Jolyon Maugham is recklessly (at best) “warning” of a flood of suicides (more threatening than warning), and the trouble with doing that is…

I’ll just quote the rest of what Jen says, to spare you the twittering.

There is a very clear link between coverage of suicides in the media and people ending their own life. Research showed an estimated 400-500 additional deaths by suicide in the aftermath of Marilyn Monroe’s death. That may not sound like much but it’s half the people at Jonestown.

Most of those copycatted her method. Any mention of suicide method leads to an upswing in attempts and successes using that method. From my own experience for a year after a very well publicised event of the death of 2 teenagers we were still getting people talking of that method (which was unusual) as being their preferred method. And a family member sadly took his life using a method publicised by a columnist in the week before his death. These effects are real and it’s real people and families who suffer as a result.

If you think ‘oh they would have done that anyway’ no they would not. Prevention works because people dont get a fixed idea in their head and go through with it no matter what. We know that from decades of studies which show that rates fall when access to methods [is] removed.

So why did his tweet make me so angry? Because it assumes people will take their lives. It even gives them a reason to take their life, as a means of pressuring the govt which means in the context of what I’ve said I see him as encouraging suicide. He’s doing it for a cynical reason because he wants to use their deaths to force the government to do what he thinks is right, and ignore the scientific evidence. He has spoken much about supposed additional deaths as a result of changes in policy but by this tweet, in the terms he wrote, he shows us he does not actually care about those people dying. They are nothing more than yet another manipulation tool to get his own way but this time his attempt to manipulate could see vulnerable people dying needlessly. But should the worst happen he’ll use their deaths and blame others for them.

It’s truly grim.