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The Internet and Suicide
I have promised to come back to the issue of our media-crazed culture and look at how and to what extent it's good and bad for us. But other issues keep intruding like Sydney Pollack's death. Now another death-related issue, and, to my way of thinking, another media psychology issue, has cut into line. So, I promise I will get back to Media-Crazed Culture, Part Deux, but I wanted to get this issue off my chest-mind so I can take a nap after a 5 mile walk this morning.
Almost 25 years ago a university colleague experienced one of the ultimate and indelible horrors of parenthood -- having a teen age child commit suicide. There was a perplexity surrounding this death: Was it accidental or intentional?
Today we have viral videos which spread across the Internet cosmos at nanospeeds. But back then, fads and fashions spread more slowly, but still faster than common sense would advocate and still-emerging patterns of disasters could inform. One such fad was cutting off oxygen to the brain while trying to achieve orgasms of Richter scale dimensions.
This Holy Grail of sexual highs was accomplished by putting a noose around the neck and doing a controlled strangulation. Problem was, some people executed the maneuver ineptly and the controlled choke was uncontrolled. Brain damage or death occurred in too many instances. To this day my colleague can never be sure if the child's death was a sexual thing gone wrong or a suicidal thing gone right.
Absent definitive information one way or the other, parents of children who get damaged or die because of foolish misadventures into sex-, alcohol-, or drug-related risky business, may have to choose between intention and accident to explain the oftentimes unexplainable. It sets up a dilemma of reasoning: would I prefer to believe my child died by accident or that they intended to take their life?
The ramifications of each choice carry heavy burdens, but an intentional suicide seems to make it easier for the parent to blame themselves in myriad ways (e.g., Why didn't I see the signs? Where did I go wrong? Did he need a stronger hand?).
Neither way of death is without an abyss of parental pain. But pain over a stupid sex experiment may yield less self-blame than pain from knowing that one's child found life unbearably tormenting or interminably painful and that the child's quiver of coping skills was inadequate to the task.
Recently, I spoke with another parent who had definitive evidence that his child committed suicide 20 odd years ago rather than dying accidentally. The child's death altered his life in every conceivable way, as it did for the colleague discussed earlier.
In our conversation, I posed an admittedly touchy question to this parent: What if, at the time, his teenage child had had access to the Internet? Is it possible that she might have gotten on some chat room site or forum? Might she have Googled search terms like suicide, thoughts of death, teenage depression, etc., and found evidence or information or anonymous listeners, any of which or whom could have guided her away from suicide?
The parent now works with teens in matters related to teen suicide and has considerable experience with the multi-faceted subject. He listened to my question, reflected for a moment and then quickly answered, "Yes, I think it's certainly possible." Was that a flash of pain I saw in his eyes?
Why was I asking, he was curious to learn. "Research for a paper," I told him. "I want to look at the possible therapeutic value something as truly borderline-miraculous as the Internet can offer people today, especially young people." We both understood that young people are so much more comfortable and deft with the Internet and its social aspects than are most adults, whose formative years were essentially ‘offline'."
So, what am I getting at here? Let me frame the issues as research questions for us to possibly explore together:
1. In what way can people who might be alone and confused with their pain but too embarrassed or uncertain about reaching out to those around them, find the Internet an option for exploring new alternatives to coping with the pain?
2. Might the Internet be a better, more selectable option for someone uncomfortable with talking to a counselor in person or calling a suicide hotline? The counselor and the hotline involve talking in real time to another person, an exchange that for many seems to risk more unwanted self- or identity-exposure than might an Internet exchange.
A key component of safe, secure, self-exploration may be the anonymity that the variety of Internet venues offers today. Anonymity may work for many so that they're not alone in their thoughts and concerns and pain. Traveling the Internet for the input of others may work to divert energy away from creating a psychological isolation, away from constructing an enabling psychological space wherein someone may more easily talk oneself into reaching for the "suicide solution."
Obviously any inquiry into the dynamics of Internet psychological resource building is also applicable to the dynamics of externalizing anger and despair onto others as in the modern spate of mass murders on school campuses and in work or other public settings; or even engaging in what has become known as "suicide by cop," where someone who can't take their own life but can, by public, criminal actions, provoke a policeman into doing it for them. For the present, however, I'm focused on the matter of suicide.
You're reading this blog so you're probably aware that the news has recently been filled with stories of teens brutalizing other teens via Internet sites like MySpace. In some egregious instances, this cruelty has led those targeted teens to acts of suicide. But there is this positive side to the Internet social interaction and information gathering sites as well. I am extremely interested in any thoughts you may have on the value of the Internet in coping with personal problems, suicidal thinking, or other states of emotional pain. Do you know details of anyone who has benefited from turning to the net to find answers and roadmaps to resolving crucial psychological problems? Your input and feedback will be much appreciated.
Psychologists often like to talk about what's wrong with new media technologies (e.g., internet addiction, TV couch potatoes). I would like to look at the other side of the coin for a change.
