Take care of your friends and loved ones, everyone. Mental illness takes on all forms, and plagues so many people without ever showing to the outside world.
Mental illness isn't always something that is persistent and never goes away. Its my understanding that most people experience some form of mental illness at some period in their lives. It is also my understanding that if your mind is in a state to contemplate or commit suicide, you are then currently experiencing mental illness.
wouldn't you have to conclude that one who makes such a choice is in some way mentally ill? Excepting terminal illness, I can't see how it makes sense otherwise.
Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm legitimately curious. I have friends who struggle with depression, some of whom clearly have contemplated this terrible 'solution'.
Why the scare quotes? It's a bona fide solution. When you kill yourself, the problem goes away. Also, why terrible? It may be terrible for the friends and family, but the person committing suicide certainly has nothing to lose by it. A loss is only a loss if you perceive it as such. You won't perceive anything after you die.
Theory: we'd all be better off if suicide were socially acceptable. The people who commit suicide "out of blue" probably consider talking to someone about it, but they know it will be seen as a cry for help, and met with banal pleas to not do it. Maybe they'd like to have a rational conversation instead, one where their right of choice would be respected. Inability to have such a conversation leads to alienation, which makes them more likely to kill themselves.
"Maybe they'd like to have a rational conversation instead, one where their right of choice would be respected. Inability to have such a conversation leads to alienation, which makes them more likely to kill themselves."
This is the part that is important. The only time you get to have this conversation is if you fail and are assigned a psychiatrist. Even then no one else will talk to you about it as they assume that it was just something you were going through and should have got over it by now.
If you raise the topic people panic and assume the worst. So despite the fact that I can now, after nearly 40 years of this, monitor my own state of mind and actually see that I am getting depressed I still can't talk to anyone when I feel it coming on.
I have had depression since I was a teenager, it comes and goes, but each time it is a little harder to cope with, or maybe I'm just getting older. If it was some other physical ailment then I could talk about it, if I was bereaved I could talk about it. But as it's a mental health issue and I appear to be otherwise fine, I have no one I can talk to. But I'm damn good at covering it up! Simply because people don't even want to talk about the weather with someone who is depressed, so to have any conversation at all you have to lock it away.
I can see how if someone was pushed to the limit eventually suicide would become a rational choice. If the pain gets too intense it becomes pretty easy to take the easy way out. Some people avoid it by going to religion, others can't make that leap and thus find another way to make it stop: suicide.
Sure mental illnesses needlessly cause suicide, but it's not impossible for someone to achieve a point of hopelessness where suicide becomes a natural expected rational decision.
But I agree with you, it should never be thought of as the rational choice, because there is always hope for better. And no, you don't have to fabricate that hope either. It's what keeps me working, applying to yc despite rejection, and staying alive the for the next day despite all my shortcomings and failures. All without the need for a religion. I still haven't got to where I want to be, but I have hope.
