If you’re asking for a logical answer, jumping provides a body to bury and gives closure to the living.
Fair enough. Other than chronic pain or imminent death of some other form, what rationales are reasonable cause for suicide?
Many people (ancient Romans, Japanese samurai, disgraced military officers in 19th-Century Europe) have committed suicide for reasons of cultural expectation. Doing exactly what society expects of you can be stupid, even evil – but never crazy. Who is better-adjusted than a conformist?!
I don’t mean to give you the runaround, but reasonable by whose standards?
It can be a symptom, but it’s not always. Just like everything else in mental health. There is no single symptom which is always indicative of mental illness. There are always multiple symptoms or behaviors which must be present.
Hearing voices can be a symptom of schizophrenia. But according to my friend the shrink, 5% of “normal” people hear voices, too. (I see with a brief google that the number is debated, but it’s not debated that *some *number of people experience auditory hallucinations with no other signs or symptoms of mental illness.)
Being tired all the time can be a symptom of depression. But it can also be a symptom of fibromyalgia, anemia or being a new parent.
Checking the stove to make sure you’ve turned it off can be a symptom of OCD. But it can also be a reasonable response if you live with someone with Alzheimer’s or you’ve recently had a home fire.
Wanting to kill yourself can be a symptom of depression. But it can also be a reasonable response to a poor prognosis or a life just not worth living anymore.
I think the reason we get so twitchy about it (besides the religious baggage we as a culture carry around whether we’re Christians or not) is that it’s so irreversible. And because it is so tied in with depression - which is moderately curable - it would be a hell of a shame to “let” someone (physically and socially) kill themselves if they had untreated depression, schizophrenia or another mental illness.
I’m totally, completely okay with supporting people’s right to end their own lives. Hell, I’d be honored to help them, if it wasn’t illegal. But I’m also okay with requiring a mental health evaluation and a minimum attempt at treatment first.
I admit that I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
I have been diagnosed with major depression. I have no problem sleeping, I have plenty of energy, and only slight appetite disturbance (which might be a drug side-effect). I don’t like myself all the time, but the self-hatred is definitely not as “hot” as it used to be. I don’t cry or mope around or miss work. I don’t struggle to get out of bed every morning. I don’t have free floating anxiety or weird pains. You get the idea.
But one symptom that I cannot shake is suicidal ideation. I won’t say it’s always intense, but the idea will often come to me casually, usually right after something minorly bad happens. The thought is hopeful: “Well, I can always hang myself when I get home. That’ll make me feel better.” I don’t fight the thought; in fact, I play around with it like it’s actually going to happen. Just as casually as you might think about what you’re going to do over the weekend. I’ll think about the thing I’ll use to make a noose out of, what species of tree would be good to die in, the logistics of me climbing the tree, how I will look hanging there, who will find me and what will they do. The works. And then the idea will just fizzle out and be replaced with something much more mundane.
It’s become an escape fantasy of mine, and I can’t shake it because I like it.
Is it a symptom of depression? My shrink thinks so and that’s the main reason why she won’t give me the all clear, despite all the progress I’ve made. Even when I tell her it’s just a fantasy and that I won’t ever do it, she still thinks it’s an unhealthy habit…that it’s indicative of hopelessness and sadness that I just can’t “feel” or admit to. And I will admit, when I am feeling low, that fantasy doesn’t seem quite fantastical. But this happens so rarely now, and I wonder if perhaps everyone thinks of suicide from time to time.
Anyway, to answer the OP, I think so. I do think that if I ever acted out my thoughts, this would be a bad sign, and that’s why I keep trying to fix myself so that I can move farther and farther away from the possibility of ever carrying out my twisted dreams. But I’m not going to be bummed out if I never shake the fantasy. Because at least right now, I don’t see it ever being a reality.
(Some people commit suicide by accident. Like that guy from INXS. I suppose if you think weird masterbation is a sign of mental illness, then he qualifies. But he didn’t mean to die. He meant to have an orgasm.)
**Selfish **
adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
My dear brother, my only sibling, committed suicide. The only way I can deal with that fact is by believing that he was mentally ill. 
Why not yours?
Yes and no. Suicide is usually traced to illnesses like depression which amplify whatever misery you normally have. I have issues with depression and I know that even though my problems are identical they seem insurmountable when depressed but not a big deal when I’m not depressed.
At the same time I find the philosophy of ‘suicide is always wrong’ almost a sign of mental illness. My reason for that is that in order to believe that you have to believe that life is always worth living. And to me that reeks of an inability to face the fact that life has horror, despair, pain and trauma in it which can overwhelm the survival instinct and make escaping the trauma by any means necessary (including death) seem like a rational response (if suicidal urges in the face of severe trauma like severe social isolation, physical pain, helpnessness, despondency, etc weren’t a rational generic response, it wouldn’t be so common across cultures, genders and individuals whenever intense pain happens). I don’t know how to verbalize what I mean exactly. I guess I’m saying I tend to think people who feel there are no valid reasons for suicidal tendencies either have very strong constitutions, or they just don’t want to accept the negatives that exist in life and how powerful they can be. Its kind of like people who tell you to ‘smile and be happy all the time’ even though you just found out this morning that your dad has stage 4 cancer (as an example of someone not wanting to face the negative side of life). To say suicidal urges are wrong and unnatural implies someone has no idea how emotions work, they are pretty common when confronted with various forms of pain and suffering.
Making a bad decision in a time of stress does not automatically equal mental illness.
Ignoring cases of terminal illness, I’d say there is a strong correlation between suicide and mental illness, but not that all suicidal people are mentally ill.
Or they are just parroting what they were told. Those in power have often found it useful to promote the idea that suicide is innately evil. A population that believes that can be exploited more harshly without trying to escape their suffering by suicide; and it keeps people from making the obvious choice when they are taught to believe in a paradisaical afterlife.
First of all, I don’t see where anyone is suggesting that suicide be made illegal. Where did you pull that from?
Second, a major difference between other forms of harm you can do to your loved ones and suicide is that with the other ones there is some possibility of attempting redress, or at least saying “I’m sorry”. You can’t do that if you kill yourself.
As for the OP - I think there are instances where a sane person could reasonably contemplate and/or commit suicide… but I also think the vast majority of the time, particularly in physically healthy adults, it is connected to mental illness. So, not inevitably a sign of mental illness, but “Was this person mentally ill?” is a reasonable question to ask, and for the young and healthy a reasonable assumption until proven otherwise.
QtM, you have just summed up something I’ve been trying to say for two years. Thank you so much. You really helped a person today.
I have read a few books on suicide lately. My favorite quote on the subject is from, of all people, Harvey Fierstein: The great thing about suicide is that it’s not one of those things you have to do now or you lose your chance. I mean, you can always do it later.
Tell it to Stephen Hawking.
Just so we’re clear, I am not asking whether suicide is immoral. Personally, I think anyone should be allowed to bump themselves off when they choose, as long as they don’t make a mess.
He could still roll himself off a cliff.
That’s not really an option for most suicidees. Throw yourself off a cliff, and your body is quite likely to wash up on a beach somewhere. Throw yourself off a cruise ship, and you face an agonising death by drowning. Finding an erupting volcano to throw yourself into may not be practical.
As for the emotional mess that is left behind, that can’t be avoided unless the suicidee waits for all their friends and family to die off first.
My $.02, for whatever it’s worth…
I don’t believe that suicides are always a sign of mental illness.
When I was 17 I came very close to killing myself. I was convinced that it was the only way to stop the pain and despair I was feeling at the time. The thought of what it would do to my family, lost years of a productive life etc, simply was not part of the equation. It was a means to an end (literally). I’m not sure what kept me from doing it, but I’m glad I didn’t – today I have a wonderful wife and two awesome sons.
I don’t think, and doubt I ever will believe, that I was mentally ill. Several people in my maternal family tree have commited suicide, I tend to think that since I’m still here it means… hell, I dont know what it means. Maybe we all are screwed up and I simply didn’t take that final step.
Basically this. I think there’s a high correlation between suicide and mental illness and it’s certainly a big red flag that is, unfortunately, too late, but I think it’s still a single data point. I think situations of high stress can easily lead to some extreme and irrational decisions.
Yes, it can be difficult to deal with the suicide of a loved one, especially in situations where it’s completely unexpected and the signs either went unnoticed or plain weren’t present, but I don’t think assuming mental illness really helps the situation at all. I think if people feel like they missed the signs, it’s somehow their fault or if it’s illness then it’s not their fault, but it’s searching for a rational explanation for an irrational act.