It is time the community changed its views on suicide and started labelling it “unacceptable”, a leading mental health campaigner says.  Executive director of the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Research Institute, Professor Ian Hickie, said society had come to condone suicide as an individual’s right rather than an act which had consequences. “We’ve got to find a new way to retain empathy for the individual but make it clear it’s entirely unacceptable because of the great harm it causes families and communities,” Prof Hickie said, adding many who commit suicide do so because they feel others will be “better off”. “They believe the only consequence is for themselves … (but) are not taking into account the terrible effects on everyone else.” Prof Hickie also said society needed to stop fearing social media and start embracing it as a powerful tool in the battle against youth suicide.

He said there was evidence which showed people used social media to seek out others for help. While he acknowledged it’s not without its faults, he said its potential in facilitating connections between people who otherwise found themselves feeling isolated, outweighed its risks. “The whole thing is it’s social. What our society lacks in terms of suicide prevention is social connection,” he said. The view jars with the broader perception of social media as a platform for cyber-bullying. People are also wary of social media because of its potential to exacerbate anxiety and low self-­esteem in vulnerable people. The term FOMO, which stands for Fear Of Missing Out, was coined by internet users as far back as 2006 to encompass this anxiety. “I think it affects my anxiety very much,” said a BeyondBlue forum user in relation to the topic. “It sometimes makes me feel like a loser bcoz (sic) everyone else on Facebook seems to be doing better than me in life, so it gets me down a lot.”Another user wrote: “I have had an anxiety relapse and watching everyone go on about their awesome lives on Facebook makes it much harder, knowing I don’t have the capacity to do any of that stuff at the moment.”

This article first appeared The Daily Telegraph, 24 May 2015.