Anyone know anything about the guy in the crane?

He was brought down safely. All ended well!

Thanks so much for that.

I think it’s just that they don’t want every dickhead who ever thought of climbing one of the cranes after a few beers to go “Heeeey! It CAN be done! AND I’ll get on the telly!”

winning star said :

The media is told not to report suicides. It’s an industry code as far as I know.

Unless they’re famous of course.

Or unless they occur at the Belco Mall, the Canb. Centre or Parliament House – such stories should lead the news bulletins for the entire day.

Don’t report on a suicide, that’s bad, but it’s ok to repeatedly show video footage of thousands of people dying in terrorist attacks and wars. And if you’re lucky enough to get a shot of a terrorists body part then you’ve struck gold!

theonewhoanswersthephones said :

He was brought down safely. All ended well!

Thanks- that’s a good result for the ones who were trying to talk him down the slow way.

I’ve often wondered about the whole copy-cat fears, I have done a couple of short courses on suicide intervention, including one where we spent two days praticing asking “are you thinking of killing yourself” over and over again, because you really do need to ask someone if you think it is a possibility, but there is such an ingrained social taboo against doing that.

Anyway, despite being asked, no one running these courses could ever come up with any sort of answer about the merits of the convention of not talking about suicide in the media. There is a definate increase in risk if someone has a familiarity with suicide through the death of a family member or friend, but does that apply to just hearing about the death of someone they don’t know? Are young people affected in a different way by media reports to other population demographics. And the really big point: if harm can be done by talking about suicide, is it or more or less than the harm that is done by not talking about suicide? The lack of discussion contributes to this soical taboo of even thinking about suicide in an abstract sense, which means people are unwilling or unable to identify when people around them are at risk and take steps to help.

He was brought down safely. All ended well!

astrojax said :

for a start, cameron, it would be overwhelming. the collective tallies of road fatalities and murders don’t begin to come close to the number of self-inflicted deaths per annum. but there has also been a long-standing tacit agreement between media and law enforcement organisations not to publicise for fear of copy-cat behaviour, a real fear particularly among the suggestive youth demographic.

I dig the overwhelming point, but not reporting it for fear of copy-cat behaviour is nonsense. If someone wants to end it, they’ll figure out a way.

more of a convention than a code.

and more based on religious sensibilities than hard data.

The media is told not to report suicides. It’s an industry code as far as I know.

Unless they’re famous of course.

Same with bomb scares.

15-25, rather.

Reporting the incidence (and method) of suicide cases in a community leads to a wierd effect where it becomes an almost self-sustaining cultural phenomenon…

Micronesia had epidemiological growth in the level of suicide-by-hanging in young males from the early 1970’s to late 1980s, when a popular guy did it when one of his girlfriends discovered he was not only seeing another girl but had gotten her pregnant, and so committed suicide by hanging.
Hanging didn’t just become the new method of choice, it became a relatively popular cause of death.
Apparently the copycats who were considering it as an option but were unwilling, see their peer do it, and see this as ‘societal permission’.
Then these get reported on, and it becomes more contagious.

For basic summary: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9E0DE1D91739F935A35750C0A965948260
For the more recent medical paper:
http://cpi.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/occasional/vol-36/33-42.pdf
Youth Suicide and Social Change in Micronesia, Donald H Rubenstein

(Micronesia has 250 suicides per 100,000 males aged 15-35 annually, comparison to suicide rates of US and worldwide, this is a 1-in-40 rate over a ten year period, and about 20 times higher than worldwide norms)