Comments on: Implicit Association Tests and Suicidality

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 17:30:57 +0000

We work solely with the individual’s consent.

This should include questions of who is forced to pay the bills, by the way. In a civilized society, the answer must be: Only those who freely purchased the medical service.

Report comment

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 17:01:34 +0000

“The Holy Grail would be some test you could give someone, see they’re suicidal, place them in a hospital for a few days until they’re no longer suicidal, give them the test again to prove they’re no longer suicidal, and let them out when you see their test scores have improved.”

Or, you know, we could just kidnap random people and violate their basic citizen’s rights severely, because surely some good will come of it and some of them will be grateful some years later, maybe, and if not, hey, at least we did something, right??

Report comment

By: Fnord

Fnord — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:10:32 +0000

Then, as I said above, I submit that your real objection is to involuntary hospitalization, not to a hypothetical new psychological test.

Report comment

By: Grognor

Grognor — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:48:02 +0000

Having been a victim of this, I can say yes, I do.

Report comment

By: In Defense of Psych Treatment for Attempted Suicide « Random Ramblings of Rude Reality

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:00:22 +0000

[…] lot of the comments in my recent post on the implicit association test asked for a defense of why society should be hospitalizing suicidal people in the first place. If […]

Report comment

By: In Defense of Psych Treatment for Attempted Suicide | Slate Star Codex

In Defense of Psych Treatment for Attempted Suicide | Slate Star Codex — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:25:26 +0000

[…] lot of the comments in my recent post on the implicit association test asked for a defense of why society should be hospitalizing suicidal people in the first place. If […]

Report comment

By: Intrism

Intrism — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:51:09 +0000

I wonder if he’s played Tsukihime, but I’m also not entirely sure how either of these are relevant to the post.

Report comment

By: Sue Donym

Sue Donym — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:19:45 +0000

Either everyone I know is extremely atypical or the choice of pictures is unbelievably stupid. It’s hard for an individual to test whether seeing pictures of suicide make suicide more likely, but it’s drop-dead obvious that pictures of cut skin make cutting more likely. “Trigger warning: self-injury”; “No discussion of self-harm is allowed in channel”; thousands of anecdotes on self-injury discussion boards.

The actual reason for using a test about self-injury rather than suicide is probably that they had already developed one, which is a much more reasonable explanation. But in the study that shows this test predicts self-injury there is no untested control group, so they don’t look at whether the test causes self-harm.

Report comment

By: Fnord

Fnord — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:49:21 +0000

As I said above, you know that involuntary hospitalization for suicidality is something that happens now, right?

Report comment

By: Fnord

Fnord — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:46:55 +0000

I think the advantage you cite is relatively minor. Even in a regime of no involuntary hospitalization for suicidality, there’s nothing preventing mental healthcare professionals from listening to people’s thoughts and then, if it they think hospitalization is appropriate, issuing a strong recommendation for hospitalization. So if “Asking outright to be hospitalized is probably pretty hard and frightening, and if you’re conflicted it may be a lot easier to just describe your thoughts to the shrink and leave the final decision in their hands,” people can still do that.

And the current regime has some serious disadvantages (Ozy notes a big one).

Report comment