I’m from a family of suicide attempters. Not only my younger brother, but both sisters and a mother. Then put in a good friend from high school who did succeed, and my thoughts and desires, as well a initial actions but not as far as an actual attempt, then I’ve seen various sides of both suicide and depression.
The one which shook me the most was oldest my sister’s attempt. She was living in Chicago and her (now ex-) husband was calling me in panic. He wouldn’t take her to the emergency room or get professional help because he thought something like that would hurt her career chances. As if a career is really necessary for a dead person.
By the time my younger brother tried to manipulate me with threatening to kill himself, I was much more laid back about it. I told him that I never wanted him to kill himself, but nevertheless, I wasn’t go to change my mind about my “no” answer.
Depression and suicide can be real but they can also be manipulative. If someone attempts suicide once, it seems much more genuine than if they try each and every time a partner tries to break up with them. You need to look at the patterns and understand the person in order to know which is which. My older sister was seriously depressed; my younger brother is manipulative.
For the OP, I think it would be nice if the girlfriend where to at least sound a little more concerned about her fiancé and his mental health. While it’s possible that she’s just in shock, it certainly can seem like she’s only interested in her fantasy world.
Don’t be a fucking idiot. How in the world do you equate lesser pain with greater pain? And suicide with infanticide? Dumbass.
Is all pain the same in your mind? No? Then don’t act is if it were.
Not selfless? Who said it was? Go argue with him.
Everyone else’s pain starts when you kill yourself? You have a might high opinion of yourself. One might even say narcissistic. Or self-centered to the extreme. Get over it. They will.
Ya think?
You said that suicide was the most selfish decision. Not that it was self-centered. Hardly the same thing at all. Most decisions people make are self centered. By necessity.
ce.
You’re an ignorant idiot. But not in the traditional meaning. And those pants make your ass look huge. Again, in a context totally unlike that considered to be of the norm. But thanks for playing.
I can’t bash Kate completely, just like I can’t bash her fiance for trying to take his life. Both of them are behaving imperfectly. Yes, Kate is selfish, but it takes a saint to be worried about someone without simultaneously asking “What about me?” Especially when you’re talking about people who are about to be joined in a life-long partnership. If she wasn’t worried about herself, I would think that would be unnatural.
She’s wrong if she’s nagging her husband and not being supportive. But I’m joining the chorus of posters who are doubtful this is the full story. It takes two to tango. And no, having even severe depression doesn’t absolve you of life and the people in your life. Maybe he needs coddling, or maybe he needs a firm hand to help him up. We don’t know enough about these people to say which he needs.
Sometimes? Yeah, of course. In every single case? No.
I’m sure you can think of some situations where suicide is a noble and heroic act. No doubt you’ve heard a few stories in the past few years where people committed suicide for their religious and/or political causes. To their compatriots, those were noble and heroic suicides. (To those of us with brains, they were indeed selfish and destructive.)
What about the soldier who throws himself on a grenade? What about the person who cannot face the pain of a terminal illness? For that matter, what about the poor schlub who was just bitten by a zombie, and can’t live with the prospect of becoming a zombie himself and is facing becoming a cannibal? Come on, you know that happens. We’ve all seen the movies.
The point is, suicide has many different motivators, and they are on a continuum from selfish to noble.
Zombies are at one extreme. “I’ll show you all, and then you’ll be sorry” is at the other.
I still have no idea where Alex is at on the continuum.
I’ve got to agree with this, at least for depression (like crime, suicide can have different motivating factors. I don’t think an abused teen and a father who kills his family then himself after losing his job can be grouped together). Though my brushes with depression have been brief, they pretty much rendered me incapable of empathy.
I think many depressed people know, logically, that they’re affecting the people around them, but the pain is just so strong they can’t think outside themselves. They’re self-ish, through no fault of their own.
Contrapuntal, I don’t know why you’re posting with such venom. You don’t agree with my opinion? Fine. It makes the world more interesting when we don’t all see things the same way. Your first post had me re-considering my opinion and doing some research. Your second post is just argumentative.
What the fuck is your problem? All I said was, sometimes a concept, like “selfish” can be different, depending on the situation. Did I SAY that suicide is always selfish? Come back when you can find that out.
I don’t know WHY you object to my comment. How about explaining, por favor, rather than just throwing a hissy fit.
And as far as committing suicide being a way to “end the pain”, that doesn’t make it right. Get over it.
Glad to hear it, and about the Ombudsman as well. I figured there must be something, but didn’t know what.
Nevertheless, I think Kate was out of line. She needed to vent and rail and rage, but she chose the wrong person, IMO.
TokyoPlayer-your story reminds me of a pt I had once. She was young, admitted to ICU after taking something like 30 Ampicillin, 30 Aspirin, and some Tetracycline and other pills. (she basically emptied the med cabinet into herself). I was very sympathetic until I heard that this was her 5th or 6th attempt–by the same method. The aspirin was worrisome, but the antibiotics? She got the shits.
What crossed my mind was this: “maybe you are a loser, since you can’t seem to do even this right.”* Her family was concerned, but nothing like one would expect. Obviously she needed, (and her family did too) long term counselling–I don’t know if she got it. There are people who use this as a way of acting out. I don’t see Alex as one of them, but perhaps there is more there than we know about.
*of course that wasn’t shared by me in any way with the pt or family.
Sorry, I was going to let this pass, but being the SDMB, I had to point this out. 2006 was the Year of the Dog. This year is the Year of the Boar (in Japanese) or the Year of the Pig (Taiwan).
For eleanorigby I agree that Kate was completely out of line in this case. I can understand her panic, but she needed to have talked to someone else about that.
People think of the weirdest things under panic or surprise. When my wife introduced me to her mother as (1) her new boyfriend (without telling her about having her previous boyfried of seven years dumping her) and (2) that we were going to get married; all her mother could do was ask about the fridge. In my MIL’s mind, we were going to move to the States, leave her forever in Asia and she would lose her daughter. She wasn’t able to express that (probably even to herself) so her mind went to my wife’s nice fridge instead.
Still, Kate had enough time, and it would have been much better if she could have talked to someone else and been a little more comforting for her boyfriend.
Amen, brother! There is nothing more selfish than somebody who wants a suicidal person to stick around, only because they will FEEL BAD if that person kills himself. Anyone who thinks suicidal people are selfish has obviously never been severely depressed in their entire lives.
Depression is more than just “feeling blue”. It’s more like a deep, black abyss of utter despair that you can’t escape from, and nobody cares, and even the people you care about seem like they’re trying to hurt you. People sometimes attempt suicide, not because they’re selfish, but because they feel that’s what people want – the crushing shame & guilt of existence makes them feel they are doing people a FAVOR by killing themselves.
Yes, sometimes people who threaten suicide are being manipulative. But it’s extremely dangerous to assume that an actively suicidal person is being manipulative. What if you’re wrong? What if you call that person out, accuse him/her of being manipulative, and the next day they are DEAD?? How would you live with yourself after that?
Like TokyoPlayer said, it’s the pattern that’s important.
For my brother’s case, it was clearly not only manipulative but blackmail as well. For example once he told my mother if she kicked him out, he would kill himself. Another time, he asked me for money and said his alternative was to suicide.
All you can do with that is tell them you hope they don’t but you need to stand your ground.
When I was working night security on campus years ago, one of the police dispatcher used to be an ambulance driver. He told a story of this guy who had tried a dozen times or so to kill himself, but always fucked it up. For example, he would slit his wrist but do it wrong.
His group was getting calls several times a month for months on end. He (the driver) finally asked him if the guy was serious and when the guy said yes, the driver showed him an effective way. :eek: The driver said he never thought that the guy would actually do it, but sure enough, then next time he was on his shift, the talk was about how the wannabe suicider had finally figured out how to do it. :eek: :eek: :eek:
My ex’s ex got an emergency call one night from one of his students. Her roommate had tried to kill herself. “I just can’t do anything right” was her reason. She tried to slit her wrists, but on the top side.
But there’s also a point where you’re allowed to say, “I cannot stay here, and remain healthy.” Being selfish isn’t necessarily wrong behavior. The comparison I use is consider a drowning person: in their panic and desperation, they are often as much of a hazard to anyone trying to help them as to themselves. Sometimes one has to recognize that trying to save that person will often result in both the would-be rescuer and the original victim being lost. Mental illness, in particular, is a good match for that metaphor, I believe.
But looking at your opening paragraph from that same post, I have to add this:
If you’re going to say that it’s selfish for the loved ones of a suicidal person to demand that they stick around - isn’t it just as bad for the suicidal person to try to put all responsibility for their lives on some external person? If you’re going to deny one person’s insistence on recognition of the emotional damage someone else’s choice might cause, you have have to deny the other, as well.
Guin, I know you think you know a lot about mental illness being as you’re fucked in the head, but I wish you’d quit acting like you know everything. Because obviously you don’t know jack shit about suicide or suicidal ideation.
My husband is suicidal a signficant amount of the time. When he is at his worst, his concerns are for everybody but himself. He worries how he is ruining my life because I have to take care of him. Ruining his son’s life because he’s such a loser and bad example. Ruining the dogs’ lives because he is inconsisent. He thinks it would be easier for everyone else if he were gone, because he believes he is a burden. He is in a huge amount of pain, but all he thinks about is everyone else.
I will be so mad if he offs himself. But the last thing that I will be doing is bitching about how his death is so hard for me, knowing how life has been so hard for him.
Tell you what…deal with some people who have mental health issues (other than your own limited problems). Then you’ll have a better framework for your proclamations about how things are.
That isn’t thinking about everyone else; that’s thinking about himself and how his influence is so great he can ruin the lives of others by his mere existence.
No, it’s realizing that he has an impact on the lives of others. The incorrect perception is that the impact he is having on those lives is always a negative one. Y’know some of us actually go to professionals to deal with these problems and can look at more than just one side of the situation.
ETA: Those professionals will tell you not to underestimate the realities of the situation. Instead to see that despite the perceived burdens there are some positives that the suicidal person may be overlooking. Sure, my husband is a burden on me at times. He also cleans up the dog shit and makes me cookies when he’s feeling good. Those things are worth hiding the ammo for.
