My ex’s grandfather was a semi-truck driver until the day someone used his truck to commit suicide. Grandpa couldn’t even make himself drive a car afterwards, let alone continue as a truck driver.
I know someone who used to work for a coroner’s office. While she had the job, we actually talked about what a suicide could do that would be most considerate to the greatest number of people. She started with saying to pay your bills and clean your house, but the thing that few suicides did that made it easiest for the coroners was to video the suicide with a statement of intent at the beginning.
Apparently, most families are convinced that their family member couldn’t have committed suicide and the coroner’s office and the police need to stop being lazy and start working on the homicide investigation. A video, especially one that’s still running when the police get there, is the only effective way to shut that down sometimes.
The police need to be notified. If you’re not comfortable with a time delay, you can call in a low level complaint that will require an officer to visit, but not require one to come immediately.
I’m not sure how much of the rest will vary by location, but in my friend’s area, if you use your car and garage, the car will be impounded as evidence and the garage sealed, possibly until your death is confirmed as a suicide. Your family will have to get the car out of impound, and will be left with a car and garage that you killed yourself in. Also blood work will be necessary to prove the cause of death and an autopsy may be performed to determine that you didn’t die of a heart attack or stroke, leaving the car running because you couldn’t turn it off. Even with a note, you could have been dumped while drunk or drugged or you could have had a heart attack or stroke before the CO took you out.
I’ll try to remember more details. But I do remember her saying that most people who tried overdoses or slit wrists lived. (Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.) Successful overdoses usually cause vomiting and/or diarrhea and may also cause pain. Unsuccessful ones can cause permanent disabilities.
There was a method being touted at the time that she really disapproved of. It mixed taking an overdose with the plastic bag and nitrogen plan others have mentioned. Apparently when you mix methods, you get the big autopsy to determine which method got you first.
In her opinion, gunshots were easiest on the police, techs, and coroners, especially if taped. A gunshot is an obvious cause of death and as long as there was clear evidence that it was suicide, no blood tests or cutting were needed at the autopsy, just x-rays to show the path of travel.
She also approved of taking your clothes off so that the techs didn’t have to cut them off later. That might be optional if you want to sit against a tree in the back yard (catches the bullet, keeps the house from being taped off). The guy that she called the Courteous Suicide, and who prompted our conversation, had checked into a motel, set up the video, put out the do not disturb sign, called the cops, stripped, laid down in the tub with the water running, and propped a board behind him to catch the bullet.
His paperwork was neatly laid out on the bed and the video was still running when the cops arrived. None of the motel staff had to see him. Clean up was minimal. She did mention that the shower washed away the powder residue, and people who didn’t tape would want to avoid that. But in CS’s case, the video made the powder residue moot.
I am very much not advocating suicide. As others have mentioned, most people who attempt it don’t go on to try a second time. I’m just passing on what sort of things cause what kind of clean up and hassle for the folks that have to deal with things after. Even if I wasn’t feeling suicidal, I wouldn’t have thought of the car being impounded.
I can - not the part about the commute but the part where they force an innocent bystander to commit murder. I can totally blame them for that. Being in pain oneself is not an excuse to inflict that pain on other people.
But hardest on the innocent spouses who married into families where they insist on open-casket funerals no matter what, and the funeral director has to tell all the visitors not to touch anything, because your spouse’s cousin’s body’s forehead ‘isn’t set very well.’ :nauseated smiley:
Because your choice doesn’t create a positive obligation on the State to provide you with the means.
The Queensland rail meme covers this one
I don’t either.
Jeremy Clarkson has stated that the way to prevent delay caused by a train-suicide is to not stop the train, given that stopping will not help the person who just killed himself.
Why would a suicide have any consideration for what others think?
For the same reason the rest of us do. Being suicidal and sociopathic aren’t the same thing.
Neither I nor Maastricht said anything about the State having an obligation to provide the means. The original statement was:
There is nothing in there about the State being obligated to do anything.
This. If my own experience is typical - and I have no reason to believe it isn’t - suicide is driven by the need for relief from one’s own demons, not by the desire to fuck up someone else’s life.
I think they are exactly the same thing:
You know, if you’re ever looking for work, you’d be a great therapist.
It’s like a less confrontational method of “suicide by cop,” essentially. Yes, the person in question is mentally ill, but they also make a distinct and deliberate - if sometimes spur-of-the-moment - plan to force someone else to take their life for them, to risk killing others in the process, and to also risk just handing off that crushing beast of depression onto their unwilling executioner. In utter pain and desperation or not, that is a thoughtless and even evil act to carry out.
True. That information is skewed to the police and coroner side of things. It’s harder to guess at the fallout for a family because every family is different. I’d guess that every suicide hurts the family (when there is one), but that using a gun might be less problematic in, say, a family with a tradition of quick, quiet cremations and maybe a pot luck memorial later.
I read recently that they’re also expected to inspect the scene afterwards, so the emergency crews know what they’re dealing with.
ETA: It was the article that friedo linked to.
Nice post/poster location combo.
Please, bobkitty, get off the tracks!
Any suicide is inconsiderate for the people left behind. The best method, therefore, is one where the autopsy report comes back “There doesn’t seem to be any signs of foul play. He just died, we don’t know why. Call it heart attack, for want of a better cause.”
I have no suggestions on a method that will give that result.
I sometimes wonder if public suicide clinics aren’t a good idea…