It’s an odd dichotomy, but at Christmas time we often think about depression. Maybe not our own, but we worry about people whose sadness and grief might somehow be amplified during this typically joyous time. And in fact, if we widen our view a bit, the U.S. Surgeon General’s office states that over the course of the full year about 36,000 Americans get so low they take their own lives.
Since we’re a social-media-connected society, a lot of those depressed and potentially suicidal people often vent their feelings online before they get to their darkest point of desperation. I remember seeing a report by a San Francisco paper just last month of a financially strapped guy posting a suicidal comment on Facebook before walking away and killing his family and himself. And that’s only one of many such stories.
Now, I’m not saying all this just to depress you, but rather to point out something good that’s being done to help those people in need. And the folks at Facebook are doing it … with our help. Facebook just launched a new suicide prevention tool that provides an immediate and direct link to a page where people can have a live text chat with a crisis counselor.
“The science shows that people experience reductions in suicidal thinking when there is quick intervention,” said Lidia Bernik, associate project director of Lifeline, an education and counseling service. “We’ve heard from many people who say they want to talk to someone but don’t want to call. Instant message is perfect for that.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Facebook is trolling through the pages of its 800 million users looking for warning signs. But there is someone who can spot and report a problem when it pops up: You. So in a way the service depends on users to be a sort of “first responder” if they recognize something out of the usual with one of their friends.
“One of the big goals here is to get the person in distress into the right help as soon as possible,” Fred Wolens, public policy manager at Facebook, told the Associated Press. “The only people who will have a really good idea of what’s going on is your friends so we’re encouraging them to speak up and giving them an easy and quick way to get help.”
Now that, it seems to me, is pretty smart. It’s an easy way to quickly aid someone who needs a helping hand and a wise reassuring word. For someone, it might be a life-saving Christmas present.
Bravo Facebook. And Merry Christmas.
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