"Coupled"
Suicide. Most of us assume that all that is relevant is the state of mind of the person who takes that extreme step. But, asks Malcolm Gladwell in Talking to Strangers , is the availability of the means to suicide a key factor? Are the two (state of mind + availability of means) “coupled”, he asks. Psychiatrists and social workers did not believe in the coupling theory. Ronald Clarke puts it perfectly: “(Most people feel) it was sort of insulting to think you could deal with it (suicide) by simply making it harder to commit suicide.” In England, writes Gladwell, in the decades when town gas was delivered at homes for cooking etc, one of its constituents was carbon monoxide. Guess what was a popular way to commit suicide? Stick your head in the oven, seal it to the best you could with clothes etc, and inhale away. Later, when town gas was replaced with a different gas with no carbon monoxide, did suicides drop? If there’s no coupling, it shouldn’t matter: people would just