What are your thoughts on Hunter S Thompson? (well specifically his exit)
How was that that egocentric? It seemed to me that he had just had enough. He wasn’t trying to give a message to anyone, trying to hurt anyone, just simply that he decided to end living. If that was egocentric then was it necessarily a bad trait or neutral trait? ( sorry if I haven’t articulated this very well)
Namkcalb sorry I completely forgot about suicide bombers or any such faith driven self-killers. Please for the sake of this Op lets disregard them.
Am basically asking if absence of any extra stressful forces can a rational person decide that life isn’t worth living and decide to end his/her life or is that always an indication of mental illness
Yes. I don’t think mental illness is the direct cause of suicide very often. I can see suicide as often being the means of escaping the problems caused by mental illness, which is a poor, but rational decision, because someone is taking an action intended to result in their death. An irrational decision would be someone committing suicide in order to go live on a comet.
I don’t see how it can’t both be indicative of mental illness and also a rational decision. People with mental illness often suffer. A lot. And it’s not always just a matter of the right treatment. If someone is being tortured and begs to die, is that irrational? How about it someone is slowly dying of a crippling illness? How about if someone just has a crippling illness they will have to suffer through the rest of their lives? I don’t think these questions have easy answers, but I don’t generally think of it as irrational to want to permanently end your suffering.
with the right cocktail of pills you can eliminate all sorts of ideations, not just suicide related ones. Just because an “I am a woman, hear me roar” type of person can be drugged (or otherwise conditioned) into obedience to an oppressive environment it doesn’t make belief in female equality a mental illness. So just because you can “cure” something doesn’t make it an illness instead of a legit response to the circumstances.
I recall reading that a large number of suicides have been found to have alcohol in their systems on autopsy. In many suicide cases, I do believe that alcohol puts the person into a mental state where they are not thinking rationally and have dropped their inhibitions. Thanks to the alcohol, they may end up doing something harmful to themselves that they wouldn’t otherwise do, regardless of any pre-existing mental illness.
Are there rational reasons for why someone would commit suicide? I do think so, but I also think that it is also important to note that even in situations like terminal illness a person’s desire to die may in fact indicate untreated clinical depression.
My brother was a suicide. He suffered from bouts of depression, and self medicated with alcohol. He was rather intelligent, and was positive that he was the smartest man on the planet. Usually, this contribute to losing job after job. This just spiraled downward.
When I heard from his landlord, I wasn’t even really surprised that he had taken his own life.
I do not know if his problems would qualify as mental illness or not.
No, I don’t think it is. I have always thought that suicide was a valid option. Of course I have been diagnosis with a mental illness so take that for what it’s worth.
I wish to commit suicide, as I have said elsewhere I have had help and it didn’t. I have already done all the things people suggested in my thread to no avail. Why should I continue living in misery? I have no spouse, or children, or cats, or friends (just my mother & my ex). Why wouldn’t this be a rational choice given the circumstances of my life?
No. The idea that suicide is egocentric is in and of itself egocentric. People who suffer for years out of concern for their loved ones are selfless. There is nothing selfish about trying to relieve yourself of agony.