“When someone expresses suicidal distress, it provides family, friends and even Facebook and Instagram the opportunity to intervene. If people can’t share their pain, or it is shared and then removed, we’ve missed a chance to save someone’s life. We train people to listen for this in conversations and to allow people to keep talking because we know that it is one way to help them through a crisis. Social media platforms allow us to do this in a way that brings many people to help very quickly.”
-Daniel J. Reidenberg, Psy.D., FAPA, Executive Director, Save.org
“Mental illness and thoughts about suicide are just not something we talk about OPENLY. Yet talking and connecting is crucial to helping prevent depression and suicide. The tools Facebook is rolling out, aim both at people who are expressing suicidal thoughts and also guide concerned friends or family members to resources and alternatives and appropriate interventions.”
-Anna Chandy, Chairperson - Trustees, The Live Love Laugh Foundation - India
“The Finnish Association for Mental Health is pleased to work with Facebook to provide support and resources for people who are feeling vulnerable and at risk of suicide and their close ones. To have this support available is important because when in crisis, people often don´t have strength or courage to seek help and can even find it hard to realize that they need help. To have resources and contact information for experts made available in the language people speak is crucial.”
-Satu Raappana-Jokinen, Manager of Online Crises services, The Finnish Association for Mental Health
“Any initiative that helps raise awareness and prevent suicide is essential to reduce the tragic statistics showing that one Brazilian dies every 45 minutes. Some people can identify signals that a friend is thinking about suicide but do not know how to help. In these cases, tools like the one launched by Facebook in Brazil can directly and indirectly help this cause that has been embraced by CVV for more than 50 years and serve as a model for other organizations to overcome ‘tabus’ and embrace further actions in this subject.”
-Carlos Correia, Volunteer, Centro de Valorizacao da Vida - Brazil