Sorry David, but as always your very obvious lack of real human empathy is shining through.

Some thick skinned folk can tolerate some demeaning bullying? Others are progressively irreparably harmed by it!

That you could arrive at your conclusions not only demonstrates a lack of genuine normal human empathy but that you have obviously never ever been touched by the suicide of a family member or friend?

Even if you have? You're very obviously such a cold fish so as to remain largely untouched by allegedly personal tragedy?

The parents of that 14 year old kid from the NT, who was in the news recently as having ended her own life as a consequence of endless senseless, cyber bullying, won't thank you for your cold blooded and heartless analysis.

Nor will the family and friends of every young suicide victim, who must have died the loneliest of all entirely unnecessary deaths in a severely truncated life.

Is there any area so sacrosanct as to remain inviolate and out of bounds in your search for a politically expedient headline? As you seek to excuse the inexcusable!
Alan B.

I completely agree with David and one could argue that Beyond Blue etal are making it worse because not only is the suicide rate not decreasing, it's going the other way. So whatever they are doing, is not working.

@AlanB
>was in the news recently as having ended her own life as a consequence of endless senseless, cyber bullying

You didn't read his article did you. Maybe it was the phases of the moon ?

The rest of your post is hyperbolic rubbish, Did you care an iota for this guy ? for example.

http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/jn/images/JN0011SUINGA.jpg

where's your empathy ?

This is one of the authors more calm and sensible articles.

'somebody whose only intention is to harm themselves'....
Strange way of saying their only intent is to liberate themselves from pain,.... so how does it translate into 'harm themselves'?.....unless one is making a judgment call based on so called 'christian beliefs'

The first decent article on suicide I have read in recent years. We are making a huge mistake talking about suicide in the media, particularly youth suicide. The Werther effect has been recognised for over 200 years and traditionally the media have not reported on suicide due to the very real risk of increasing the suicide rate. That seems to have completely gone out the window in recent years with the most recent example of Dolly getting almost saturation media coverage. All this does is glorify and glamorise suicide, particularly in the eyes of adolescents. It also suggests that suicide is a reasonable and natural response to people saying mean things on face book. The more money we put into "suicide prevention" and the more we talk about it, the higher the suicide rate gets. Ideally we should defund all suicide prevention and encourage the media to not report it. Then we might see the rates drop.

To David Leyonhjelm.

There are different reasons for suicide, and they differ for different situtions. Having a basic understanding of these might help restrain people from considering suicide when those situtions arise. For instance sucide due to loss and depression/grief (loss of a career, loss of a spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend), might be countered by an inviting culture to act as a safety net in times of loss. If people know that they are going into a difficult situation, then by trying to at least have some people around before sucide becomes an issue could be a solution. (Where as often those depressed try to shut people out and only intensify their own inner struggle). A second solution to this is to go through hardship in the past and see it through. "Survive" the hard times and the phrase becomes true "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.

On the other hand suicide due to bullying, isn't about a loss that a person has, but a constant struggle with belittling or aggressive community. And again that can be helped by persevering through it an surviving it, as well as by having those who care about the person stay connected with them.

But suicide due to painful medical issues or due to a chemical imbalance in one's hormones are a different issue. To ignore suicide will not help these cases.

To Rhys Jones.

You might be right that talking about suicide can increases it's occurance. But to the point that if it's not reported then the rates will go down, here's a counter point. How would we know? As long as it's not reported the rate will be unknown and may even seem lower because the actual rate is hidden from the public's eyes.

Hi notnowsoon, I don't mean not reported to the authorities but not reported in the media. We still need to keep statistics on theses things. Just not glorify them like happened in the case of Dolly. Young people see all that media coverage, out pouring of grief and public statements of how wonderful she was and how much everyone loved her and think "I want some of that".

Suicide can occur where a person has pain that is too great for them to bear. If bullying is the main cause of the pain, then it's pretty obvious that bullying caused the suicide. If bullying causes depression, followed by suicide, and there are no other adverse life events, then the bullying is the cause of the suicide. We may not have mathematical proof of that, but from a common sense perspective we can still draw conclusions. Courts take a commonsense approach when it comes to questions of causation and have been able to draw conclusions about the cause of particular suicides. For example in Lisle v Bruce (2001) 34 Motor Vehicle Reports 206, the plaintiff's husband sustained injuries in a car accident which led to "major depression". Williams JA, with whom McMurdo P and Thomas JA agreed, in the Queensland Court of Appeal held that the accident was the cause of his suicide three years later. This was despite the fact that other events in his life, such as an altercation involving the police and business difficulties, probably contributed to his suicide.

Fair point Rhys Jones.

You either do it.... or you don't!
it's only ever up to one person
and as far as youth go, their parents have already long passed the point of responsibility they should have exercised as regard to the care of theirs....take away the phones and the drugs you'll see a big difference....better still put the money into national service for all and you'll see a nation revived.....not to mention the boat people having second thoughts.
Instead of putting the money into Manus they could have put it into the NS scheme