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Fuzakenaideyo t1_j1zok9i wrote

Reply to comment by _--00--_ in Anti-transgender legislation associated with suicide-related Internet searches when the state had a high LGBT population density. by Respawan

When I was in my 20s i certainly googled it & the safest least painful ways to do it.

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QncyFie t1_j275djc wrote

Yeah it's soothing like that. Just that

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_--00--_ t1_j1zq9nk wrote

Yeah. I'm not saying suicidal people don't. I'm saying, it's not an indicator of how many people are suicidal or depressed.

2 of us were suicidal. 1 googled it. 1 didn't. No indication of anything

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ritchie70 t1_j1zt99a wrote

If you accept that 50% consistently Google then Google searches are a good relative indicator of suicidal inclination in the population and can be used to compare states over time.

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PM-me-your-moogles t1_j1zt64r wrote

How many mentally well people are googling suicide and suicide methods though?

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Trichotillomaniac- t1_j21rgxx wrote

I would assume an equal amount of (mentally well) people regardless of the transgender legislation in their area. Thus its a reasonable assumption higher search rates indicate more interest in suicide for transgender people.

But even if it is more mentally well people who cares? Isnt less total suicide searches ideal? Or os there actually a case for suicide searches being mentally healthy? I doubt that. Less suicide searches seems more better in my opinion. +lgbt laws reduce depression, i dont need anymore than that.

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PM-me-your-moogles t1_j21ukw9 wrote

I mean...I agree. I have a LGBT child who has mental illness.

I was responding to someone who seemed to want to wave away the statistics and data.

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_--00--_ t1_j2052gv wrote

Probably less than suicidal people. But that depends if the word just needed to be in the search. Like if I search for suicide squad, does that count?

To answer your question, neither of us know. But I assume we'd both agree mentally well people goole those words less in general

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PM-me-your-moogles t1_j21h4pi wrote

The way I see the data, is let's say if you Google suicide squad, when suicide squad is released in theaters, they would say "When Suicide Squad comes out, the searches for suicide go up." Well we can correlate that to the movie and assume that uptick is NOT from suicidal people.

I imagine the average google searches per day for "suicide squad, etc", factor into the average searches per day even long after the movie is out.

So if anti-lgbt legislature hits the news, and the searches for suicide go up...we can safely assume that uptick is not from people searching up movie titles more...but probably from the LGBT community which already has higher suicide rates in general because of social stigma. So...law/bill that hurts LGBT people goes out, searches for suicide go up... It's pretty point a to point b.

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[deleted] t1_j21s8ap wrote

[deleted]

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ZSpectre t1_j220of7 wrote

Eh, they were just using a hypothetical example to demonstrate how we interpret data based on context in general. Nitpicking how the hypothetical example doesn't fit the validity of the population kind of misses their point since that wasn't what they were trying to explain.

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GodBlessThisGhetto t1_j22dyvr wrote

This is what gets me about these “citizen scientist” types. Don’t you think the scientists carefully crafting a rigorous analysis that needs to pass extensive peer review know enough to make sure that “Suicide Squad” isn’t captured by what they’re searching for?

How do you think that the experts are dumb enough to miss an exceedingly obvious confound instead of correcting for it or at least being aware of it? It’s like the anti-climate change people looking at a paper and going “did they account for volcanic activity” as if that’s some huge missing link that was likely overlooked.

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_--00--_ t1_j23qqso wrote

Did you read about the study?

I'm not a scientist. I'm no expert. I also don't know if this was peer reviewed. I didn't read it was. But from what I read, yes they used the word suicide and depression for these numbers. And used them against searches for weather per region. So no, they did not account for search context.

This research seems lazy. I already know more gays and trans are suicidal under laws that are against them. But this study was fuckign stupid and poorly done.

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