Printer Says It Can Improve Suicide Notes
WELLINGTON, Ohio (AP) -- Health officials expressed outrage Friday over a fake suicide scene displayed in a shop window to sell printing services.
The display at Special Effects, a video and printing store in this northeast Ohio village, shows empty beer cans on the floor near an overturned table below dangling legs meant to look like a person who hanged himself.
On a nearby table is a short, scrawled suicide letter on a piece of notebook paper - and another note that's lengthy and professionally printed.
A sign reads, "Contemplating suicide? Let Special Effects give your suicide note that professional look."
The head of the state agency in charge of suicide prevention said the display goes too far.
"We have to hope it reflects ignorance," said Michael F. Hogan. "When suicide takes almost 1,000 lives every year in Ohio - more than murder or HIV-AIDS - and when 20 percent of high school students think about suicide every year, we need messages encouraging life, not death."
Storeowner Chris Goran said Friday that almost all her customers thought the display she put up last week was amusing, and that she never intended to offend anyone.
"It certainly wasn't meant to elicit all of this emotion," Goran said. "I have to stand by the opinion that it's generating people talking about suicide, and if people talked about it more maybe there would be less."
Goran said she would keep the display up but may add a sign with a suicide prevention hot line phone number.
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