Talk:Suicide methods

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hulings1 (article contribs). This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ln168282 (article contribs). This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2019 and 16 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Edwarchng, Chung.esther (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Edwarchng, Chung.esther, Mdoherty44.

Suicide Helplines

See also: fr:Discussion:Moyen de suicide § Bandeau d'avertissement

I know that wikipedia believes that people have the right to search everything and I am for that. However, I think it would be best to at least show at the top a suicide prevention hotline warning. People who are searching for this may be conspiring to end their lives and we should do the best we can to stop that. 177.18.225.191 (talk) 16:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes please do this. I am in a dark place and this article is not helping. 172.92.9.6 (talk) 05:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This has been discussed countless times before and the consensus was to not display the hotline on the article itself. However, the talk page contains various resources. It has also shown that most people arrive here through a search engine, which will most likely already contain hotlines/resources. -- ChamithN (talk) 07:38, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]


If you feel you may physically harm yourself, or others: Click here for a list of crisis support resources. Kolya Butternut (talk) 18:09, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Edit Request to Suffocation section - Argon while inert is denser than air and therefore does not work with a suicide bag

I don't know where to put this - and the main article is protected from editing - so I will put it here and hope it helps.

(a) Argon is incorrectly listed as an inert gas that can be used with a suicide bag. It is necessary that the inert gas be less dense than air for the suicide bag to function to exclude air/oxygen and also flush away exhaled CO2. Argon is denser/heavier than air and does not work with a suicide bag. The bag fills from the top down from the flowing gas piped into the suicide bag. Then after filling the bag from the top, the ongoing excess inert gas flow spills out the partly open neck of the bag. This maintains an ongoing barrier to stop any room air / oxygen flowing into the open lower neck of the bag. It also flushes away out the open neck of the bag any exhaled CO2 which is also denser/heavier than air. This way the bag is continually kept full of the less dense inert gas, and free of CO2. This works with inert gases Helium and Nitrogen which are less dense than air. It does not work with inert gas Argon. Denser than air argon will just spill out the open neck of the bag and will not fill it from the top down and will not exclude room air/oxygen. The bag will actually continually allow in less dense fresh room air/oxygen as the denser argon flows down out the open neck of the bag. There are just 2 references that I have found describing an attempt with argon. As expected neither resulted in a fatality, in contrast to the very many demonstrated cases with Helium or nitrogen where one deep breath led to unconsciousness and death followed within approx 10 minutes.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352260222_Suicide_Attempt_by_Inhalation_of_Argon_Gas

Tincu, R.C.; Cobilinschi, C.; Tomescu, D.; Ghiorghiu, Z.; Macovei, R.A. (2016). Suicide attempt after argon gas inhalation – Case report. Toxicology Letters, 258(), S109–. doi:10.1016/j.toxlet.2016.06.1454

Argon is non toxic ( unlike eg butane or Carbon monoxide) so without almost complete exclusion of Oxygen, fatal suffocation will not result and it should not be mistakenly listed here with Helium and Nitrogen as inert gases used with a suicide bag for suffocation. Only less dense ( than air) inert gases work in this arrangement.


(b) method restrictions The low pressure/low flow helium cylinders originally used in this method were intended as disposable helium for party balloons. They are now all filled with only 80% helium and 20% air, so they cannot be used for suicide any more.

Regular high pressure helium cylinders cannot be used for this method as suitably low flow regulators and flowmeters are not available. Regular nitrogen/argon etc flowmeter controllers yield much too high minimum flow rates for helium and are not usable.

Given that gas suppliers are aware of the nitrogen / suicide bag method, it is now extremely difficult for private individuals to obtain a cylinder of nitrogen, for which there are few uses by a private individual without eg HVAC certification.

(c) Suffocation / hanging - edit request : A ligature does not simply block the oxygen carrying carotid arteries for blood flow to be interrupted. The ligature can be fatal without being so tight as to block the carotid arteries. 

- The use of a ligature first compresses the jugular veins and blocks blood flow from leaving the head, at a much lower force than that required to block the entry of fresh oxygenated blood through the deeper seated carotid arteries or the even much higher force required to occlude the airway.

This engorgement of blood in the head and blocking of blood drainage is the reason for the characteristic petechiae or burst blood vessels seen in such cases. The incoming blood is blocked because it cannot overcome the back-pressure caused by the blocked drainage veins. There is no way for the blood to get back out of the head once the veins are blocked. That is why the oxygenated blood flow input stops. The veins are blocked - then with higher force the arteries may be blocked, then with yet higher force the airway is completely blocked. 

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Riomhaire1 (talk • contribs) 17:49, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this suggestion. I have removed the word Argon from the article, and the unsourced and WP:CHALLENGEd claim about the carotid arteries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Finally someone that says what I’m looking for. I m not looking how not to kill my self lol!! I should be done today 100% 79.106.126.48 (talk) 02:59, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Edit Request - Poisoning - include Sodium nitrite, Nembutal and anti-emetics

The Peaceful Pill handbook has extensive discussion of use of Sodium nitrite for suicide, including the various necessary Prescription only anti-emetics. This is all publicly well known now, and as a result pure sodium nitrite is now very difficult to obtain by a private individual, though it is legal to import and possess because it is a standard food curing agent although normally used at only 6% concentration where it is no longer fatally toxic.

Another of the primary agents used is oral Nembutal / pheno-barbital -- both in the Peaceful pill handbook and in Swiss clinics. Discussion of prescription anti-emetics and the difficulty of sourcing or importing veterinary nembutal is discussed.

Neither of these "primary" poisons listed in the Peaceful Pill handbook and similar literature are even mentioned in the present wiki article - though they are widely known and counter measures are all already in place to protect the public. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Riomhaire1 (talk • contribs) 18:09, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that this article needs to go into a lot of specifics or name every possible substance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure it does -cspan02 (talk) 22:42, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello 2600:100A:B032:BFE4:6F2C:CAE0:9608:6FE4 (talk) 08:52, 2 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why is there no help line provided

There should be a help line provided at top of this Wikipedia site 2003:C6:3F2A:ED00:5D7A:A8F0:A38B:1E8A (talk) 02:41, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is a link at the top of this page, where it says "The Wikimedia Foundation's Trust and Safety team maintains a list of crisis support resources."
Additionally, it looks like 95% of people who arrive at this page are coming from web search engines, which means they have likely seen a message about their local crisis line(s) in the last few seconds. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:53, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
988 -beefbaby182 (talk) 22:12, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Typo on number of deaths

Under List > Pesticide, it says in US pesticides are used in about 12 suicides. Based on the cited source information, I believe 12 million was meant. 172.102.168.219 (talk) 03:19, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please elucidate. Suicide by pesticide is very rare in the US; it's far more common elsewhere. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 03:47, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There can't possibly be 12 million suicides by pesticide each year in the US; there are only 3.5 million deaths each year in the US, and only 0.05 million of them are any kind of suicide. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:16, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I just stumbled across this comment and I must say I’m baffled by the assertion that more people than the population of New York City are deliberately killing themselves with pesticides. Dronebogus (talk) 17:17, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not in the United States, no. "Pesticide ingestion is one of the most common methods of suicide worldwide. It is responsible for an estimated 14 million deaths since the Green Revolution in the 1960s, when pesticides became widely used in small-scale farming." The Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 18:31, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WP:WEIGHT, WP:BALANCE and general WP:NPOV issues

The article's primary topic is suicide methods, but there is too much unnecessary covering on prevention, which should be on the suicide prevention article instead. Also, there is no need to have a purpose of study section to "justify" the article; if there are enough reliable sources on the topic etc it already passes notability criteria. The "List" section should be at the top as well.. Yhyhyy (talk) 10:00, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Part of writing an encyclopedia article is to provide the reader with context for the article. I think that understanding why academics care about this particular niche helps people understand the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The way the article is written, including the lead section, is covering a topic that is not primary topic for Suicide Methods. It is covering wider aspects of suicide, and not suicide method per se. The "purpose of study" is NPOV, as it is biased towards prevention itself, little to do with suicide methods.
On the first paragraph on the lead section, only the first sentence describe suicide methods. And then, its third paragraph is again on suicide prevention. This article, as it is today (differently from years ago), clearly got censored (against WP:CENSOR) and biased towards suicide prevention (against WP:BALASP) instead of focusing describing the primary topic of the article, that is suicide methods, and NOT suicide prevention or suicidology. Yhyhyy (talk) 01:19, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I moved some content to improve the article to cover what is actually WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I would like to further reduce content on suicide prevention etc which is not topic of Suicide Methods, and move such content to their respective articles. Yhyhyy (talk) 01:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you think Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic is relevant? This is not a disambiguation page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:26, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We have to be cognisant that descriptions of suicide methods encourage suicide, and Wikipedia, while seeking to be an unbiased encyclopaedia, should not be encouraging what is usually a mental health problem. By couching discussion of suicide methods within a wider context, we are literally saving lives. A bias towards prevention is a good thing. Bondegezou (talk) 11:05, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Bondegezou: What are your sources, data and statistics on "descriptions of suicide methods encourage suicide"? On Derek Humphry's "Final Exit" 2020 edition page 13, it clearly states "Fortunately, only a tiny portion of Americans commit suicide - approximately 31,000 a year out of an annual death rate of 2,250,000. That statistic has not increased since the publication of this book,". "The Peaceful Pill Hankbook" by Dr Philip Nitschke and Dr Fiona Stewart also states "There has no rise in the suicide rate. Providing people with information does not incite or encourage people to die."Yhyhyy (talk) 00:24, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe either of the two books you cite would meet WP:MEDRS criteria for being reliable. Indeed, Final Exit, as a book that provides information on suicide methods, clearly has an interest in saying this is not a problem. No, we should consider what the academic literature says instead.
Florentine & Crane (2010, doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.01.029), a review article, wrote, "It is concluded that in appropriate contexts, where substitution is less likely to occur, and in conjunction with psychosocial prevention efforts, limitation of both physical and cognitive access to suicide can be an effective suicide prevention strategy." ("Cognitive access" here meaning "mainly with regard to the media in terms of providing access to technical information and sensational or inaccurate portrayals of suicide.)
Gunnell et al. (2012, doi:10.1016/j.jad.2012.04.015), a primary study, found, "Easy access to information about suicide methods and pro-suicide web sites on the Internet appears to contribute to a small but significant proportion of suicides."
Eriksen et al. (2020, doi:10.1027/0227-5910/a000701), a primary study, begins, "Information on methods of suicide is available online, and access to information on methods of suicide appears to contribute to a small but significant proportion of suicides." Bondegezou (talk) 11:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand, attempts to sustain ignorance are fundamentally disrespectful of human ingenuity, and counterproductive because they deny information to the majority of the population who are socially responsible and use such information to identify individuals at risk and take appropriate corrective actions. Thewellman (talk) 18:36, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think of this from a completely different angle: There have already been nine failed attempts to get this article deleted. Whether any given editor likes it or doesn't, we seem to be stuck with it. Therefore, we should write the most encyclopedic, policy-compliant article we can.
IMO that means, among other things, that it must not be written like a how-to guide, that it must provide context for the reader (e.g., why specific methods matter in the real world, how specific methods connect to suicide prevention), and that it must not express unencyclopedic viewpoints (e.g., by promoting any specific method as "best" or "good", by omitting ugly facts like pain and vomiting, or even by endorsing the idea of suicide).
(Also, the numbers that book are wrong. In 2020, about 46,000 Americans killed themselves.[1] Compared to 31,000, that's about a 50% increase, though there's no particular reason to blame the change on the book.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Bondegezou: Alright, I now notice the sources I gave are biased and hardly scientific, and after learning more about, I conclude that detailed descriptions of suicide can influence on people's behavior towards suicide, and thus shall be avoid. But I still think it is an issue that this article does not follow Wikipedia standards of encyclopedic article, against WP:NPOV (note that WP:NPOV "is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus") and WP:CENSOR. I edited the article to better suit those policies, but it was reverted without clarification on how this in agreement with NPOV. I believe suicide prevention on this article should be done differently, for example having a banner or similar warning users to seek professional support and hotlines in case of suicidal ideation Yhyhyy (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Neutral" is our wiki-jargon for an article that fairly and proportionately represents the viewpoints of high-quality sources. To give two made-up examples:
  • All the historians say X, and some political campaigns in one country say Y: The article is neutral when it says X. The article is non-neutral if it says X and Y.
  • Half the economists say A, and half the economists say B: The article is neutral when it says A and B. The article is non-neutral if it picks either side.
In what way do you think this article presents something different from what you would get if you read the medical literature?
If you're not familiar with the medical literature, then here are a couple of high-quality recent sources you could look at: PMID 34953923 and PMID 35977165. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
About the claim that "Providing people with information does not incite or encourage people to die": It's probably more complicated than that.
I read https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-30/dead-at-16 the other day, and it sounds like there are two competing things, both of which are simultaneously true: talking about suicide to a typical person does not prompt suicidal thoughts, but talking about specific deaths can sometimes trigger Suicide contagion, especially in already-vulnerable teens/young adults who have a small connection with the deceased. My overall takeaway from the article is that Postvention is hard (and our article on it needs a lot of work), but the smaller one is this: It is probably not true that you can provide just anybody with any information without anyone ever being harmed. It's probably safe to provide the information (as this article does, and IMO should) that the three most prevalent methods are hanging, pesticides, and firearms, but it may not be safe to say to just anyone "Hey, you remember that girl in your English class last year? Well, let me tell you all the details about her death..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Edit Request

The original:

A drug overdose involves taking a dose of a drug that exceeds safe levels. In the UK (England and Wales) until 2013, a drug overdose was the most common suicide method in females. In 2019 in males the percentage is 16%. Self-poisoning accounts for the highest number of non-fatal suicide attempts. In the United States about 60% of suicide attempts and 14% of suicide deaths involve drug overdoses. The risk of death in suicide attempts involving overdose is about 2%.[verification needed]


Edit: A drug overdose involves taking a dosage of a drug or drugs that exceeds safe levels. In the UK, in 2013, drug overdose was the most common suicide method among women. For men, as of 2019, the rate was 16%. In the United States, about 60% of suicide attempts and 14% of suicide deaths involve drug overdoses. Self-poisoning accounts for the highest number of non-fatal suicide attempts. The risk of death in an overdose related suicide attempt is around 2%.[verification needed]

There are a number of grammatical issues in the current edit. Dstryker120 (talk) 23:50, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about this. I understand that dose, in its more technical use, is only how much of a drug ("500 mg"), and dosage includes how often it is given ("500 mg twice a day for two weeks"). See https://www.goodrx.com/drugs/medication-basics/pharmacy-medical-glossary#d
If memory serves, the UK source doesn't include Scotland or Northern Ireland. If my memory is correct, then we might need to mention that. It'd be better to find a more up to date source, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion notice

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) regarding the use of suicide crisis telephone numbers. The thread is Suicide hotlines.  Thank you. TheSpacebook (talk) 21:00, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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