The person who asked HP Fan-fic where an Imperiused Dudley jumps off a building also included a link to Lifeline, the Australian nonprofit that provides support to people who are affected or have been affected by rape, assault, suicide and similar events that may or may not cause extreme distress or negative effects in users.
I think that while reminding people that such services exist is a good idea, I think in this case the execution might be problematic. This is a single link to a single non profit in a single country which doesn't even make the top 50 of most populous countries in the world. Providing a link to this one service while leaving out the millions of other users who can't be helped by this service seems like a drop in the ocean, and somewhat misplaced.
Again, I don't have an issue with providing users information on how to cope with this kind of stuff, and I feel like it adds value, but what I don't like is that we single out Australia and leave aside the countries with more users, or even the 50 countries with higher population count. Either provide more links, or a link to an aggregator, or don't provide a link at all, but don't just have 1 link.
so there are effectively 2 questions here:
- should we proactively add a suicide disclaimer on questions that handle suicide, as frequently happens on TV or in the newspaper?
- If yes, what should this disclaimer be?