Thank you. I don’t have much more to add to this thread right now, but that was very polite of you.
I agree. Sometimes it’s manageable depression. However, there are people who are plagued with serious depression that they never find relief from. At any rate, if a person can’t find an alternative to depression, why should they be obligated to continue a pain-filled life? Doesn’t a human being have the basic right to end an unhappy existence?
Why would you think a chronically depressed person is “healthy?” We’re not talking about someone who just lost $50 at the track. We’re talking about clinical depression. Depression that, for many people, is never relieved by medication or therapy. It is as debilitating as cancer. And equally painful.
Basically - the same reason I think I’m generally healthy. I’m not trying to deny the pain that mental illness encompasses, I am a consumer, myself, and know something of the situation. There is a dichotomy, not just in my mind, but in the mind of the public at large between physical health and mental health. I was trying to speak to the physical health - not mental. I choose poor wording, and apologise for that.
Again, let me restate, I am not particularly pleased with my view towards suicide - but I’m afraid what might happen if I did my mind. So, I’ll stay over here, if you don’t mind. 
Thank you OtakuLoki. Bob always appreciates being mentioned and having fans on our side. The smile that brought to my face meant today had something special in it.
Now, I don’t know if anecdotal evidence is called for in this thread to show another side -or- at this point, anyone is even interested in all my rending of garments and gnashing of teeth wailing on about my problems, but if it can offer a different perspective to the questions asked (and if it’s wanted – certainly no throwing out shit on the table at the party), then I’d be willing to prattle on about life for the chronically depressed, yadda yadda yadda, who can’t seem to permanently fix it and deal with the whole suicide issue at least four hundred times daily.
Lemme know. Bob and I will be standing by. Trying to work on that evil world domination thing we’ve been set up to pursue with a vengence. 
Suicide is usually the act of a depressed person. Any cowardice involved is the result of not using reason (above emotion) to seek help. Real depression is a battle that requires a person to fight for survival.
I heard an interview with Curt Colbain before he died. He came across as a punk-ass kid. My guess is that he found out fame and fortune just made him wealty and that happiness can’t be purchased. Just a swag on my part because it is impossible to know what goes through a depressed person’s mind unless they communicate it.
No, it’s not fair to judge a suicide without all the facts but it’s worth discussing for the benefit of those who might think along those lines.
There have been too many suicides in my life–none directly related to me, thank God. One was a middle aged woman at my church–she hanged herself in her closet and let her 13 y/o daughter find her after school. She was in treatment (outpt b/c her insurance had run out of inpt days).
Another was a doctor–brilliant pulmonologist with a specialty in sleep disorders. He left behind 3 beautiful daughters whose ground will never be quite firm again. The last 3 are all teen age/early twenties guys: all headed to college and bright futures. ALL of their deaths stem from watching helplessly while another friend of theirs drowned in Hawaii. The last one hanged himself in Dec–his funeral was held on Christmas Eve.
I have mixed feelings and thoughts about suicide. On the one hand, I agree that it is not an act of cowardice. IMO, it is called that by those left behind out of anger towards the deceased.
I think that suicide is an act of anger and self hatred–and it indicates an irrationality of thought. (I exclude cases of terminal CA etc here). It is the biggest, most extreme, “fuck you, world” that there is.
But having seen the devastation that is left behind–it is bone deep, life shattering, horrific. I cannot just state, “well, they were living a hell and so chose to end it.” That is too easy for my taste. Hell comes in all shapes and sizes–and each suicide creates a hell as they find their peace.
I am not sure what the answer(s) should be. Counselling, meds, inpt treatment, prevention and hotlines all do work, to some extent.
I do know that telling teens that “if you commit suicide, you know you’ll miss Prom/never drive/never have a GF/BF etc” is complete nonsense. It’s what was told to me and my class back in 1979. We thought it was BS then, too.
Just a note: suicides most often occur NOT when the pt is most deeply depressed–they lack the strength and energy then. The risk comes when they are starting to respond to treatment and are allowed some independence (which is what happened to the church woman)…
Though I’ve only this anecdotal evidence, I would now tend to suspect that the state of mind of my friend regarding his daughter could be prevalent amongst depressed people rather than an exception. I say “now” bcause before this conversation I had with him, it never occured to me that a depressed parent could follow this kind of reasonning (barring exceptionnal circumstances) . I would have expected the existence of a child to be a deterent, not yet another reason to entertain thoughts of suicide.
But now, I think it makes a lot of sense given the mindset of a depressed person, and as I said, I tend to suspect it might be widespread. Of course, it’s only a WAG.
Me too.
I think.
I suppose I could have a productive life behind bars, but the idea of the permanency of it might depress me to the point of suicide.
It’s viewed as a cowardly act by some because of the ones left behind. It’s an extremely cruel thing to do to family, friends or even strangers. Imagine a small child finding daddy hanging from the rafters or mommy with her head in the oven.
What a horrible thing to do to a child. After all, the person who committed suicide doesn’t have to live with it; or see the vision every day; or wonder why; or if there was something they could have done?
What a horrible, horrible thing to do to someone.
If you are truly looking to do something like that, AND you’ve decided this with 100% of your gray matter, go into the woods, lay down where no one will find you except critters and do it. Don’t leave a horrific vision for someone to live with.
That’s why I view it as cowardly…
I’m with you on the self-hatred, but I disagree that it lacks rationality (see your final statement below) at least in a lot of cases. A person who cannot find peace in his or her life is capable of determining that and intelligently choosing to die. Are there people who get a snootful and off themselves because the wife ran away with the milkman? Sure (and actually, I think that’s ok too…shortsighted, but ok). But we’re talking about a different level of depression here.
Well, there’s no getting away from the fact that suicide hurts other people. Life stinks a lot of the time. Is it worse to lose someone to suicide than to illness? My mother-in-law lost her two youngest…one to a gunshot wound to the head and one to alcoholism (and a grandson to a motorcycle accident). I don’t think she could say one is worse than the other. She just knows her two youngest children are dead.
For MOST people. For others, they never feel well enough to stop entertaining thoughts of suicide. Not everyone’s chemical makeup can be corrected.
Cowardly does not equal cruel. The words have completely different meanings.
One of the suicides I knew was simply uncorrectable. To give context, his entire family is unstable. His parents have both been in and out of mental institutions, his sister was psychotic, his brother was a paranoid schizophrenic who was wanted by the police for a violent crime but who had spent 10 years hiding out somewhere, and then there was Harry (not his real name) who had been medicated up to his eyes for twenty years without a moment’s happiness.
Yes, he killed himself. Yes, I’m sure it was upsetting for his parents and his wife. I know it was. It had to be. But what else was Harry supposed to do in order to appease everyone else? He left a note saying he was afraid he’d do something violent, that he’d turn into his brother, that he could feel his control slipping. He was already half zombified by all the meds. He had already been “helped.” The tragedy isn’t the suicide. The tragedy is that a very nice man had an incurable disease.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Does a person have some sort of moral obligation to stay alive if he doesn’t want to? Why?
[QUOTE]
Something is being overlooked
Well I am glad to see someone ask the question, and I think that it depends on the context.
I see people here talking about depression/ mental deficit etc. Studies show that most depressed people committing suicide, don’t really want to die. They are rather “crying for help” seeking a last ditch effort for attention or to get a point across (whether it is a conscious decision or not). Opinions on whether they are “cowardly” are obviously going to vary, but my key thought regarding legitimate suicide lies somewhere else.
There is a whole other group of people being overlooked here. This is the chronically ill/ terminally ill people to which life is not much better than death. If someone is in this situation, a burden on others, and their life is pain and misery, who is to say that they are being cowardly if they were to want to end their life. To me in this situation, it seems to me that it is family and friends that are being cowardly and selfish if they are trying to prevent someone from committing suicide. I don’t see a moral issue in it either, as I don’t think anyone can justify saying that we are meant to slowly suffer and die with no real life other than constant pain. I suspect many people may change there opinion on this if THEY were the ones in the situation (whether or not they actually chose to committ suicide or not). I submitt that it takes courage and strength to face death, but they are making a educated choice. We are certainly all taught that suicide is wrong, but why should it be in these cases? Who is the one being cowardly?
I’d like to see those studies… do you have a link? I wonder how they can determine the motivation of a dead person. If they just interviewed people who unsuccessfully attempted suicide, that’s not quite the same.
First off, great rebuttals by neutron star.
Not to pick on you especially, Q.N., but I don’t think anyone here said that. “X is worse off than Y; Y commited suicide; now X will be pressured to do the same!” is a slippery-slope argument that I don’t find compelling or plausible.
Hear, hear. I don’t buy the kneejerk suicide-is-cowardice response but I agree with your example (and let’s not traumatize engineers either - stay off the frelling train tracks!)
In my own experience, when I’m depressed enough to kill myself I’m also too depressed to take action. With my luck I’ll be eighty-something years old on my deathbed going, “Damn, I forgot to commit suicide!” :smack:
Best quote in the thread.
Are we? I remember having been taught that suicide was a sin at sunday school, but generally speaking, nobody (parents, teachers…) tried to teach me “suicide is wrong”.
Actually, I’m surprised by the number of people who are stating here that suicide is morally wrong, and cowardly . Like every time the majority’s opinion surprises me on this board, I begin to wonder if this stance about suicide could be an american cultural trait…
I can’t comment on French society, though Flaubert’s Mme. Bovary makes it clear he thinks suicide is painful, and stupid.
However, I seem to recall English law used to have some really harsh penalties for suicides - something along the lines of having the body drawn, quartered, and buried at four corners of a crossroads. If that’s not a rather emphatic statement that suicide is wrong and disapproved of, I can’t imagine what would be.
So, I guess I’m saying it may be an American cultural thing, but it’s not solely American, I don’t think.
Well, this wasn’t really a point of my post, as I was providing possibe reasons in support of suicide, however since you asked…
The vast majority of suicides are unsuccessful (1 success per 24 attempts according to National Institute of Health 2001 data). For this reason, even if ALL successful attempts were done for different reasons than survivors, they would be in a great minority. The fact is that almost all medical studies done in the past 40 years show that most suicide attempts due to depression/stress/anxiety do not really want to die.
Interestingly enough, most of the **successful ** attempts are committed by the elderly (over 65) according to NIH, and several recent studies. Rates for death by suicide are around 18-22 per 100,000 for the elderly vs 9 per 100,000 for the total population (including elderly).
Well, you took this comment out of context, not even completing my sentence as I was questioning exactly this. I think you misunderstood what I was saying. You made my point demostrating that you were taught it was morally wrong in sunday school, as well as what you refer to be the “majority opinion” of the board.
As you clearly show, most people are taught by society that suicide is wrong. My question was why are we taught this? If someone is deathly ill, in pain and suffering, and life serves no purpose but endless pain, then why are they being selfish or “cowardly” if they die. It is my feeling that it is the family that is selfish or cowardly for making someone feel guilty for wanting to do this.