Thanks all for your thoughtful comments and questions about suicide and related topics. These are not things we've taken lightly, but it is primarily a question of helping keep community members safe -- both those who are considering suicide and everyone else who may be triggered by specific method talk. Being online in a good support group can be of great help to someone who is suicidal, which we recognize. And as long as the talk is just about the general thoughts and such that a person is experiencing about suicide, that's fine.

We draw the line in posts that say they are going to die tonight, or tomorrow, or whatever, and this is how. That's not what we're setup here to do or to help with. Throughout the world, there are suicidal helplines (click the button on our homepage to find one near you), and we recommend members make use of these free resources. Online there are other groups where such discussion is allowed (but we don't vouch for those groups, nor what you may find there).

As for homicidal ideation about wanting to kill one's abuser, I fairly certain we've allowed such discussions, as long as they are fairly limited and well defined, because they fall into the same category about thoughts. Each case is different however. And so while we may allow such discussion about wanting to end the life of one's abuser, we wouldn't allow discussion about someone wanted to end the life of a person for some other reason. We have to balance individual member's needs versus those of the entire community, and so we usually have a discussion about such threads as they arise and make decisions on a case by case basis.

DocJohn