Several months ago, I wrote a blog entry on the existence of suicide and anorexia nervosa enablement sites on the Net. Sadly, there has now been a New Zealand case where one depressed young woman ended her life because of a suicide enablement site.

Alethea Gates (27) died in Auckland, in January 2008. Her parents, Neville and Faye, are now trying to persuade Internet Service Providers and politicians to try to block suicide (and anorexia) enablement websites. Tomorrow, Neville will be talking about his family tragedy to the NetSafe international cybersafety conference in Queenstown.

Unfortunately for New Zealanders, many suicide enablement websites are based overseas, and only the United Kingdom specifically forbids them in its own context as well. In addition, France has bannned anorexia promotion websites. After Alethea, a student teacher, and suffering from depression, ended her own life, her brothers traced the websites that she’d used on the family computer. Her grieving parents were horrified to discover that her log used the aforementioned sites, which added to their pain. While Alethea had strong religious beliefs, depression had forced her to give up her first teaching job, at a South Auckland primary school. 

At the same time, she had just come off antidepressant medication. I feel ambivalent about this particular admission. If she had not done so on her doctor’s advice, that might have contributed to the final outcome, as antidepressant medication should not be discontinued without medical advice. One does wonder if suicide enablement websites encourage this, however.

Happily, Vodafone is trialling an experimental webcensor service that might be able to block suicide enablement, pro-anorexia and other dark side of the web sites, although the Department of Internal Affairs and ISPs may be hampered by the lack of illegality of such websites overseas (with above exceptions listed). Suicide Prevention Information New Zealand (SPINZ) has said it would be only too happy to assist in compiling such a website. Given that lesbian and gay youth suicide and younger gay male anorexia and bulimia are also perennial problem for our own communities, I am sure that we would also assist.

While net censorship shouldn’t exclude access to our community websites, I believe that many LGBT parents would not want either younger members of our community, or our own children, accessing the above.

Recommended:

Catherine Woulfe: “Suicide Sites Add Shock to Parents Grief:” Sunday Star Times: 27.07.08: http://www.stuff.co.nz