Samaritans is a registered charity aimed at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope or at risk of suicide throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, often through its telephone helpline. Its name derives from the biblical Parable of the Good Samaritan although the organisation itself is not religious.
The Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology started in 1991 to discuss the controversial beliefs of Scientology, as well as the activities of the Church of Scientology, which claims exclusive intellectual property rights thereto and is viewed by many as a dangerous cult. The newsgroup has become the focal point of an aggressive battle known as Scientology versus the Internet, which has taken place both online and in the courts.
Google Groups is a service from Google that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests. The Groups service also provides a gateway to Usenet newsgroups, both reading and posting to them, via a shared user interface. In addition to accessing Google and Usenet groups, registered users can also set up mailing list archives for e-mail lists that are hosted elsewhere.
A crisis hotline is a phone number people can call to get immediate emergency telephone counseling, usually by trained volunteers. The first such service was founded in England in 1951 and such hotlines have existed in most major cities of the English speaking world at least since the mid-1970s. Initially set up to help those contemplating suicide, many have expanded their mandate to deal more generally with emotional crises. Similar hotlines operate to help people in other circumstances, including rape, bullying, self-harm, runaway children, human trafficking, and people who identify as LGBT or intersex. Despite crisis hotlines being common, their effectiveness in reducing suicides is not clear.
Suicide prevention is a collection of efforts to reduce the risk of suicide. Suicide is often preventable, and the efforts to prevent it may occur at the individual, relationship, community, and society level. Suicide is a serious public health problem that can have long-lasting effects on individuals, families, and communities. Preventing suicide requires strategies at all levels of society. This includes prevention and protective strategies for individuals, families, and communities. Suicide can be prevented by learning the warning signs, promoting prevention and resilience, and committing to social change.
A suicide pact is an agreed plan between two or more individuals to die by suicide. The plan may be to die together, or separately and closely timed.
Suicidal ideation, or suicidal thoughts, is the thought process of having ideas, or ruminations about the possibility of committing suicide. It is not a diagnosis but is a symptom of some mental disorders, use of certain psychoactive drugs, and can also occur in response to adverse life events without the presence of a mental disorder.
The Samaritan Befrienders Hong Kong (SBHK) is a non-government organisation. It is a local voluntary agency which provides counselling services to people with suicidal tendencies or behaviour. This organisation was the first of its kind in Asia.
A suicide crisis, suicidal crisis or potential suicide is a situation in which a person is attempting to kill themselves or is seriously contemplating or planning to do so. It is considered by public safety authorities, medical practice, and emergency services to be a medical emergency, requiring immediate suicide intervention and emergency medical treatment. Suicidal presentations occur when an individual faces an emotional, physical, or social problem they feel they cannot overcome and considers suicide to be a solution. Clinicians usually attempt to re-frame suicidal crises, point out that suicide is not a solution and help the individual identify and solve or tolerate the problems.
A Usenet personality was a particular kind of Internet celebrity, being an individual who gained a certain level of notoriety from posting on Usenet, a global network of computer users with a vast array of topics for discussion. The platform is usually anonymous, although users can get celebrity status, usually by being deemed different from other posters in some way.
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse are risk factors. Some suicides are impulsive acts due to stress, relationship problems, or harassment and bullying. Those who have previously attempted suicide are at a higher risk for future attempts. Effective suicide prevention efforts include limiting access to methods of suicide such as firearms, drugs, and poisons; treating mental disorders and substance abuse; careful media reporting about suicide; improving economic conditions; and dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT). Although crisis hotlines are common resources, their effectiveness has not been well studied.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a global registered charity based in Cambridge, England. It states that its remit is "to minimise the availability of online sexual abuse content, specifically child sexual abuse images and videos hosted anywhere in the world and non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK." Content inciting racial hatred was removed from the IWF's remit after a police website was set up for the purpose in April 2011. The IWF used to also take reports of criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK. This was removed from the IWF's remit in 2017. As part of its function, the IWF says that it will "supply partners with an accurate and current URL list to enable blocking of child sexual abuse content". It has "an excellent and responsive national Hotline reporting service" for receiving reports from the public. In addition to receiving referrals from the public, its agents also proactively search the open web and deep web to identify child sexual abuse images and videos. It can then ask service providers to take down the websites containing the images or to block them if they fall outside UK jurisdiction.
Suicide in South Korea occurs at the 12th highest rate in the world. South Korea has the highest recorded suicide rate in the OECD. In South Korea, it is estimated to affect 0.02 percent of the population by the WHO. In 2012, suicide was the fourth-highest cause of death. The suicide rate has consistently declined between 2012 and 2019, the year when the latest data are available.
Gender differences in suicide rates have been shown to be significant. There are different rates of suicides and suicidal behavior between males and females. While females more often have suicidal thoughts, males die by suicide more frequently. This discrepancy is also known as the gender paradox in suicide.
Advocacy of suicide, also known as pro-suicide, has occurred in many cultures and subcultures. Confucianism holds that one should give up one's life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren (altruism) and yi (righteousness). The Japanese military during World War II encouraged and glorified kamikaze attacks, and Japanese society as a whole has been described as "suicide-tolerant".
Researchers study Social media and suicide to find if a correlation exists between the two. Some research has shown that there may be a correlation.
Suicide and the Internet have increasingly important relationships as Internet use becomes more ubiquitous.
Suicide is a significant national social issue in the United Kingdom. In 2019 there were 5,691 registered deaths by suicide in England and Wales, equating to an average of 18 suicides per day. Suicide is the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the country.
In 2017, the suicide rate in Hong Kong was around 12 deaths per 100,000 people and ranked 32 in the world standing, which was its lowest rate in four years. The suicide rate for males was nearly double that for females, as it was 16.2 deaths per 100,000 males, and 8.8 deaths per 100,000 females. Although it has decreased slightly compared to previous years, for those aged 19 or younger it has risen by 50%. The Samaritans Hong Kong charity has described the issues as worthy of attention.
Sanctioned Suicide (SS) is an internet forum known for its open discussion and encouragement of suicide and suicide methods. The forum was founded on March 18, 2018, by Diego Joaquín Galante and Lamarcus Small, who go by the online pseudonyms Serge and Marquis. Galante and Small created the website after the subreddit r/SanctionedSuicide was banned by Reddit; both the website and the subreddit have been described as the successors to the Usenet newsgroup alt.suicide.holiday. As of October 2023, the forum has over 40,000 members and was reported to receive nearly 10 million page views in September 2023. Although the forum frames itself as a "pro-choice" suicide forum, it has been widely described as "pro-suicide".
