Bro­ken Angels: Music video

The impact of music on emotion

I am sub­mit­ting my pro­posal for my final project soon. I have decided to cre­ate a music video illus­trat­ing the warn­ing signs of sui­cide. I will be work­ing with Laramie local, Brit­tany Wells. Brit­tany is a very tal­ented singer/songwriter and I am happy to be able to work with her. For the video Brit­tany will be per­form­ing an orig­i­nal piece.

My rea­son­ing for cre­at­ing a video is grounded in every sound­track to every movie I have ever seen. Movie sound­tracks are amaz­ing. Music has a pow­er­ful effect on the mind. … Con­tinue Reading

Mak­ing a choice

When some­one com­mits sui­cide we call them a vic­tim. Why? They clearly made the choice to end their own life. Wether under the duress of an ill­ness or life chang­ing event they made a choice. Using the term “vic­tim” implies that there is no per­sonal choice involved.

Every­day every one of you make hun­dreds of deci­sions. What to wear, which way to drive to work or school, whether to get out of bed… etc. Each choice has a con­se­quence. Regard­less of how big or small the con­se­quence is it is there none the less. Some con­se­quences have a greater impact than oth­ers, if you choose to not go to work, you will not get paid, if you choose to speed you will get a speed­ing cita­tion from the police. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less. … Con­tinue Reading

“Good” cov­er­age of a suicide

The AFSP has a copy of a New York Times Arti­cle on their web­site. The arti­cle in ques­tion Talks about a senior exec­u­tive who killed him­self. The arti­cle treats this exec­u­tives act of sui­cide as a ben­e­fi­cial thing, rais­ing sui­cide aware­ness in the com­mu­nity. I under­stand that the AFSP is a bit biased in its opin­ion but the arti­cle does have merit.

The opin­ions of the AFSP not with­stand­ing, “good cov­er­age” of a sui­cide should be respect­ful to both the indi­vid­u­als griev­ing and the need to serve the greater pub­lic good. Not all sui­cides are news­wor­thy, but the ones that are affect a far greater num­ber of peo­ple than those who are clos­est to the sui­cide vic­tim. (I use the term “vic­tim” loosely, but more on that later). The reporter should ask the tough ques­tions such as, why did they kill them­selves and did you see it coming.

It is only through group analy­sis and pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion can we as a com­mu­nity begin to more deeply under­stand suicide.

Sui­cide cov­er­age in the media

Sui­cide in and of itself is not news. Cov­er­ing a sui­cide is a tricky thing to accom­plish. Griev­ing relative’s and friends may or may not con­sent to being inter­viewed, pho­tog­ra­phers have to bal­ance the need for dis­cre­tion with the need to be in the mid­dle of things to be able to tell the story properly.

The Amer­i­can Foun­da­tion for Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion, or AFSP, is a non-profit organaza­tion ded­i­cated to under­stand­ing and pre­vent­ing sui­cide through research, edu­ca­tion and advocacy.

As it turns out, the AFSP is a great resource for the media for infor­ma­tion about the warn­ing signs and real life exam­ples of good and bad sui­cide cov­er­age. Some of the exam­ples listed are from such ven­er­a­ble sources as; The New York Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and USA Today. Cov­er­ing an emo­tional story is a dif­fi­cult task. Reporters and edi­tors are often forced to make quick deci­sions at the last minute in order to beat their com­peti­tors to pub­li­ca­tion. The only true rem­edy to bad report­ing is expe­ri­ence. … Con­tinue Reading

Sui­cide infor­ma­tion from the CDC

Con­tin­u­ing on with our dis­cus­sion of sui­cide and sui­cide pre­ven­tion we will visit the The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol, (CDC) web­site. The CDC web­site is packed with infor­ma­tion about sui­cide and sui­cide pre­ven­tion. The CDC takes a mul­ti­modal approach and offers text, images and audio files. All of the offered resources are effi­ciently orga­nized on the page to max­i­mize ease of access and read­abil­ity. The infor­ma­tion is pre­sented as a series of links orga­nized into dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories such as, sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion, gen­eral infor­ma­tion, whats new and fea­tured resources. Over­all it is a very user friendly site cater­ing to both data seek­ers and poten­tial can­di­dates for suicide.

Sui­cide as an ongo­ing topic

I am work­ing on project explor­ing sui­cide and the right to die. My road map for this project is an edi­to­r­ial I wrote detail­ing my sup­port for the legal­iza­tion of sui­cide. The basis of my argu­ment is to put a sys­tem in place to make it socially accept­able com­mit sui­cide. The results of this social nor­mal­iza­tion of sui­cide would be less sui­cides over­all.  I believe if it were socially accept­able to com­mit sui­cide then more peo­ple would seek help. Until that far off day arrives we must be vig­i­lant for the signs and symp­toms of impend­ing suicides.

The first rea­son­able site I encoun­tered on my quest to find the signs and symp­toms of sui­cide was www.suicide.org. The design aes­thetic of suicide.org is min­i­mal­is­tic and painful to look at. The site does con­tain some good infor­ma­tion though. Clearly the designer has not dis­cov­ered Mike Run­dles “How CRAP is your site design” arti­cle. Find­ing tele­phone num­bers for sui­cide pre­ven­tion cen­ters requires you to scroll past the site cre­ators impas­sioned plea to not com­mit sui­cide and first dial 911. … Con­tinue Reading

Sui­cide for Dummies

Sui­cide is the answer. Go ahead, what are you wait­ing for? Nobody loves you, you’re all alone and don’t for­get, It’s cold out­side. There is one catch to keep in mind while attempt­ing to escape the mor­tal world, if you fail you go straight to jail (after being dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal of course).

Of all the per­sonal free­doms that we have in this coun­try, sui­cide is not one of them. Chris­t­ian morals have shaped every­thing in our lives, from the words printed on our money to our right of self-elimination. The bible says sui­cide is wrong; so by God we made laws against it. Legally you can com­mit sui­cide if you sac­ri­fice your own life to save some­one else’s. While self-sacrifice is legal and tech­ni­cally eth­i­cal, it is not prac­ti­cal because the oppor­tu­ni­ties are gen­er­ally unpre­dictable and scarce. … Con­tinue Reading