‘Social media saved my life’
Online suicide note prompts flood of caring responses that push man to seek, and get, immediate help
Andrew Parker was on the verge of killing himself less than a month ago when a simple post on social media saved his life.
On March 17, the 34-year-old freelance film critic, who has struggled with anxiety since childhood and was diagnosed with clinical depression at19, uploaded a suicide note to his personal blog. The post, titled “The End of All Things,” detailed Parker’s lifelong mental health struggles and conveyed one message: he wanted to die.
Within minutes of posting a link to his Twitter entry, Parker was inundated with messages from hundreds of friends, acquaintances and strangers, urging him to get help. That response — mostly from people he’d never met — pushed Parker to reconsider his plan and seek help from a nearby parking enforcement officer.
“Social media, those people, saved my life. I would not have sought help if I had not seen those messages. That was more than I could have asked for,” Parker told the Star at a favourite lunch spot Wednesday, the same day he was released from Mount Sinai Hospital after a threeweek voluntary stay.
Negative messages in social media have been viewed as a contributing factor in the tragic deaths of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, teenage girls from British Columbia and Nova Scotia, respectively, who both committed suicide after being cyberbullied. But Parker, who has previously received threats over the Internet because of his movie reviews, believes social media can also do a lot of good.
“We talk a lot about how social media is sort of like a no-man’s land, gang mentality. That’s definitely there; I know people that have had their lives irreparably damaged because of social media, but at the same time it can be a force for good,” he said.
Suicide had been on his mind nearly constantly for the past three years, Parker said. Last spring, he brought himself to an emergency room after a suicide attempt, one of a handful of times he has tried to kill himself in the past 15 years.
Nearly homeless — he says he has couch-surfed for much of the past few years — and drowning in debts owed to friends, Parker decided in early March to seclude himself for two weeks to finish all his work assignments and then take his own life.
His post, Parker said, wasn’t a cry for help. “I meant it as an apology, to everyone I’ve hurt. It was a suicide note; at the time, I thought I was too far gone for help. I planned to die.”
Toronto Police Const. Scott Mills, a social media relations officer, was at a McDonald’s with his 2-year-old son when a follower on Twitter alerted him to Parker’s post on that St. Patrick’s Day evening. Quickly, the notifications began rolling in.
“Our system was moving on all fronts on communications and investigations in that case, and it was a collaborative team effort within the police department,” he said.
Dealing with people experiencing a mental health crisis over social media is not rare for Mills, who began working with social media in 2004.
“This is happening daily,” Mills said of people posting cries for help on the Internet. He has dealt with dozens of cases, most involving people who live in Toronto, but he’s also been contacted by people across Canada and around the world.
In Mills’ experience, nine times out of 10, people reaching out for help simply want to speak with a professional. “Why would you go out and post in the public? If you really wanted to kill yourself, you wouldn’t tell anybody and go and do it.”
Parker’s case came to what Mills calls a “very successful” conclusion when he presented himself to a parking enforcement officer, who immediately called the police. Parker was then taken to the emergency department at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health before being transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital.
“It makes me feel good for the human condition,” Mills said. “There is good in humanity, and it definitely comes out in these cases.”
As superficial as social media may be, sometimes just the perception that someone cares can be very meaningful to a person in distress, said Scott Schieman, a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto and the Canada Research Chair in Social Contexts of Health.
“Sometimes people are just looking to connect in any way,” said Schieman, who is not involved in Parker’s case. “Sometimes even the smallest connection can impact a person in a deep way.”
In the best-case scenario, a person in crisis who reaches out for help publicly will eventually find support in real life, Schieman said. But, in some cases the deep value of that perception could be enough to get that person through treatment, even if the casual acquaintances and strangers from social media fall away. “Even if it may seem superficial to an outsider, it may not take too much to bring back someone who feels isolated, so to speak.”
Though admittedly fragile, Parker said he feels he is supported by a core group of trusted friends. Posting his note online, which upset many of his nearest and dearest, was “not cool,” Parker said, but now, back on medication and working on a treatment plan with his doctors, he’s ready to take on a once unfathomable future.
“Now I feel like I have the strength to move on . . . and set my life up in a way that it’s not all going to come crumbling down around me again.”