect. After someone with suicidal ideations depresses the crap out of themselves reading about suicide, they can read "Some species of termites have soldiers that explode, covering their enemies with sticky goo"

It would be a good epitaph

Here Lies John Doe

He went home to be with the Lord

After exploding and covering his enemies

With sticky goo

Not much different than falling on a grenade. Although falling on a grenade is a defensive act, while exploding and covering your enemies with sticky goo is an offensive act. And as we all know, the best defense is a good offense. Tisane /_stalk 19:07, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Just an interesting tidbit for anyone interested in animal suicide.Wikiposter0123 (talk) 23:33, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe life just got too "ruff" for them. Tisane /_stalk 00:27, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Suicide-Too much information?

Moved from Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Suicide-Too_much_information.3F

Hi, I am concerned by the level of detail contained in the entry for 'suicide'. I am aware that there are strict guidelines journalists have to adhere to when reporting any information about suicide. I wondered why these do not apply to Misplaced Pages. I have lost people close to me to suicide and am worried that Misplaced Pages's entry reads very much like an irresponsible 'how to' guide in places. This could prove fatal to a vulnerable, distressed person trawling the internet for sources of support and help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.4.77.107 (talk) 12:22, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

The page does not read like a how-to guide. It does contain discussion of the various methods, historical and modern, by which suicide has commonly been performed, but this is an obvious and essential part of an encyclopedic article on suicide. If you have a concern with a specific part of the article, the best place to bring it up would be the article talk page, in this case Talk:Suicide. --erachima talk 17:16, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I understand your concerns here, but discussing suicide without discussing methods of suicide would be omitting critical information that is important for the many people who are not suicidal to understand the topic and its importance. I think the article is fine as it stands, particularly in light of the inconclusive scientific studies regarding whether exposure to information about suicide motivates suicide (mentioned in this article). Dcoetzee 17:56, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I would object to that whole principle of ignorance is strength, that holds that we can prevent suicide by getting rid of information about it. True, we would perhaps reduce the number of people who commit suicide after reading our suicide-related articles, but correlation is not causation. It is quite possible that a lot of suicidal people struggle to understand their feelings, and in their search for meaning, browse through our articles after doing a Google search. Much of the suicide-related information on the Internet is biased one way or the other, or laden with emotional propaganda, and thus not ideal for people who try to approach such decisions from a logical, unbiased point of view. Misplaced Pages can hopefully provide a source of balanced, factual information that will be useful to researchers attempting to understand suicide epidemics, suicidal people themselves, surviving family members of suicides, etc.

Even the suicide methods page can serve a legitimate harm reduction purpose. E.g., if people know that laying on a railroad track is not a surefire method of painless suicide, maybe they won't do that. Likewise, it might cause someone to reconsider his plan to kill himself with a .22 caliber rifle when he finds out that can cause permanent brain damage without killing him. More information is a good thing; consider that we also have pages on cross site scripting that could be useful to newbie hackers, but the info is probably even more useful to those seeking to safeguard their sites from such hackers. Tisane /_stalk 19:04, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

To me, it is also a question of democracy and egalitarianism (as in all people should be treated as equals and have the same rights). With maybe a few exceptions, I think it is fundamentally wrong if some people would have information that they think other people should not have access to, even if this would be "for their own good". For me, this is basically the idea with Misplaced Pages: information available to all. Also information on suicide. Lova Falk talk 16:28, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I wonder how other encyclopædias treat suicide? Perhaps we can emulate how they approach it. 69.251.180.224 (talk) 22:49, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

They usually devote a couple pages to it, and examine it from an epidemiological/sociological perspective. Tisane /_stalk 22:53, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Glamorizing suicide increases the rate of suicide. This is something some media has done in the past. There is no evidence that discussing the risk / treatment / etc. for suicide has this effect. I do not think this wiki page glamorizes suicide and therefor feel these concerns are misplaced.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:45, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

psychological causes reverted edits

I have reverted these changes until they can be added again with a better range of sources. There is a great deal of debate about the psychological causes of suicide and this needs to be reflected in a discussion which gives information from a wider range of sources. These sources are all articles by the same person (and give links to a personal webpage at manchester university). Since the user who added these pages also added similar text to other pages on the same day and citing the same sources then it looks also as if this might be some sort of academic self-promotion. Jenafalt (talk) 20:35, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Doubtful this is academic self-promation. When I read up on an author I go and look to see what info from that author I can add to Misplaced Pages. Probably a similar occurrence here.Wikiposter0123 (talk) 21:00, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Quite Janafalt - assume good faith!

Sorry I must have been in a grumpy mood when I made that comment. I was just alerted to the fact that this person had added work from the same sources to multiple pages after not having edited Misplaced Pages since last year. It rang some alarm bells. I'll try to not be so suspicious in the future! To clarify - I think it would be fine to re-add this information to the page, but it needs to be much more balanced as the text and related sources that were added only relate to one small aspect of this very complex and contentious issue. Jenafalt (talk) 12:26, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

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