Help For a Suicide Hotline July 27, 2006 zuzu Shakespeare’s Sister has some links about George Bush’s defunding of the highly effective 1-800-SUICIDE.
jere said: What makes you think the federal gov’t is responsible for funding suicide hotlines? Because it’s nice to have a national resource for people who need help and don’t know where to turn instead of hoping individual states will decide to provide it?
Must be they’re hoping it’ll get replaced by a bunch of community-based (translation: Christian…and proselytizing!) volunteer groups. Or, they’re hoping that government group can listen in and start a pariah list. You know sooner or later that’s coming.
It’s a cheap program, jere, that saves a lot of lives and improves quality of life for people in this country. There would be plenty of money for it if it weren’t being used to put projectiles into people or money in a small group of pockets. You could argue that it’s not the federal government’s job to improve quality of life, sure. But when the program already exists, it’s known to be highly effective, and it cost the government a pittance, it’s just rubbing salt in the wounds of defunding everything else from public broadcasting to college funds to also say, well, hey, those suicidal folks can go take a flying leap, y’know?
He has more important things to do with our money than save people’s live here, like taking other people’s lives over there.
I’m new to the site, as in just found it today. 1800suicide saved my life. No question about it. I was way messed up on booze and painkillers sitting with a shotgun in my lap. I dialed the number out of what could only be called gallows humor. I mean… 1800suicide…It just seemed a little too convenient. I didn’t even think it would connect to anyone. If it hadn’t, if there hadn’t been someone to talk me back into reality… They didn’t try to solve my problems, they just told me not to shoot myself. They didn’t call an ambulance and further complicate my life, they just told me not to shoot myself. Really calmly, for an hour. I really can’t believe that a national suicide hotline would be concidered a bad idea, an unecessary idea… If the federal govt. isn’t responsible for funding things that concretely improve the lives of all citizens at no detriment to others (I assure you that what I bring to the economy will greatly outweigh the cost of my phone call throughout my life) then the responsibilites of the federal govt. should be expanded. A govt. that prevents death seems like an oxymoron and that makes me wonder why we bother having them at all.