Some situations are indeed intractable. That's why, for the physical ones, we have things like palliative care. I don't know what can be for psychological issues.
However, had you read the article, you would have noticed this short snippet:
> Dr. Seiden’s study, “Where Are They Now?,” published in 1978, followed up on five hundred and fifteen people who were prevented from attempting suicide at the bridge between 1937 and 1971. After, on average, more than twenty-six years, ninety-four per cent of the would-be suicides were either still alive or had died of natural causes. “The findings confirm previous observations that suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature,” Seiden concluded; if you can get a suicidal person through his crisis—Seiden put the high-risk period at ninety days—chances are extremely good that he won’t kill himself later.
The question then becomes "What about those remaining 6%?"
Well, I don't know. Did they go through another, different crisis? Where they appropriately helped and supported following their first attempt?
And if nothing could actually be done for them, then we end up with the traditional trolley cart dilemma. 94% lives worth living saved vs 6% miserables lives.
Oh, I have seen that clip so many, many times. It's just about the first thing trotted out. I need not read that paragraph yet one more time, life is too long.
It ignores things like, "What number of those ninety-four just continued to be miserable?" They didn't kill themselves, but it doesn't mean that they were not still suffering. It might well mean that they were bludgeoned with the "just think of how devastating it will be for your family" bit until they submitted to a life of quiet desperation. It's not a measure of life being worth living at all.
Ask, rather than tell. We spend a tremendous amount of time telling, even yelling, over people who may say things we do not wish to hear. Rote responses appear on our lips and it is no coincidence that those responses are ideal for getting people out of our way, leaving them to puzzle over unanswerable questions like "How do you know it won't get better?" Nobody truly knows that, but would you bet on it? Bet on it enough to suffer consequences? We do not ask that, we say, "a permanent solution to a temporary problem."
The entire concept is surrounded by an interlocking complex of memes that very neatly steer us away from grappling with a thorny subject: the true suffering of others. That must be dismantled before we can begin to start gathering data.
However, had you read the article, you would have noticed this short snippet:
> Dr. Seiden’s study, “Where Are They Now?,” published in 1978, followed up on five hundred and fifteen people who were prevented from attempting suicide at the bridge between 1937 and 1971. After, on average, more than twenty-six years, ninety-four per cent of the would-be suicides were either still alive or had died of natural causes. “The findings confirm previous observations that suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature,” Seiden concluded; if you can get a suicidal person through his crisis—Seiden put the high-risk period at ninety days—chances are extremely good that he won’t kill himself later.
The question then becomes "What about those remaining 6%?"
Well, I don't know. Did they go through another, different crisis? Where they appropriately helped and supported following their first attempt?
And if nothing could actually be done for them, then we end up with the traditional trolley cart dilemma. 94% lives worth living saved vs 6% miserables lives.