Couldn't be any worse than an empty safe.

If you think someone you know is in danger of harming him-or-herself, it would probably be better to contact that person yourself, directly. Or contact their parents, siblings, friends, anyone you can think of. I do know that it can be very awkward to to that, but the idea of just clicking a button and hoping that Facebook can do something seems odd to me, but I'm 70 years old and don't have any faith in Facebook.

Twice in my life I have had friends of my children contact me to say they thought my kid was in danger of suicide. This was hideously painful and awkward, but in both cases it made me wake up and realize that the situation was more acute than I thought. I will always have gratitude toward the young people who did this for me and for my kids, in spite of how difficult it was for everyone when it was happening.

I know every time I look at Facebook I want to kill myself. I can't be the only one.

Suicide threats are a result of one of 2 thibgs

1)A neurochemical imbalance - from untreated medical causes or from medications - makes situation seem overwhelming, dire, jumbled, etc.

2) Life circumstances have created contradictions, stresses, unadressable injustices, unrecoverable losses, or just such a low quality of life it seems not worth living.

It seems like both of those situations can and should be caught before someone has t "cry out for help". In fact if they do have to make a suicide threat they will get the added stress of the indignities around the response they receive - fear they will be treated as a "drama queen", dehumanizing procedural treatment from authority figures, accidentally depriving themselves of future prescrptions of needed pain medication if they abuse what they have in a suicide attempt, etc.

If a person's basic needs in life aren't being met, it should be obvious. The US unfortunately is just fine with torturing people over unmet basic needs, yet freaks out over their stress, depression, and suicide. A "mobile crisis unit" or a welfare check by the poice isn't going to deal with this situation - it will only humiliate the victim and defer the suicide. (unless the "crisis" offers the opportunity of suicide by cop.)

Lets look at the other one - neurochemical imbalance. I take neurologically active medications, and a few months ago I felt a serious problem soon after I restarted taking them after a month-long Medi-Cal-frak-up break. I could feel a huge plunge happening both in my mood and physiologically. So I tried out these crisis lines to see what they could do for me. It turns out not much. I had to leave phone messages, make numerous calls, and wait for a return call. Some return calls never came. After a week or so, I ended up with an appointent with a therapist that was still a week or so out. As for provlems with my medications, it actually took me MONTHS to get that addressed because I was not on any "controlled substances".

I'm under the impression the resources for the area I live are better than most. Yet after telling people my medication was causing severe mood alterations, I was left with all the time and the opportunity to commit suicide. Frankly, if I had gotten an impersonal Facebook pop-up at that point, I might have killed myself in response. Just because it confirmed the world didn't really care about me - all I got were canned messages.

I had already been telling people there was something wrong with my meds before that point, and I continued after that point. The issue is only starting to be taken seriously now after 4 trips to the ER (for cardiovascular, not mental, problems). My point is that I doubt these crisis calls are really a sudden crisis. I bet the bulk of them are from people with long-standing problems who are simply being ignored and their problems are allowed to ramp up to the point where a "crisis unit" isn't going to be able to help much.