This picture tweeted by The Academy (Oscars) about Robin Williams is beyond poignant:

[Are_grits_groceries]

Sigh........just sigh........

[a kennedy]

1. another movie I loved.......he was just exceptional in this.

Still can't believe I'm still crying 12 hours later.....

[malaise]

2. Genius

you're free

[FBaggins]

3. That's nice at first, but I don't think I like it.

What message does it send to others suffering from depression?

[Shivering Jemmy]

5. I've suffered from depression and been suicidal

I get it.

[Hosnon]

8. I don't have personal experience with depression but perhaps for those

who struggle with it their entire lives with thoughts of suicide, death does represent some degree of relief from that struggle.

[FBaggins]

12. And that was my point

We don't tell otherwise healthy people who are considering killing themselves that suicide takes care of their problems.

[Hosnon]

13. And that wasn't my point.

Suicide isn't a solution, but death does end suffering (for all of us).

[FBaggins]

14. To a depressed & suicidal person "end suffering" and "solution" are often the same thing. n/t

[Hosnon]

15. Look, I didn't claim to have personal knowledge of depression. But the sentiment makes sense to me.

My grandmother died of bone cancer. It's a horribly painful thing to die from and my entire family was relieved when she finally passed (she asked my grandfather to kill her while in the hospital).

I don't think anyone, including the Academy or myself, is claiming that suicide is the solution to depression or any other disease. It's a simple recognition that his suffering has ended. And when someone you love dies, there can be solace in that.

[Skittles]

41. you are spot on, Hosnon

well said

[HangOnKids]

19. You are being obtuse

From your prior postings I have to conclude it is deliberate and it has NO place here.

[NM_Birder]

30. Why are you trolling this thread, just to wave your finger at people ?

[HangOnKids]

46. With 4 hides in 90 days I would think you might want to stop being the board nanny

[fascisthunter]

51. Good catch

Hi

[NM_Birder]

55. I'm flattered you are so interested in me,

my posts were hidden because I dared to make fun of the US dollar and Chloe Kardashian.
An over sensitive member though I was making fun of Autistic kids. Trolling and nit picking is a sport to some, and the jury thing is hit or miss fair in my opinion.

So, trying to keep you on track. Why are you trolling around waving your finger ?

[NM_Birder]

57. HOLY MARSH MELLOWS BATMAN !

I misspelled another word in my post did you guys catch that one too ?

[NM_Birder]

17. I understand what you mean,

it feels warm and comforting that his suffering is over, .....at the same time eluding to "the final decision" being "for the best".

everyday people don't get remembered and immortalized like famous people, they just end up dead, and their families have only each other to cope.

[HangOnKids]

20. That would be alluding not eluding

Nobody said it was for the best, nor did they allude to it.

[NM_Birder]

23. The irony in your post just made my day, thanks !

gold star for "you're" ability....LOL !

[HangOnKids]

24. Sorry no you're in my post

Or your. Might want to pick up YOUR reading glasses.

[NM_Birder]

29. lol ... that was terribly written.

I expressed my opinion on how the cartoon made me feel, like it was eluding .... to suicide being the final decision, that could set you free. I expressed my opinion and so it is never wrong, where did your reading glasses tell you I said some else said anyhting ? Unfortunately, you're not cutting a new trail by discovering my propensity to misspell words, I've done it before, and I'll do it again.

As impressive as your grammar and communication skills are to you, I'll need more convincing. In a thread about a man killing himself, you express yourself by nit picking a grammar argument, and poorly at that.

take care.

[HangOnKids]

45. Allude means to hint at, suggest

Elude means to avoid danger or escape from it. Got it? Good. This was not a spelling error, it was using the incorrect word. In a thread about a man who killed himself I would think you might choose your words more carefully.

[NM_Birder]

56. LOL, you're spelling lesson is doing the trick,

can you tell I'm impressed yet ?

[HangOnKids]

25. Please keep going Birder

Tick Tock! Have a blessed day!

[NM_Birder]

33. I'm not a religious man,

but I appreciate the sentiment, thanks.

[jeff47]

28. People suffering from depression are not morons.

People who suffer from depression are extremely aware of what suicide is, and what it will do to them and those around them.

Your concerns are similar to complaining that pointing out air has oxygen will make people want to breathe. The impulse was already present before you pointed it out.

[FBaggins]

34. It isn't an issue of intelligence

People who are depressed and suicidal most certainly aren't lacking in intelligence... but they are suffering from a serious illness that impacts their ability to correctly weigh things like "what it will do to them and those around them"

Using the wording of the DSM-IV, they have - "difficulty thinking, concentrating or troubles making decisions."

[jeff47]

36. Then don't treat them like morons.

Your post implies that they were just trudging along, but then they heard about suicide. Thanks to this picture, they now know how to make everything all better!

If someone was bleeding, would you insist on protecting them from images of cuts and scrapes? Would letting them see a wound cause them to bleed more? Of course not.

It's the same with depression. Finding out other people suffer too doesn't make them worse.

[FBaggins]

37. Did you even read what you replied to?

It doesn't appear so.

I'm not treating them like morons. I'm treating like people with an illness who are considering self-treating that illness - when they should instead seek medical assistance from a professional. Which is exactly what they are.

Finding out other people suffer too doesn't make them worse.

This image isn't showing them that other people suffer (not being "morons"... they already know this). It tells them that the rest of society thinks this guy's self-treatment fixed his problem... that it is in some way acceptable.

If someone was bleeding, would you insist on protecting them from images of cuts and scrapes?

Nope... but if their injury required an emergency room and they were thinking of "toughing it out" and stitching it up themselves, I wouldn't want to show them images that implied that "real men deal with these things themselves".

Like I implied in the first post. I "get" the image. I'll miss so much of who he was and think the world is a darker place for his loss... but at least he isn't suffering any longer (existential/theological/"What Dreams May Come" considerations aside). Not being depressed or suicidal, I "get" that. But I do have relatives and friends who have suffered from severe depression and suicidal thoughts... and more than one is no longer with us because of it. In far too many cases, they thought that this solves their problem and those of the people who suffer because of them.

They often think that they're being self-sacrificial easing the troubled of those they love... that the world is better off without them.

[jeff47]

39. Yes. The problem is you are building a mental framework that is outside your experiences.

But I do have relatives and friends who have suffered from severe depression and suicidal thoughts... and more than one is no longer with us because of it. In far too many cases, they thought that this solves their problem and those of the people who suffer because of them.

Utterly wrong. They thought it stopped their pain. It's not a solution, it's a way for the hurt to stop.

And they are not so stupid that suicide does not occur to them unless they see a picture like the OP. I can assure you that people with clinical depression are extremely aware that suicide is an option. Long before you were aware that they were depressed.

They often think that they're being self-sacrificial easing the troubled of those they love... that the world is better off without them.

No, there isn't anything positive involved, such as self-sacrifice.

You're coming to this situation as someone who is not depressessed, attempting to create a mental framework from your guesses and what you think people with depression are feeling.

The problem is your model is very wrong. It has massive holes where you completely miss major factors in depression, such as extreme self-loathing. Or the utterly artificial construct of a person that they show to everyone.

You are then taking your model and attempting to say "if I felt like this, how would I react to that picture?". Adding another level of indirection and error on top of what is already there. And then you assert that these problems would not occur without something like that picture.

What you're doing is similar to a man saying "feminists think this". Or a suburban white person saying "inner-city blacks think this". You can't successfully build a mental framework that simulates what they are experiencing, because their reality is radically different from your experiences.

Someone with depression looks at that picture, and sees that the people have worth. They have skills. They also are loved and valued. And the hug would be utterly wonderful because it is gushing with worth, acceptance and unconditional love. It's "I'll be there with you, even when we are walking through the depths of hell." It's a hug of two people's genuine personalities.

That picture is what every depressed person desperately wants, and thinks they can not get.

[MADem]

53. And what you're doing is trying to speak for every person who ever suffered from depression.

No one elected you the spokesman. Your experience is YOUR experience--it's not everyone's.

You are assuming authority you just do not possess.

Just because I own a pair of Nikes, that doesn't qualify me to star in the basketball commercial.

[jeff47]

58. So got hidden when you were being stupid in another thread

and started stalking? Lovely.

You have no understanding of what depression is. Just like you have no understanding of what it's really like to live in Libya at the moment. Or to be a small, elderly Jewish woman. Or anything else radically different from your own experience.

Your options are to listen to the people who have lived it, or to insist that you know their reality better than they do.

For some reason, you've chosen the latter.

[Hissyspit]

49. Suicide contagion and social media: The dangers of sharing ‘Genie, you’re free’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/08/12/suicide-contagion-and-social-media-the-dangers-of-sharing-genie-youre-free

The Intersect
Suicide contagion and social media: The dangers of sharing ‘Genie, you’re free’

By Caitlin Dewey August 12 at 1:09 PM

On Monday night, as fans around the world began to grieve Robin Williams’s death, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — best known, in many circles, as the people behind the Oscars — sent out what may be the iconic social media image of Williams’s death.

More than 270,000 people have shared the tweet, which means that, per the analytics site Topsy, as many as 69 million people have seen it.

The problem? It violates well-established public health standards for how we talk about suicide.

“If it doesn’t cross the line, it comes very, very close to it,” said Christine Moutier, chief medical officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. “Suicide should never be presented as an option. That’s a formula for potential contagion.”

Moutier is referring to a well-documented phenomenon, better-known as “copycat suicide,” in which media coverage or publicity around one death encourages other vulnerable people to commit suicide in the same way. Adolescents are most at risk of suicide contagion; in recent years, groups like AFSP have also become particularly attentive to the role the Internet plays in romanticizing notorious or high-profile deaths, something it has long asked both the news and entertainment industries to avoid.

“The potential for online reports, photos/videos and stories to go viral makes it vital that online coverage of suicide follow site or industry safety recommendations,” one media guide reads.

MORE

[MADem]

54. Good article.

But in the hours since @TheAcademy’s tweet went viral, professionals like Moutier have become concerned that it doesn’t, in fact, follow established safety recommendations. The starry sky from Disney’s Aladdin, and the written implication that suicide is somehow a liberating option, presents suicide in too celebratory a light, Moutier said.

There's absolutely nothing "celebratory" about suicide and I'm glad this writer has put the point forward.

All that's left is pain and misery for the family and friends left behind.

[jeff47]

59. FBaggins isn't the only one who thinks depressed people are morons.

It's actually quite common, even from people you'd think would know better. Largely because clinical depression is so outside most people's experience that they make mistakes when they create a mental framework of what they think clinical depression is like.

Yes, famous or spectacular suicides can cause copycats. But it isn't depression that is causing that copycat. We're talking about people who fundamentally believe they are not worthy. Of anything. To copycat, you have to believe you are worthy. You too can be just like (famous person).

While depression is always a factor in suicide - happy people don't kill themselves - it isn't the only thing going on in the heads of all suicidal people.

[FBaggins]

61. I think we'll take the meical professionals word over your own.

Your experience does not inform you on every other person who ever suffered from depression. When it conflicts with what multiple other people within that experience tell me and what the professionals who deal with thousands of such cases tell me... I think I'm safe ignoring what an unnecessarily abrasive internet poster claims he knows about the subject. Particularly when he so often resorts to strawmen.

[jeff47]

62. The medical professionals are talking about a different swath of people

The point is there's nuance you're missing in what the professionals are talking about. As a result, you're talking about a different set of people than they are.

Copycat suicide is a much larger problem in people with mania or bipolar disorder than for "classic" depression.

[FBaggins]

63. As if that makes your claims any more valid.

Hint... it doesn't.

So you're saying that it's perfectly ok for me to be concerned with the use of the image... so long as I was talking about different forms of depression than you meant? Maybe manic depressives are "morons"... but not your flavor of depression?

That's ridiculous... and I can only suggest that you delete your prior posts on the matter.

Here are some more people who you seem to think don't get it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/13/robin-williams-genie-free_n_5674076.html

But mental health experts have warned that the image, when coupled with the caption, has some sinister undertones - a glorification of suicide as "freeing" an individual from pain and suffering, and a solution to problems. The Samaritan's guidelines for media on reporting suicide advise against anything that might "suggest that people are honouring the suicidal behaviour, rather than mourning a death".

...snip...

"It's not a helpful picture to share," Jane Powell, director of CALM which works on male suicide prevention, told The Huffington Post UK. "It's obviously been done very innocently, but the message is 'wouldn't you like to be free too?'

...snip...

Mark Winstanley, the chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness said he understood why people may want to share comforting images with "good intentions" when they are in mourning for a much-loved public figure, but said that the clip could "suggest suicide is a good ‘way out’, or an answer to your problems".

...snip...

Danny Baker, a mental health campaigner who started the Depression is Not Destiny project, said that the image glorified the act of suicide. "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but the message here is not the one we should be pushing, which is - you can get help. This portrays it as a 'release'."

...snip...

“The reason why many international organisations have developed media reporting guidelines on suicide is because there is clear evidence that insensitive, over-simplified, melodramatic and overly sensationalised reporting is associated with increased risk of suicide in others, in particular among people who are already vulnerable,” said Professor Rory O'Connor, of the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory at the University of Glasgow.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00031539.htm

[jeff47]

64. No, what I'm trying to get you to do is understand what depression really is

Because if you don't understand what it's actually like, you won't be nearly as good at helping with it. And if you have the misfortune of stumbling into it yourself, understanding it can greatly shorten how long you suffer.

And quoting additional experts doesn't change that those experts are still talking about different people than we are talking about.

Instead of searching for experts to try and "win", try understanding instead. Chances are at least one of your friends or family are suffering from clinical depression, and you could be an enormous help to them. But only if you understand what they are actually going through instead of the caricature you currently have. Thinking they would kill themselves because a still from a cartoon can possibly be twisted into encouraging suicide isn't going to help them. Neither are common platitudes like "you are not alone" - depressed people think they should be alone because they think they are worthless.

[FBaggins]

65. You mean "certain kinds of depression"... right?

Because obviously the people who do understand what depression really is all seem to agree with me.

And quoting additional experts doesn't change that those experts are still talking about different people than we are talking about.

Nope. That's just your current spin avoid admitting the error. Nowhere in my posts here did I restrict my comments to specific types of depression.

Instead of searching for experts to try and "win", try understanding instead.

I think the better plan is for you to stop pretending that you understand and speak for all depressed people... or all of a particular flavor of depressed people. You speak only for yourself. If you're no more likely to take your life because of the image... great. I'm happy. But that doesn't change the fact that it was innapropriate for the Academy to post it.

What I said... and what the experts apparently all agree on... is that the use of that image is innapropriate because it increases the liklihood of additional suicides. You decided that was calling depressed people morons (and now it's aparenly only some depressed people who aren't morons).

Chances are at least one of your friends or family are suffering from clinical depression, and you could be an enormous help to them.

As I stated earlier... this isn't "chances are". I have more than one relative and a handful of friends who have struggled with this beast over the years... including losing that struggle. I've spoken to them and their doctors at some length. It isn't a coincidence that my take on this matches that of the experts. You were perfectly willin to call them liars and tell me that that wasn't really what they were thinking.

Do you realize how far off base you've been in this thread? You really should delete your posts. I'd be happy to delete mine if you really think this is about "winning" for me.

[jeff47]

66. No, I'm talking about the medical condition.

When you're talking about depression as a medical condition, there's a particular set of things going on in their brain. That is different than people who are "depressed" in our common usage of the term. Our common usage of the term is not very close to the disease.

Other conditions have their own names. For example, bipolar disorder isn't depression, even though someone with bipolar disorder has periods where they are depressed. Btw, your concerns about the pic/statement do apply to someone with bipolar disorder. But they need much different care than someone with depression.

Nowhere in my posts here did I restrict my comments to specific types of depression.

That's because your error is "types of depression".

What I said... and what the experts apparently all agree on... is that the use of that image is innapropriate because it increases the liklihood of additional suicides. You decided that was calling depressed people morons (and now it's aparenly only some depressed people who aren't morons).

And winning is far more important to you than understanding.

[fascisthunter]

50. I Suffer from Clinical Depression

And I have no problem with it... why do you?

[FBaggins]

60. Do you also suffer from dysgraphia?

Because I covered that at some length in the other comments.

If you read post 49 you'll see that I'm hardly alone.

[tblue]

4. I've never been sadder over a celebrity's death.

This one really hurts and it seems to have struck a universal chord.

That's a beautiful pic and caption. Wish we had a genie to bring him back. Thanks for sharing. That's exactly the kind of hug I wish I could give him.

[snappyturtle]

6. Me too. nt

[DanTex]

21. Yes I am sad about this. Also was sad about Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

[catbyte]

7. This hit me really hard too and I don't even know why. I didn't particularly like his manic style,

it was a little too jarring to me, but I did appreciate the genius and talent behind it. Just like I don't like Led Zeppelin because they're too screechy, but I appreciate the talent. He always struck me as incredibly sad when I would watch him in interviews. He'd never answer a question about himself, instead he'd revert to some character. That told me he didn't allow anyone in. I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say here. I'm also so sad that he felt so desperate that he took that way out, just like I'm sad when I hear about anyone who is in the grips of that much despair that they do this. I wish this country had more compassion for mental illness, well, I wish this country had more compassion period.

[daleanime]

11. I agree with too much...

for a simple +1.







Although I always liked him in anything he did, never saw a note out of place in any performance.

[woo me with science]

16. "I wish this country had more compassion, period."

Amen.

[Enrique]

26. same here

except i like Led Zeppelin

[Hosnon]

9. The 10 year old boy in me is absolutely devastated.

Genies can't die.

[Jefferson23]

10. ...

[polmaven]

18. Mork has returned to Ork!

We will miss you, Mork!!

[libodem]

22. That flat made me cry

Dang it.

[hifiguy]

27. Wonderful pic.

No one ever made me laugh more than Robin Williams.

[samsingh]

31. that's very powerful and brings tears to my eyes

[JNelson6563]

32. Damn. Ya got me.

*sniff*. *hug*

Julie

[ChazII]

35. One of the best tributes to Robin Williams so far. n/t

[LittleBlue]

38. That one hits home

Shit. Powerful childhood memories in that photo.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

40. I decided to see what the Dark Side was saying....

They claim Robin Williams is in HELL not just for committing suicide but for playing a genie which is a DEMON in mythology and also for promoting Aladdin who was an Arab and therefore a TERRORIST.

I swear,...must itch like crazy to have all of those bugs running around in their skulls.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

42. You bet, Spitfire

and those are the kinds of bugs you can't reach to scratch.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

47. Especially with their heads up their asses.

[Uncle Joe]

43. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, grits.

[niyad]

44. k and r, with tears.

[Fearless]

48. .

[MADem]

52. Free of the crushing debt and bills he couldn't pay, at any rate.

That played a part in his demise--he was overburdened by expenditures and he was frantic because his series had been cancelled. He'd been trying to sell his Napa house (at a loss) for two years.

Maybe some of his rich pals at the Academy might have offered him some decent work...