People with the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality do not understand what it is like to have your thoughts and feelings controlled by diseases like depression and suicidal ideation. How does a person decide who they are going to be and how their life will progress? The majority of people who commit suicide - or attempt it - are ill and have been ill for a long time. That is not their fault, mostly. They can be blamed, to some extent, for perpetuating those desires. The situation that they live in from day to day is just as responsible, if not more so.
If you ask me, the selfishness and cowardice on both sides is even. A suicide is tragic, nothing more or less.
Most low-percentage suicide attempts are really cries for attention, sure. But when a person employs a high-percentage method, I don’t think we can assume anything other than a genuine desire to die.
The woman who tries to overdose on OTC sleeping pills is worlds apart from the man who puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. And since most suicide attempts (by far, IIRC) are made by women, that can skew the data to however you want to present it. (Males are, again by far IIRC, much more likely to succeed.)
I would be interested in seeing a cite of those studies, in particular if they break it down by gender.
I found this an interesting question. 21 years ago a man,** “S”, ** I was involved with committed suicide. He was deeply depressed, but under treatment. When he had enough energy he bought a shotgun and shot himself. Both his parents killed themselves(his mother taking his baby brother with her) and his paternal grandfather also killed himself. (His maternal grandfather, a survivor if there ever was one, returned the shotgun to the sporting goods store after the police released it )
Even after “S” told me of his history his swore that he wouldn’t put anyone he loved through the same thing as he experienced. I believe that suicide was always an option for him. Was he a coward? To a degree. He saw how others lives went on after the deaths of his parents. So what the hell. I don’t know what was going through his mind when he pulled the trigger, but he couldn’t face his responsibilities chose death.
This must have been rough for you. I’m sorry to hear it and what a sad story. But it also brings up another point which I don’t recall being mentioned yet. I’ve heard evidence that the tendency to suicide may be in part biological and possibly heritable (e.g. related to impulse control issues). If ever there was someone likely to have a genetic predisposition - this guy had to have been it.
Well lets remember we are talking about suicide attempts. Remember that the majority of all attempts in US aren’t successful(96% per NIH data), which certainly indiciates that they are not using what you refer to as a “high percentage method”. I am not sure what you are trying to say as Gender holds no bearing regarding this.
I think what Ellis Dee and I are both saying is we want a cite. If “almost all medical studies done in the past 40 years” really show what you’re claiming, it shouldn’t be hard to direct us to at least one of those studies, right? I mean, surely you must have seen them if you’re making reference to them.
And gender does matter, if it turns out that women are more likely to attempt suicide and also more likely to fail. I’ve also heard that claim (women tend to attempt suicide as a call for help, wihch is why they use methods that are likely to fail, while men attempt suicide because they want to die), and I’d like to see how it measures up to the data.
Unfortunately access to most medical studies are limited to paying customers of medical journels and medical publication databases, if you are not, you are not able to access the actual studies I have read. Honestly I also didn’t give it much thought as it is actually not necessary to “cite” generally accepted thought. It was a very minor comment in an email about a completely different subject. Similar to asking me to cite that grass is green or that Donald Trump has ugly hair. I do apoligize that I did not provide specific cites, but it is not even clear what information you were looking for and I think you were missing the point. Personally I would hold that since 96% of suicides are unsuccessful, the pure fact that 96% are unsuccessful and it is not hard to die if you really want to, that data in it self indicates the that the majority of people don’t want to really die. Due to this, even if what I suggested was unheard of, “cites” outside the above National Institute of Health information really wasn’t necessary.
To answer your question, once again as my only point with regards to overall suicide attempts, the sex of the person does not matter in any way. I think that you have a misunderstanding in what I said. I am not in any way saying that people don’t have valid reasons to commit suicide. I was actually supporting it in for specific situations in my op. The statement I said in passing was that the majority of all suicide attempts do not want to die, and that they are not making a rational decision that they want to die. I am personally applying my statement to physically healthy, but depressed/stressed/anxious individuals, while the data is for all suicide attempts. If my comment was not clear, I apologize. As this is referring to overall suicide attempts, the statement is true whether they are female or male. For example, even if ALL suicides were males and wanted to die, it still doesn’t change the fact that 96% of the people attempting suicide were unsuccessful, and that the majority did not really want to die. Every one of the unsuccessful 96% could be women as well and it still would not change the facts on overall suicide attempts. On top of this, you should also you should the note percentage of successful attempts is so small, that their characteristics don’t impact the statastics of the overall suicide attempt group in the context of my statement. Conversely, in I should point out that this does **NOT ** necessarily mean that suicide attempts were a cry for help. This is a popular misunderstanding that I want to make clear. There are many possible reasons/theories to explain attempted suicide. Also do not read “majority” as meaning “all”. Personally I would hold that since 96% of suicides are unsuccessful, the pure fact that 96% are unsuccessful and it is not hard to die if you really want to, that data in it self indicates the that the majority of people don’t want to really die. I would furthermore sumbit that a reasonable portion of the group that fall into the successful 4% fall into my catagory of people that are old, or fatally/chronically ill. While there is evidence of this I do not have specific statistics in front of me to prove this however except the fact that suicide is 5.5 times more likely in men over 65 than in 15-24 year olds.
If you are still curious, many recent studies focus on men (because they may focus on a specific reason for attempted suicide or due to the fact that more men committ suicide than women), or a general cross-section of suicide attempts. Both usually hold that attempts did not rationally wish to die, although in some cases it may not be the only focus of the study. I personally have seen NO studies focusing on women, although I am sure they exist.
I should further comment that while some believe that women attempt suicide more than men, there is no actual data that clearly supports this. This is belief is probably due to the fact that women more freely admitt to attempting suicide than men. Data indicates that more attempts are actually done by white males. Recent studies from NIH show that white males are more likely to attempt suicide than any other group, while at the same time the CDC reports that women are more likely to admitt openly to a history of attempted suicide(3 times more likely). This has to do more with willingness to talk about their history than actual attempts. It is true however that men are more willing to use a gun (70% in men vs 60% in women per one NIH study) and that more suicides are performed by men (a huge 73% were white males in 2001). What you may find most suprising is that the highest suicide rate is in white males over the age of 65 and it gets even higher as they continue to age. Some of this goes against what is often the popular impression of people attempting suicide. There are many myths regarding suicide that are popularly held, that people have a misunderstanding on the realities of suicide. Another example is the myth that holidays (christmas or thanksgiving usually) have higher suicide rates. The reality is that the highest amount occurs in the spring in the US. That may be one of the biggest problems with this thread is there may be misconception on who is actually committing suicide, but that is really beside the point here and getting me on even more of a tanget that I am not going to get in to.
While as I am sure you are aware most popularly believe that suicidal people don’t rationally want to die, among professionals, belief in the “reasons” actually varies greatly and the basis for much more conjecture. I get the impression that your concern is that everyone believes that suicide is simply a cry for help. This is not the case among professionals as there are several theories, and some believe it varies between types of victims (which seems most likely). A popular theory that you may appreciate is that it is a frequently a control issue- meaning that attempting death is their only way to regain control of their life. The fact is however that they still don’t really WANT to die specially, but rather that they want to somehow retake control of what appears to be a depressing situation and suicide seems to be the only way to do this. This theory has been made popular by Paul Joffe, Ph.D, and is most commonly applied to young people. You can read about him in pyschology today
None of this was remotely the focus of my orginal post in this thread and you have caused me to go on a tangent. My post was solely about why many people have legitamite reasons for commiting suicide, and nothing else. I hope that I at least partly answered your questions, if not, I apologize if I have been unable to address your concerns. In future emails I would like to address the points for suicide I was orginally trying to make, which btw was that people in this debate are overlooking the chronically ill and dying who have nothing to live for but pain and there is no justifiable reason for them needing to continue to suffer which account for a substancial number of suicides.
If this is generally accepted thought, it’s news to me. Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but this thread is the first time I can remember hearing anyone seriously argue that people who try to kill themselves don’t really want to die.
On its face, that claim makes no sense. It’s like saying that if I heat some food up in the microwave, put it in my mouth, chew it, and swallow it, I don’t really want to eat. The only way that could be true is if I didn’t know those actions constituted eating (i.e. that I had a gross misunderstanding of how the eating process works), or if some mad scientist were controlling my body, forcing me to do things while I was consciously objecting every step of the way.
That’s why I want to see the studies - I want to know what exactly they mean when they say someone “doesn’t want to die”, because the very fact that someone is trying to kill themselves, to me, is a clear indication that they are trying to die, unless they don’t realize killing leads to death (or there’s a mad scientist involved). I can only guess that they’re using some bizarre definition of “want”, and concluding that even if a person takes actions with the intent of achieving a certain goal, they may not really “want” that goal.
Again, this looks like a case of misleading terminology. They want to retake control of a depressing situation, and dying seems to be the only way to do it. They want to die because they feel it’s the ultimate way to control their lives - that doesn’t change the fact that they still want to die.
I apologize if you feel this is a tangent, but you’re making claims that make no sense to me, and I think a discussion of those claims is legitimate in this thread. You’re not the only one making them, I’m not trying to single you out, but you seem to have a lot of information on this topic, even if you’re only willing to share it one bit at a time instead of pointing us to a place where we can read it on our own.
It is possible to want to die and not want to die. Not simultaneously, perhaps… desire, especially in this context, is mercurial. A suicidal/depressed person is experiencing mental chronic pain that is hardly different than chronic physical pain. IMO, the same processes are involved in both types.
Actually, a suicidal person is NOT physically healthy. Society cannot claim that these diseases are treatable, then turn around and say that an individual’s mental illness is caused by a character flaw(cowardice, irresponsibility, laziness, aggression, etc). The end result of that type of thinking is genetically engineered blandness. In other words, the value-judgements we make that determine our perception of a person’s social fitness are not necessarily based on how they truly benefit human progress.
This figure of 96% seems dubious. I imagine it includes all manner of attempts, even those that aren’t actual attempts by any reasonable standard. Consider a person aiming their car at a tree, only to swerve back onto the road at the last second. Was that a suicide attempt? I’m sure it would be included in the 96%, but I wouldn’t consider that an actual attempt. Same with minor cuts on the wrist, or any number of ways that people cry for help.
There is a notable distinction between cries for help and serious attempts. I am highly skeptical that the 96% figure applies to the latter; rather, I suspect it applies to the former. In such a case, the number sounds about right, but I dispute its usefulness.
The disconnect is that I don’t consider cries for help to be actual suicide attempts. I can accept that I may be in the minority.
I think that classifying cries for help in the same category as the person who eats a bullet does a disservice to both sides. On the one hand, the person who made the cry for help is treated much more harshly than is warranted, often with involuntary committal. On the other hand, the person who makes an actual suicide attempt but fails is treated as if they didn’t really want to die, which is a mistake. In the worst case scenario, they get on a never ending prescription drug carousel that is only marginally effective, if at all. More typically, they will simply figure out what it is that the doctors want to hear so they can get discharged and try again.
More to the point, this lumping of both categories leads to such misleading statements as this one to which I’m responding.
This is a problem, IMO.
That is fascinating, and plausible as well. You’ve got excellent info, but it would be much more satisfying to see that claim verified independently, as opposed to just taking your word for it.
i believe most people think that they are doing there family & friends a favor. as kids we said live love & party hard till you die and leave a good looking corpse. Today different Kid’s but the story remains the same. money, sex, drugs, peer pressure, parents, life, people, the world, no one is happy to be just themselves any more, no more no less?
any way you look at it it’s all just a bunch of bad choices that lead you down the hall of darkness. Cowardly Act no, it takes big ones to do it. Ah! but for the Grace of God go I.
