Is suicide inherent proof of mental illness?

Great Debates
81

Alright.

If I tell you I once slitted my wrists to see what was on the other side, what would you conclude about my state of mind? Would you need more information?

Or would you do what most people would not be able to do and just shrug your shoulders and give it no other thought?

I’m not big on labels either, just to be clear. I don’t go around seriously calling people crazy. If that were the case, I’d be sitting in a hospital right now. But I’m also of the belief that it’s not that hard to see when someone is just eccentric or quirky and when they are completely out of their gourd. I concede that sometimes the lines are blurred and that there is an industry out there that capitalizes on creating illnesses out of thin air. But for reals, if someone is blasse enough about life (or death) that they would kill themselves just because they don’t want to live any more, with no emotions behind this decision, I would question their mental state.

I’m as emotionally disturbed as the next chick (da bump bump), but not having emotions at a time like that is not normal and would be a major warning sign of a brain gone wrong.

82

First of all, monstro, I’m sorry if my previous post came across as antagonistic.

Well, it was something like this latter position that I was actually arguing against. I don’t think that pain is necessarily the reason for all (sane) suicides.
I gave the example of people who commit suicide for political reasons, such as Emily Davison and Mohamed Bouazizi. Or of people going on suicide missions in war. But these were just meant to be the thin end of the wedge; clear-cut examples of people making a conscious decision to die for non-pain reasons.

One philosophy which is very popular, is the idea that everything we do is geared directly or indirectly to maximizing our pleasure and minimizing suffering. IMO it’s easy to debunk this idea, but I keep having to do it because so many people I meet assume it as a self-evident fact.
I can’t help feeling we’re in that territory now.
“Since suicide cannot increase happiness, then the only other (sane) motivation is decreasing suffering…”

83

No problem.

Well, I did say “most”, right? The majority of suicides are not political in nature, but rather intensely personal. And I would even argue that just because someone’s suicide act is political, that does not mean it is devoid of anguish.

I can personally imagine killing myself to send a message about something I felt passionately about (which would mean that it probably be a public spectacle and therefore graphic and inconveniencing…which would make it kind of a dickish way to go). But that passion would be driven not out of joy or love, but because the atrocity I’m rallying against would hurt the very grain of my being. I would be saying, “The system is so shitty I can’t bear to live in it anymore!”

However, I’ll concede that this is not necessarily what drives other suicidal acts of a political nature.

I’m not sure I completely understand what you are saying here. I’ll take a stab at it, though. How about, “Suicide should be used as an escape mechanism when all other reasonable alternatives have been explored or considered.” Do you agree with this?

I don’t think life “should” be happy. Life just is. I do agree with you that people put a lot of emphasis on it, though, and that when you are suffering, the happy-happy-joy-joy people can make you feel homicidal as well as suicidal. But I don’t think you should automatically give in to every desire you have…including the one to die. That’s as equally hedonistic. There has to be some middle ground.

84

I don’t think there’s anything left that we disagree on. Suicide is not necessarily irrational, nor is it necessarily about ending an individual’s pain.

I don’t think you have understood my point here, but there’s no reason for me to go into it now.
The response I was expecting was something like “Of course everything we do is motivated by maximizing happiness. What else could there be?” but I see that this isn’t your position at all.

85

In his book “Suicide and Assisted Suicide,” Geo Stone answers this question “Yes, no, not necessarily, and so what?”

86

I completely take issue with that statement.

For example, In my state, before you can use a self-defense defense in court to murdering someone, you have to show that no other escape was possible. Here the state has required me to perform the better action of escape rather than a killing.

This is not to say that a life where force to choose the better action never happens isn’t possible, some may have a life like that.

When I was younger and got in trouble a few times, the legal system had its lectures about what I should have done instead, with the idea of “seek the better course next time, or go to jail.”

87

I’ve been watching this thread for a while, and I think the real problem is with the term “mentally ill” rather than with suicide itself.

Humans are designed to categorize things: yellow crayons over there, red crayons over there. Sane people over here, mentally ill people over there. Nice little boxes, nice little categories which don’t overlap, and have nice bright dividing lines to keep them arranged neatly.

Except that most things exist in a continuum, not in categories. People aren’t sane up until one specific moment when they “go crazy” nor are mentally ill people entirely devoid of all of the “sane” behaviors and opinions shared by the rest of humanity.

What I’m saying is that since we aren’t telepathic, nor empathic (in the science-fictional sense, not the mirror-neuron sense) we can’t really TELL anything about anyone else’s mental state (their thoughts and emotions) with any certainty.
Sure there are people of sufficient fortitude to withstand torture and deprivation and hatred - lots of people were rescued eventually from the Holocaust. Does that mean that the people who didn’t have that fortitude were mentally ill?

If I am kidnapped and tortured and have an opportunity to kill myself and do so to escape, am I then mentally ill for not having the necessary resources to sustain my life under that fashion? What if in an alternate dimension, the kidnapper picks someone else? I don’t change, but suddenly I’m saner, simply because I didn’t encounter a certain situation? That doesn’t make sense.

As far as I am willing to state, suicide is a signal that there was something wrong, from the perspective of the person who committed it. Whether that wrongness is caused by their life situation, by chemical imbalances in their brains or bodies, or by their own personal emotional and mental frameworks, we can’t know that for sure.

88

We all have a reason to live. The heart hasn’t stopped beating yet. Sounds like you are considering your own estimation of the value of another’s life rather than theirs, as I doubt the “pretenders” think they are pretending. In their view, it is you who pretends they have no reason to live.

To call people mentally ill because you can find no value for them is not too rational if you ask me.

89

A fox who chews off his leg to get out of a trap is not insane. Sometimes the choice for death is a sane response to a horrendous situation.

If the person commits suicide due to a trap s/he can see/feel but which is not really there, then that’s insanity.

90

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91

hi,

i’ve just registered with this site, and felt like taking part in this discussion because it is a subject that i feel strongly about and also one which can be tricky to talk about if you don’t want to worry or upset the people who care about you. i’ve recently had a stay in hospital because i was deemed to be mentally ill; the diagnoses that have been ascribed to me, the medication and treatment that i’ve received, and it seems to me pretty much everything else that’s happened lately has been predicated on one assumption, namely that there is something intrinsically wrong with suicide. furthermore that if one plans to kill oneself and speaks to a psychiatrist about it, one’s liberty can be compromised almost as if one had been found guilty of a crime. people look at you horrified as you explain the various pros and cons of the methods you have in mind, and you inevitably end up faking that you’re doing better simply because it’s not only what everyone seems to want to hear, but it’s also the only way that you’re going to get out of the secure ward that you find yourself in. again.
i maintain though that the fundamental assumption that suicidal thoughts, and the intention to kill oneself is irrational, pathological or in any way necessarily a mental illness is dogmatic, anachronistic and probably partly a relic of the time when we were less secular than we are now. it’s also partly a result of a confusion of hippocratic oath, legal or other concerns and the big elephant in the room, which is what we might call ‘the doctrine of the sanctity of human life’.
this idea is so deeply ingrained in us, our society, law and so on, that to question it is not far from heretical, and from there it’s a short step to being ‘sectioned’ or ‘committed’. the notion that suicide is self-evidently wrong and a terrible thing, not just to suffer, but also to commit, is taken as axiomatic by our culture. it’s as if to argue otherwise is to deny that a triangle has three sides, or that if i have 5 apples, and you give me 5 apples, i will have 10 apples. these are not just matters of fact: there is no way that we can conceive of things being otherwise, and these ideas would be true and necessary regardless of the availabilty of apples, or even the existence of people to think about triangles and stuff.
so, my point, such as it is, is i suppose to question this presumption that killing oneself, or even just being seriously suicidal is morally wrong, necessarily something to be prevented or even irrational. none of those ideas is necessarily implied by suicide, and the doctrine of the sanctity of human life is a value-judgement at best, and an absurdly childish prejudice at worst. as the mighty cristopher hitchens was fond of saying, we don’t actually need god as our moral arbiter; the fact is that we seem to have a sense of decency without his/her help. and, despite having been depressive for 30 years and self-destructive and quite often suicidal, i have not really done anything to anyone that i would consider a crime: i have not been deliberately cruel or abusive, and i’m not sure that i have an enemy in the world. my own opinion happens to be that if one has felt really horrible, and i mean what i would call genuine existential pain, for several decades, then it seems like an eminently rational thing to consider putting an end to it. if the dogmatic horror and all that prejudice about suicide was maybe put to one side, then we’d be able to be open about what we are experiencing, and also it would be quite handy for me because i’m too much of a pussy to jump off a tower block, or in front of a train. if i could get suicide on the nhs (say a large quantity of barbiturates, for example), i think that would be a massive step forward for us as a culture. no-one really seems to vexed about abortion, at least in the UK, and that’s i think because the idea that a woman has a sovereign right over her own body was never really in any doubt. so i find this taboo about suicide a bit odd, frankly, as surely we should be beyond these childish superstitions by now, right?

92

As long as we are taking votes:

I maintain that suicide is an absolute, inviolate right of every person over a very, very low age - say 16-18.
By the time anyone is 20, there is no question.

I once saw a woman on the SF-Oakland bay bridge with her car stopped and looking calmly at the water below.
I did call the Highway Patrol, but regretted doing so. At least it took 10-15 minutes to get to the phone (1982).

If I saw the same thing today, I would not.

As I pointed out in another thread, the discussion of suicide is now where the discussion of gay rights was in 1969.
Homosexuality was still in the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Assn, but the Stonewall riots had started the debate (it was removed from the manual om 1972, IIRC).

We now are approaching it slowly. Dr. Kervorkian’s work should have started this a decade ago, but at least we’re nibbling around the edges.

For now, we’re pretty much in agreement re terminal disease with or without extreme pain.

It’s a start…

93

Oh yes, I have been, in a mandated-by-CA-law, 3 day hospital “Suicide Watch” because the head nurse heard me comment that I think of suicide as a relief valve.
I am now taking anti-depressants because of the medical record of “suicide idealization”.

  1. And it looks like this battle is going to be tougher than race or sexuality.

But I no longer mention that word around medical types.

94

As a “medical type,” thank you for not mentioning it. Because I actually agree with you. I think you write some very insightful and accurate things in your post. My problem is that I’m legally trapped. Even though I personally and professionally agree with you, if I hear you talking like that in real life, I have to do something about it or I can lose my license.

I’m not a very good liar. If you did kill yourself and then your doctor or a family member came to me and asked if you’d said anything recently about committing suicide, I’d have to say yes, you had, but I hasn’t reported it. And then I’d get my nursing license taken away and potentially face jail time or big fines for not following my state’s mandatory reporting law. (I’m actually not sure what the penalties are, but I’m sure I don’t want to find out.)

So, have some compassion for your medical types. It’s entirely possible they privately agree with you, but it would be professional suicide for them not to act on your statements. They are fellow victims of the cultural sanctity of human life.

95

There is gradual absolute capitalism = slow suicide
There is violent absolute capitalism = fast suicide

Suicide is a choice.

Currently the system you all call civilization takes more power than it gives to sustain existence.

The same as chopping down trees faster than they regrow to sustain existence.

As long as there are trees to chop down you can sustain committing slow suicide.

But at the logical conclusion or defeat of the reasonable assumption…the trees run out

Then you commit fast suicide.

If you are ignorant of what you are doing and you kill yourself

Is that sane/smart or insane/dumb?

Absolute capitalism takes more power than it gives from all and everything in the universe to sustain it’s existence for as long as possible.

The same as chopping down trees faster than they regrow to sustain existence for as long as possible.

When the trees run out at the logical conclusion…eternal death or suicide is the result.

This is antisocialism.

Responsible capitalism shares power as equally as possible with all and everything in the universe to sustain existence for as long as possible.

The same as chopping down trees as fast as or slower than they regrow to sustain existence. as long as possible.

Since the trees do not run out…there is no logical conclusion…eternal life is the result

This is socialism

Which of the two is smart/sane and dumb/insane.

Do you choose to take more power than you give or chop down trees faster than they regrow to prove how sane you are?

Of course as long as there are trees to chop down to keep proving that you are sane you will be sane until the trees run out and then you will be proven insane.

or

Do you choose to share power as equally as possible or chop down trees as fast as or slower than they regrow to prove how sane you are?

Of course since the trees never run out…you will never be proven insane.

96

your bodies are composed of trillions of absolute capitalistic or animal cells that take more power than they give to sustain existence.

They are ignorant of Truth.

There is no such thing as human being cells.

You are not a human being at the instant of conception or birth and what you see when you look into a mirror is not a human being.

Animals are ignorant of truth and take more power than they give to sustain existence for as long as possible.

Human beings are knowledgeable of truth and share power as equally as possible to sustain existence as long as possible.

Maintaining existence as a human being is an ideal that constantly has to be strived for.

Maintaining existence as an animal requires no thought at all since taking more power than is given is the path of least effort…the path that all and everything ignorant of truth in the universe follows by default.

It only requires belief.

That is what university trained mental health professionals do in order to earn a living…Convince people to believe.

If you are told you have a mental illness by a university trained mental health professional and choose to believe you do…that is what a university trained mental health professional wants.

But if you choose not to believe what a university trained mental health professional wants you to believe…that is what a university trained mental health professional does not want.

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb.

Only one but first the light bulb has to want to change.

97

At what point is a good time to stop being compassionate to the educated health care professionals that demand it?

When it’s too late?

“T4 Program, also called T4 Euthanasia Program, Nazi German effort—framed as a euthanasia program—to kill incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and elderly people. Adolf Hitler initiated this program in 1939, and, while it was officially discontinued in 1941, killings continued covertly until the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.”

"In October 1939, Adolf Hitler empowered his personal physician and the chief of the Chancellery of the Führer to kill people considered unsuited to live. He backdated his order to September 1, 1939, the day World War II began, to give it the appearance of a wartime measure. In this directive, Dr. Karl Brandt and Chancellery chief Philipp Bouhler were “charged with responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians…so that patients considered incurable, according to the best available human judgment of their state of health, can be granted a mercy killing.”

"Within a few months, the T4 Program—named for the Chancellery offices that directed it from the Berlin address Tiergartenstrasse 4—involved virtually the entire German psychiatric community. A new bureaucracy, headed by physicians, was established with a mandate to kill anyone deemed to have a “life unworthy of living.” Some physicians active in the study of eugenics, who saw Nazism as “applied biology,” enthusiastically endorsed this program. However, the criteria for inclusion in this program were not exclusively genetic, nor were they necessarily based on infirmity. An important criterion was economic. Nazi officials assigned people to this program largely based on their economic productivity. The Nazis referred to the program’s victims as “burdensome lives” and “useless eaters.”

98

“Nevertheless, the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act passed on March 7, 1928, creating a Eugenics Board with the power to authorize the sexual sterilization of individuals. From 1929 to 1972, the board approved 4725 of 4800 cases brought before it, of whom 2822 were officially sterilized. (British Columbia passed a similar act in 1933 but was far less vigorous in its implementation. In any case the BC records have been destroyed.)”

“The Alberta Eugenics Board took on a life of its own. Neither the wave of revulsion that followed the revelations of Hitler’s policies to “purify” the German people, nor the strong repudiation of eugenics ideas by leading scientists had any impact on the operation of the board, which continued its work with the full support of the Social Credit government. The new Conservative government of Peter Lougheed finally erased the law in 1972.”

“A celebrated law case finally brought the eugenics disgrace to light. Leilani Muir sued the Alberta government for wrongfully confining her, stigmatizing her as a moron, and sterilizing her. Rather than offering an acceptable settlement out of court, the Klein government insisted on a full trial, which took place in 1995. The Hon. Madame Justice Joanne B. Veit ruled that the province had wrongfully sterilized Ms Muir and ordered it to pay damages. “The circumstances of Ms Muir’s sterilization were so high-handed and so contemptuous… and were undertaken in an atmosphere that so little respected Ms Muir’s dignity that the community’s and the court’s sense of decency is offended,” Veit wrote in her judgment.”

It was found out in the trial that most of the people sterilized were not suffering from anything except abuse from highly educated mental health professionals who think they are sane and everyone else is insane…

99

“The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted at Stanford University from August 14–20, 1971, by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. It was funded by the US Office of Naval Research and was of interest to both the US Navy and Marine Corps as an investigation into the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.”

“Twenty-four male students out of seventy-five were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building for a period of 7–14 days. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo’s expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed, and excerpts of footage are publicly available.”

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0YX_uRDVVcM/VQnZvLvh-UI/AAAAAAAAAfU/vtFpdNAefDk/s1600/cesar-millan-rollerblades-with-dog-packii.jpg

100

Hypertiger, will you ever get to the point? Your soapbox is about to collapse under the excess baggage.