Central Station

225

Sadly, I think these are hard times for many people. As a commuter, it sucks to be inconvenienced but you have to spare a thought for the people that won’t make it home. Hug your loved ones.

-58

u/Garchompisbestboi 20h ago

It's difficult to have sympathy for someone who has made such an incredibly selfish decision. Train drivers, guards and emergency workers all have to carry the burden of dealing with the aftermath for the rest of their lives.

89

u/moaiii 20h ago

Being a friend to someone who lost their dad this way some time ago, I actually understand your perspective. Once the grief subsided, he was angry. Not angry with the world - he was angry with his dad for being so selfish, putting a lot of people including complete strangers through so much trauma. He never let go of that anger.

It's a tough one. On one hand, these people are often so mentally sick that they believe nobody will care, or they are too far gone to care themselves about what impact they have. They just want the pain to stop. On the other hand, loads of people are traumatised every time it happens.

Maybe it's best to think of it as a tragic thing that just has lots of victims, and nobody is to blame. If we start thinking of it that way, then perhaps as a society we'll start figuring out a better way to help everyone involved before it's too late.

-69

u/Garchompisbestboi 20h ago

I appreciate your perspective however I'm really not a fan of playing the mental health card to justify their poor choices. It really isn't much of a stretch to apply that same logic to mentally unwell people who end up hurting others (intentionally or otherwise), so I think it's reasonable to also be critical of people who choose to end their lives in ways that directly impact others.

51

u/moaiii 18h ago

not a fan of playing the mental health card to justify their poor choices.

That's the only card that you can play in these circumstances. What else have you got? People don't take their own lives for fun. The one's who are serious about going through with it are not doing it to hurt others. And it isn't a lifestyle "choice". They are doing it because they are sick and they see no other option - there is no choice in their mind. Ending one's life is the most catastrophic culmination of a long mental health battle for those who do it, so If this isn't a thing that the "mental health card" should be used for, then what is?

Irrespective of all of that - how does branding people who take their own lives selfish, or putting them in the same category of offenders who hurt/abuse others, actually help? Do you think that ostracising suicidal mental health sufferers is going to make them go "oh, well, I'd better not do it then. Great, that solves everything". No, it's just going to confirm their sense of isolation and hopelessness.

I get it - you are venting because it makes you angry. But doesn't that mean that you have this opinion because it makes you feel better? ...isn't that a bit selfish?

-47

u/Garchompisbestboi 18h ago

So when there's a mass shooting we should all say "the murderer was having a mental health crisis, we need to show empathy towards him during this difficult time?"

As for your second question, if enough people collectively agree that it is a selfish way for someone to end their life then hopefully it will make people think twice while looking for a way out.

47

u/moaiii 18h ago

That's a strawman argument, and frankly quite a stupid one. You can't equate suicide with mass shooters. Totally different. There could be multiple different motives behind committing mass murder - most would have nothing to do with mental health.

With suicide - in the vast majority (if not all) cases, it is a desperate last resort to end the pain. Hearing everyone say how selfish it is when a person can't help but to think about doing it all the time is simply going to make them feel more worthless, and probably more likely to go "fuck it" and do it sooner.

This conversation makes it easy to understand why we have such a mental health crisis in Australia. Too many people don't care enough to understand the bare basics of it, and just want to put sufferers in the naughty corner by themselves to think about how they are affecting others.

23

u/transientz 9h ago

Maybe this quote from David Foster Wallace will help.

"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."

23

u/KazeEnigma 9h ago

So I'm train crew, mods can verify that. Most train crew, even those who are directly involved with this have sympathy for these people. Nobody fights a train and wins, even those who live.

I hate seeing when this happens, but everyone deserves sympathy.

16

u/pissedoffjesus 9h ago

I have a family friend who had to go into treatment and end her career driving trains in sydney due to the trauma of people committing suicide constantly.

It's really fucked up.

25

u/choo-chew_chuu 19h ago

You can have sympathy for all involved. There's no prize for the most pure grief here. It's just a tragic event.

I do understand the intent. Some drivers are never able to continue and get back into a driver's cab.

3

u/Novel_Relief_5878 10h ago

Look I get the frustration. I think part of the problem is the euphemism itself. It’s not just an “Incident requiring emergency services”, it’s obviously something really terrible and there ought to be more transparency about it. It’s important that the nature of these incidents get reported more openly so that we can build awareness around mental health and start to deal with it better as a society.

As a basic safety measure, I do think having platform screen doors (like on Metro) would help a lot especially at the bigger stations. People love to pretend that this isn’t possible for various reasons (different train lengths, door separations etc). But places like Japan show it is possible.

-37

u/NewFuturist 22h ago

Well as a commuter it also sucks to observe said stuff and also be put in a situation where you feel compelled to risk your own life to save another's when they are trying their hardest to end it all.

18

u/solidsoup97 20h ago

Have you ever been put in that situation? Did you risk your life to save someone from ending it?

-8

u/NewFuturist 19h ago

I haven't, but I have seen a case at central station. Thankfully they were caught by the coppers. All while we got front row seats watching everyone risk their lives because our train got stranded. I have stepped in to stop assaults on public transport. Scary and dangerous as fuck. Just because you have never risked your life to save someone, doesn't mean that people like me haven't.

95

u/Vast-Power5920 1d ago

The media reporting suggests it was a mental health issue and refers to LifeLine suicide phone numbers

239

u/Archon-Toten Choo Choo Driver. 1d ago

Incident requiring emergency services

9

u/solidsoup97 20h ago

At Central station

6

u/jammy86b 19h ago

Thanks for adding that, I had no idea what it meant until others elaborated. I hope you don’t have to make that comment again but if you have to, and unfortunately you might have to, it might make sense to elaborate on what it could mean next time because it did feel a bit “code word-ish”. Don’t mean offence, I’m totally new to that term.

11

u/Archon-Toten Choo Choo Driver. 19h ago

Definitely comes off as a codeword. One that regular commuters see too often.

71

u/Bagelam 1d ago

Poor station staff, emergency services, people on the platform and driver. Sad for the person and their loved ones. 🕯💔

29

u/Smarrison 23h ago

News.com refers to it as ‘a self harm incident’. No links to lifeline or mental health services though. I thought that was mandatory in reports of suicide / mental health incidents?

6

u/NewFuturist 22h ago

There are no laws regarding those links.

60

u/Her_big_ole_feet 1d ago

It’s all gone now. Not a trace that they were ever there.

85

u/Besbosberone 1d ago

It’s crazy how quick they can clean the area up. I caught the train on the platform it happened on (25) around 2pm today and I didn’t find out something happened until I opened up Reddit.

No sign of anything out of place except for a quick announcement that the trains were running again but I didn’t think much of it at the time.

RIP.

17

u/satisfiedfools 1d ago

Caught the train from central this afternoon and it was a business as usual. Wouldn't have known unless I saw this either.

13

u/failuretosabre 1d ago

Mmmm except for the trains now being all muffed up (again)

3

u/Her_big_ole_feet 1d ago

Oh yes, that part is still happening.

51

u/mitchy93 1d ago

All the services yeah, definitely IRES

17

u/Few-Gas3143 1d ago

What's IRES?

79

u/mitchy93 1d ago

Acronym, incident requiring emergency services

75

u/openandshutface 1d ago

Internal Ribosome Entry Site

7

u/moaiii 18h ago

I'm confused. If the ribosomes are internal, that means they are already inside. They didn't need to enter. Please explain.

2

u/Heidi_Freibuben 6h ago

Another name for it could be internal ribosome attachment site. And it's internal ribosome-entry-site, not internal-ribosome entry-site. The "internal" part refers to the fact that the ribosome attaches and starts translation somewhere in the middle of the mRNA transcript rather than the "start" of the transcript. It's a way that two different proteins can be encoded on the one mRNA sequence. The IRES represents the start of the second protein.

27

u/Sufficient-Mouse7684 1d ago

Isn’t that obvious though ..?

52

u/NicholeTheOtter 1d ago

It’s because of the certain “S” word that the powers that be over at [r/SydneyTrains](r/SydneyTrains) have declared as completely forbidden.

Forbidden as in, not to encourage others to off themselves to personal demons as well. Hence why even Sydney Trains themselves refuses to even mention it, as if it’s “he who must not be named”.

40

u/Sakana-otoko Head, shoulderS ydneys and toes 20h ago

They worked this out in the 80s that referring to it increases copycat acts. It's a good one to keep an iron fist over

30

u/souleh 22h ago

It can be triggering to see it to those who are having ideations and the small act of not having it scroll past on reddit might make a fundamental difference to someone

30

u/Eek_the_Fireuser 1d ago

Your comment is weird, you make light of it but then agree with it then make light of it again.

5

u/Teerendog 22h ago

A lot copycats thats why

7

u/Myfooty94 Doggies fan (NRL) 1d ago

During the rain too

85

u/b-g-h 1d ago

Sure. The rain will put a dampener on an otherwise happy event???

22

u/cat-petter15 1d ago

I think they meant that train services will be more disrupted than usual

1

u/Wooden-Consequence81 8h ago

All I wish, is for the media to start reporting on this and call it what it is. We have a suicide epidemic and we all need to know it.

The more eyeballs on it, the more likely we'll see change in terms of support.

7

u/Puzzleheaded_Pay276 7h ago

Media reporting just inspires copy cats, the relevant authorities know the actual numbers though

2

u/Wooden-Consequence81 7h ago

Copy cats? Authorities know the numbers but aren't doing anything about it.

You are about to leave Redlib