Someone should add the phone number to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline into the "No suicidal posts" message above, the number is 1-800-273-8255.

The root of the issue is psychcentral's legal liability. The company can't endorse the use of their resources as a suicide prevention tool because it makes them liable. The forums are not staffed with professionals who are equipped to deal with a person who is suicidal. If the company implied that forum members were capable of dealing with suicidal behavior some serious crap would hit the fan if someone die as a result of our nonfeasance, misfeasance, or possibly even intentional malfeasance towards someone we might not like.

The company must endorse and enforce a strict no suicidal post policy as a way to protect itself from liability, the law makes no exceptions for this.

It's ok to generally talk about suicide here. However, what's not ok is posting statements that you are going to, or are considering, killing yourself. Additionally, a message like that is very emotionally taxing to forum members. Due to the anonymity of the Internet it's not as if we can call the police and have them do a welfare check. We are helpless to actually do anything and simply end up worrying about something we can't control.

Their is simply no reason to believe we're qualified to deal with an actual suicide crisis. Services like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline are able to dispatch police that can intervene before a person is able to harm themselves, we have no safety net in place like that here.

Considering the aforementioned, I feel that posting suicidal messages here is attention seeking behavior and that for all intents and purposes it's a form of emotional blackmail.