#SPSM will be discussing our suicide prevention manifesto, 2/26/17, 9pCT.

What’s our manifesto, and why do one now?

SPSM has always had a point of view. We aim to use social media to have an expert to expert conversation about suicide prevention, social media, digital technology, and innovation…at the speed of technology and innovation, and not years behind it (the pre-SPSM speed of traditional expert to expert media in suicide prevention).

This was a bold undertaking…and in the last four years we feel our community is living this mission, and having an impact on accelerating and elevating the conversation on suicide prevention. In the meantime, our community has learned a few things, and is starting to crystallize a clear point of view about a possible future free of the blight of suicide, along with the challenges that must be undertaken to get there. This is *our* “suicide prevention moonshot.”

Here is our SPSM Manifesto

1. Suicide is an enormous, global blight on humanity, and years of doing what we’ve been doing has not moved the needle on this problem in a powerful way. It’s time for radical solutions.
2. “Radical solutions” will require a passionate, unapologetic quest for the resources (financial, institutional, political, and technical) to address this problem at scale.
3. “Radical solutions” will require “suicidologists” to reach out and collaborate effectively with people in a number of science, technology, and media disciplines we’ve never worked with before.
4. Because “radical solutions” will inevitably require use of “breakthrough technology” to address suicide at the scale of the problem, it is likely we will have to build things that do not yet exist, and we probably do not know, at this moment in time, what that is. We need to start dreaming big, taking risks, and proposing designs for suicide prevention at the scale of the problem. Then we need to start doing what it takes to actually attempt these designs, with a focus on tracking outcomes.
5. We must become unattached to suicide prevention “solutions” that do not deliver results at scale. This will require a real realignment of motivations.
6. Because we will be trying radical, multidisciplinary solutions to suicide prevention we need to solve the research and development process problems that consistently interfere with innovation at scale.
7. Ethics writing, standards/practices benchmarks, and policy work needs to be funded and incentivized to keep pace with innovation. Without these important system elements, no innovation could be responsibly implemented.

Watch us nail our theses to the front door of YouTube, LIVE: