How the public sees BP's

[08hduc]

On Feb 15, a 21 year old guy walked up the freeway interchange and drank beer. Finally he stood on a pole hanging off the side, preparing to jump off. Rather than help by trying to talk him down, people stopped and took video with their cell phones, probably hoping to capture the moment he jumped. Which he eventually did, 30 feet into bushes. He survived and was sent to the hospital I was just at, diagnosed as BP in the depressive phase.

The saddest part of this event is what people put into the papers blogs about it:

this is to funny.....did he fall in the grass?

Well he's not gonna pick himself up! What an idiot.

How selfish is that. I get he wanted to kill himself but at the busiest intersection??? Bicentennial overpass was just right down the highway away from traffic and would have been guaranteed to work if that’s what he really wanted. I was caught 45 minutes in that mess for someone that wanted attention. Not being mean just honest.

WELL NOT TO BE MEAN OR ANYTHING BUT IF HIS INTENTIONS WERE TO KILL HIMSELF, THEN WHY ONLY GO 30 FEET. I FIGURE THAT MAYBE HE JUST WANTED ATTENTION OR SOMETHING. . . NEXT TIME HE SHOULD THINK ABOUT THE LOCATION BECAUSE THERE ARE SOME ANGRY MOTORISTS OUT THERE AND THEY JUST MIGHT PUSH HIM OFF THE EXPRESSWAY SO THAT THEY MAY BE ON THEIR WAY. . .

I was near the scene also. If a person wants to kill his/herself,they shouldn't involve other people. If one of us had hit that guy and killed him, we would have felt guilty for the rest of our lives.

I was there too,,,I was the guy in the black Hummer screaming "JUMP JUMP".

Oh please, just another weak minded local kook. Just like those macho boys who get pissed and start shooting people when thier ex starts dating someone else. If everybody who lost thier job these days decided to jump off an overpass, there would be no room for traffic ever.

If this guy along with all the worthless low lives living off of welfare would have been at work like most of us, this article wouldn’t have been on The Monitor. So to his wife, too bad you got offended with all the bad comments on her “luving” not loving husband. If he is hard working as you say he is, would have been at work not on the ledge of a busy freeway drinking beer causing a circus.

Does anybody know if the beer was OK?

two of the bottles were broken during the scuffle. There will be a memorial service on Friday at DeLeon Funeral Home.

I think he jumped because he finally ran out of beer. I can sympathize...

WOW, what "mentally healthy" people really think of us hmmmm. Isn't our world, where I live especially, circling the drain. Makes a guy sick. And to think I went to war 2 times for these jack offs:mad:

[malign]

I'd like to point out several things about this, though:

1. The vast majority of people writing weren't writing about bipolar disorder, specifically. They mostly reflected people's misinformation about suicide, and their selfish anger at having to sit in traffic. Well, and stupidity.

2. This can't have been all of the messages. I understand why you might have sampled the worst ones, but I think you inadvertently made it all sound worse, to those of us reading.

3. Just because you can write in to a newspaper blog doesn't mean you're "mentally healthy". Nor is it a representative sample of those who are: most people would not have participated in such a blog at all. Those who did will not be required to stand behind what they said, which we all know gives people extra leeway to be idiots. Sad, but true.

I know you didn't think of it this way, 08hduc, but you might find that the way you presented this, some people might think you agree with what was posted (your opinion was at the end, and not well-separated from the text of the comments.) There are probably those who would be hurt to read these opinions, as well, and I know that wasn't your intent. Maybe the fewer times we repeat what idiots say, the less we'll be forced to listen to them? :-)

[08hduc]

I guess you're right. I was amped up pending the PDoc visit and it just pissed me off. But in my defense, only 4-5 posts were sympathetic to the guy and most of those "said" they were friends. I guess the anonymous part of the web is both good and bad as it allows anyone to play Superman behind a keyboard.

[malign]

Have you ever wondered how long it would take a real Superman to start abusing his powers?

Even if he were genuinely good: it would be so tempting to just do a little more good, until eventually you've hosed everything up so badly you couldn't undo it.

[Luna-]

But isn't it shocking how badly behaved people can be at a keyboard when they can't see the person they're talking to? It makes me ashamed to be part of the same species. Anonymity brings out the worst in people, the poison pens. And how they reveal themselves by their own words!

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt."

I know I'm not a bad person, but I still get hurt when I read prejudiced words about BPs being unstable killers and the like. It's so thoughtless, unkind and uninformed. Downright nasty, actually.

[Guest ASchwartz]

Hi 08HDUC and all,

It just goes to show that what we call "normal" does not mean much. In fact, I suggest to all of you to stop thinking of yourselves as "not normal." Just because you may have BP does not mean you are abnormal. If I have the flu, am I abnormal???

What scares me about stories like this is that people seem to have become callous to human pain and suffering. Worse than callous is that they seem to be indifferent. Would you believe that someone told me the following:

"Hummph, why send money and help to Haitai? Why not help people here?

This person is normal???

My response was, "Why not help both?"

Allan:mad:

[amberlyn]

I definitely agree with Allan. Most of the human race has become so apathetic, it's sickening. I have a T-shirt that has my favorite quote on it:

"Be careful who you hate; it may be someone you love."

It's actually in reference to the gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender community, but I think it fits in this situation too. My boyfriend's mom used to talk about a former co-worker of her's ... that he was "just crazy... I mean, he IS bipolar." Then she found out that I have BP Disorder. It's sad that it takes something like this hitting home for people to be sympathetic.

[shakes head]