Facebook now has a suicide help system

This could be funny if wouldn’t be sad. Well, you probably heard until now about people who posted on their Facebook profile their suicide notes and final messages before they actually took their lives. This made those from Facebook to think to a “suicide system help”.

Before committing suicide, people use to post on their Facebook wall some desperate messages or depressing status. Now, anyone who sees that can report to Facebook. If you know someone who is possible to commit this act, you can easily go to the help center and search for the word “suicide” in the proper box. The first page that will pop up after this search will bring you a number where you can call for help. If you don’t like to get too much involved in this, you can press the button “Report suicidal content” and Facebook will do this job for you. The case will be solved by one of the Samaritan agents. In this way you can easily save a depressive friend’s life.

The feature is being run in conjunction with Samaritans, which said several people had used it during a test phase. The report page will ask you for the URL address of the person who is supposed to have a suicidal attempt, but also for the full name of the user and any other details of any networks they are member for.

“When a report is made, they then assess whether they need to call the police immediately or forward it on to us,” said Samaritans’ Nicola Peckett for BBC.

The system had been working in a trial mode for almost three months, without publicity. Facebook is trying by this to save as many lives as it is possible and to avoid further scandals, like the one it happened when Simone Back died on Christmas day after taking a drug overdose.