Suicide by train

[Broomstick]

@EmilyG

I wonder how you people who think that train suicide victims are ‘‘assholes’’ would feel if one of your family members committed suicide by train. If it was someone you loved, would you still think they’re an asshole?

My sister didn’t commit suicide by train, but I still think killing herself was an asshole move. She made it very clear in her three-page note that she did it in part to hurt other people, most notably the person she had been in a seven-year relationship with, said relationship ending at that point in time.

That said, I also recognize my sister suffered from a severe and real illness. I recognize she was hurting. I still love her for the many positive things she did. She still used her suicide to deliberately cause other people pain. Granted, that pain was purely emotional and not physical, but why discount the survivors’ pain?

And just a note - my sister did have access to treatment, and utilized it, for well over a decade. You can’t attribute her particular death to lack of access.

My sister’s illness did not make her lose contact with reality, and did not make her incapable of moral choice. As I previously stated, she took care that no one else would be physically hurt by her death, and chose a relatively non-messy manner of killing herself. It was still a dick thing to do to those who loved her.

I realize that makes me a bad person to the “oh, boo-hoo, the mentally ill are completely helpless crowd” but so be it. I did not come to my conclusion through ignorance.

Meanwhile - IF depression DOES cause such a loss of moral culpability then the only rational thing to do is to immediately incarcerate anyone with a history of depression for the rest of his or her life to protect themselves and others from their disconnected-from-reality actions, and to make them all wards of a non-mentally ill person (relative, friend, the state) so to manage the affairs of the incompetent. I don’t believe that is a necessary action, and I don’t think those championing the mentally ill think so either. Mental illness does not automatically render a person helpless or incompetent.

[Telemark]

@Broomstick

Then there are those of us who do understand mental illness, and understand it is a spectrum and not a binary disorder. Mental illness does not instantly and completely render a person helpless in all situations. There are millions of people who struggle with mental illness yet are morally competent people at the same time. Painting those who understand not all mental illness is equally incapacitating and ignorant or insensitive is a gross distortion of reality.

You can also be mentally ill AND a jerk. The two states are not mutually exclusive.

This sums up my feelings much more eloquently than I wrote earlier. I’ve had enough experiences dealing with the aftermath of suicide and suicide attempts to speak more than in the abstract. Mental illness is a broad spectrum of symptoms and effects; in some/many/most cases it doesn’t destroy a person’s moral compass. Where you draw the line in *some *vs *many *vs *most *is certainly open to debate.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

This thread is a train wreck.

[phouka]

@Eyebrows_0f_Doom

People who throw themselves in front of trains to commit suicide are assholes. Froth at the mouth all you want, it won’t change that.

How about this:

How about, instead of hating on people who are already messed up enough to kill themselves and do it in a manner that endangers, harms, and even kills other people, we spend our precious time and energy on trying to solve the problem?

Because even if you consider train suiciders to be assholes as opposed to extremely sick people, sitting back and pronouncing judgment doesn’t prevent more of these tragedies. It allows more to happen. You see, suicidal people who are so far gone as to consider throwing themselves in front of a train a viable option aren’t going to be shamed by hearing previous train jumpers called assholes, sick bastards, murderers, or any other name you want to call them. If they recall it at all, they’re only going to think something along the lines of “screw it, they hate me anyways”.

I’m not saying that everyone singing “Poor Pitiful Pauline” at them will help either. What I am saying is that if we can set aside that perfectly understandable and justifiable rage, and consider this as a problem to be solved, we stand a much better chance of preventing future occurrences, and by doing so, save some lives.

Some of it is already being done in places. Fences put up along train tracks to make it more difficult to reach them, signs and phones offering help to the suicidal and monitored cameras so that train jumpers can be spotted and stopped. But we need more resources to treat mental illness, and we need to create legal provisions to effectively commit someone who has become a danger to themselves and others. We need a safety net so that those individuals who might become train jumpers have some place to go for treatment before they reach the point where it’s somehow an acceptable choice to jump in front of a train.

And when that fails - because inevitably there will be someone who defeats all those measures - then we need some seriously heavy duty resources to care for the people harmed by the fallout of that suicide - people hurt or killed by a derailment and their families, conductors and engineers with PTSD from seeing another human being die in front of them, passengers who need to get home to care for children or elderly parents or need to get to work to perform vital services.

I am not in favor of mourning train jumpers to the exclusion of survivors. I don’t spend all my compassion on someone so broken they hurt other human beings while ending their own lives. There’s plenty more left for the remainder caught up in these tragedies. I am trying to find a way to humanize the people who cause this havoc in an effort to find some way to minimize and prevent future occurrences. If I had to choose between the innocent bystanders and the jumper, I’d choose the bystanders every single time. Yet, I’m convinced that it’s not a choice between. It’s a choice of targeting care towards individuals who could potentially do this, so that the bystanders are never harmed.

[phouka]

@Broomstick

I realize that makes me a bad person to the “oh, boo-hoo, the mentally ill are completely helpless crowd” but so be it. I did not come to my conclusion through ignorance.

Meanwhile - IF depression DOES cause such a loss of moral culpability then the only rational thing to do is to immediately incarcerate anyone with a history of depression for the rest of his or her life to protect themselves and others from their disconnected-from-reality actions, and to make them all wards of a non-mentally ill person (relative, friend, the state) so to manage the affairs of the incompetent. I don’t believe that is a necessary action, and I don’t think those championing the mentally ill think so either. Mental illness does not automatically render a person helpless or incompetent.

Broomstick, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I’ve never thought you’re a bad person. All of my experience of you, through your posts, informs me that you are a compassionate, insightful, determined, brave person worthy of emulation. But that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to label one side of this discussion as the “boo-hoo, the mentally ill are completely helpless” crowd. It’s dismissive. It’s a misrepresentation of what I and others are saying, it’s an over-generalization of depression and other mental illnesses, and it excludes a very large middle of people who have depression, people with depression who suffer from suicidal impulses, and people with depression who suffer from suicidal impulses and commit suicide. It assumes only that every person with depression suffers from suicidal impulses, will attempt to commit suicide, and will do so in a manner that endangers and harms others.

No one is saying that all people with any mental illness are always helpless and incompetent. What some of us are saying is “anyone who commits suicide by throwing themselves under a train should be assumed to be so damaged by their mental illness that they were incapable of making a rational decision.” From there, the conclusions that “people incapable of making rational decisions should not be held accountable for their actions” and that “irrational people who harm others should not be hated but pitied” follow. I’m making the additional argument that “if we treat the act of suicide by train as the irrational impulse of a damaged person, we can take steps to prevent future suicides of this nature as well as minimize the harm done to innocent bystanders.”

Do you find any value in this argument? Any value at all?

[Telemark]

@phouka

What some of us are saying is “anyone who commits suicide by throwing themselves under a train should be assumed to be so damaged by their mental illness that they were incapable of making a rational decision.”

I understand and even sympathize with that statement, but I don’t agree with it.

[Czarcasm]

True story(I was there)-When I was a kid we had a neighbor, Nadine, who had severe bouts of depression. My mother had sent me over to see if we could pick up any groceries for her, and I found her in the kitchen bleeding from two slit wrists. She sliced them open horizontally. I called the police and they sent an ambulance. As the medic was wrapping her wrists he decided to scare her straight and said something like, “Dammit lady! There are people out there that really need our help, and you waste our time with this? You didn’t even do it right-you’re supposed to slice up the vein, not acrossed it. That way you die quick and easy and don’t waste anybody’s time.”

When she was released from the hospital a few days later, she took his advice.

Sometimes mental illness cuts you off from the world in such a way that you think that you have no connection to any part of it. The world becomes an adversary, and life merely another hardship. The guy who smiled as he walked into the oncoming train may well have been thinking, “You win. No harm, no foul. I give up.”

[Tollhouse]

@Broomstick

Then there are those of us who do understand mental illness, and understand it is a spectrum and not a binary disorder. Mental illness does not instantly and completely render a person helpless in all situations. There are millions of people who struggle with mental illness yet are morally competent people at the same time. Painting those who understand not all mental illness is equally incapacitating and ignorant or insensitive is a gross distortion of reality.

You can also be mentally ill AND a jerk. The two states are not mutually exclusive.

I guess I thought most people already know this…of COURSE its a spectrum…:smack:

You could be a jerk, and also mentally ill. But you being a jerk would not have to do with committing suuicide…get it? A person could be a jerk because of character issues that make him jerklike, such as arrogance, being a racist, etc. but being severely depressed or in a state of psychosis that causes their judgment to become impaired and desperate for relief from the symptoms of an illness, no..lthat is not what makes a person a jerk. The man in the OP jumped in front of a tran. How is it you assume he was a jerk? Had you met him, had coffee with the man, or known him well enough to jnow he was a jerk?
How would you assume he was a jerk, anymore than a story of a man who had a heart attack on an airplane that you didnt know? Do you normally as a matter of course assume people you never met are jerks based on the outcome of their illness?

Perhaps you would then say my grandma was nothing but a big jerk for having the nerve to cause problems upset and inconveinience to people as a result of her dementia?

[Tollhouse]

@Broomstick

My sister didn’t commit suicide by train, but I still think killing herself was an asshole move. She made it very clear in her three-page note that she did it in part to hurt other people, most notably the person she had been in a seven-year relationship with, said relationship ending at that point in time.

That said, I also recognize my sister suffered from a severe and real illness. I recognize she was hurting. I still love her for the many positive things she did. She still used her suicide to deliberately cause other people pain. Granted, that pain was purely emotional and not physical, but why discount the survivors’ pain?

And just a note - my sister did have access to treatment, and utilized it, for well over a decade. You can’t attribute her particular death to lack of access.

My sister’s illness did not make her lose contact with reality, and did not make her incapable of moral choice. As I previously stated, she took care that no one else would be physically hurt by her death, and chose a relatively non-messy manner of killing herself. It was still a dick thing to do to those who loved her.

I realize that makes me a bad person to the “oh, boo-hoo, the mentally ill are completely helpless crowd” but so be it. I did not come to my conclusion through ignorance.

Meanwhile - IF depression DOES cause such a loss of moral culpability then the only rational thing to do is to immediately incarcerate anyone with a history of depression for the rest of his or her life to protect themselves and others from their disconnected-from-reality actions, and to make them all wards of a non-mentally ill person (relative, friend, the state) so to manage the affairs of the incompetent. I don’t believe that is a necessary action, and I don’t think those championing the mentally ill think so either. Mental illness does not automatically render a person helpless or incompetent.

Too bad you were not educated at the time of her tragic death, so that you could understand what the heck a serious mental ilkness is. Book learnin is a wonderful tool, that…

[Broomstick]

@phouka

How about, instead of hating on people who are already messed up enough to kill themselves and do it in a manner that endangers, harms, and even kills other people, we spend our precious time and energy on trying to solve the problem?

I absolutely support efforts to better treat mental illness. One of my regrets regarding the universe is that my sister did not live long enough to try some of the newer anti-depressants which might have helped her. Or maybe they wouldn’t have but she never had the opportunity to try them.

I just don’t accept that being suicidal inherently erases a person’s moral compass because most suicides don’t willfully involve others in the manner train jumpers do. One thing I would definitely support is research into why some people involve or endanger others and so many don’t, and what the risk factors are for that behavior so better evaluations can be made as to who is a physical danger to others and who isn’t. I can’t help but think there’s a connection to some of the spree-killers who seem to want to kill others prior to taking their own lives. Or maybe not. We just don’t know, do we?

Because even if you consider train suiciders to be assholes as opposed to extremely sick people, sitting back and pronouncing judgment doesn’t prevent more of these tragedies.

It doesn’t prevent tragedies, but unless someone is soooo deranged as to truly have no grasp of reality (hypothetically, a grossly hallucinating person who simply doesn’t see the oncoming train, or sees it as something else) I still think one can be suicidal AND an asshat at the same time.

It allows more to happen. You see, suicidal people who are so far gone as to consider throwing themselves in front of a train a viable option aren’t going to be shamed by hearing previous train jumpers called assholes, sick bastards, murderers, or any other name you want to call them.

Can we be sure of that? How do we know that some aren’t swayed by public disapproval of the method? Has anyone ever done any research into why people choose the suicide methods they do? (Presumably, this would have to be done with unsuccessful suicides).

Some of it is already being done in places. Fences put up along train tracks to make it more difficult to reach them, signs and phones offering help to the suicidal and monitored cameras so that train jumpers can be spotted and stopped. But we need more resources to treat mental illness, and we need to create legal provisions to effectively commit someone who has become a danger to themselves and others. We need a safety net so that those individuals who might become train jumpers have some place to go for treatment before they reach the point where it’s somehow an acceptable choice to jump in front of a train.

I absolutely and unequivocally support all of the above.

And when that fails - because inevitably there will be someone who defeats all those measures - then we need some seriously heavy duty resources to care for the people harmed by the fallout of that suicide - people hurt or killed by a derailment and their families, conductors and engineers with PTSD from seeing another human being die in front of them, passengers who need to get home to care for children or elderly parents or need to get to work to perform vital services.

^ I think this is being neglected by some in this thread, especially the poster who claimed “you aren’t harmed” if you’re a passenger on a train used for suicide. The harm any individual passenger suffers may not be as great as what the suicide suffers (although if the trail derails and passengers are maimed/killed they most certainly do suffer greatly) but there is still harm.

Frankly, a successful suicide doesn’t need my sympathy. HIS problems are over, he’s dead after all. The people I feel most sympathy for are the friends and loved ones he leaves behind, THEY are the ones most in need of comfort.

[Tollhouse]

@Czarcasm

True story(I was there)-When I was a kid we had a neighbor, Nadine, who had severe bouts of depression. My mother had sent me over to see if we could pick up any groceries for her, and I found her in the kitchen bleeding from two slit wrists. She sliced them open horizontally. I called the police and they sent an ambulance. As the medic was wrapping her wrists he decided to scare her straight and said something like, “Dammit lady! There are people out there that really need our help, and you waste our time with this? You didn’t even do it right-you’re supposed to slice up the vein, not acrossed it. That way you die quick and easy and don’t waste anybody’s time.”

When she was released from the hospital a few days later, she took his advice.

Sometimes mental illness cuts you off from the world in such a way that you think that you have no connection to any part of it. The world becomes an adversary, and life merely another hardship. The guy who smiled as he walked into the oncoming train may well have been thinking, “You win. No harm, no foul. I give up.”

And did this so called paramedic suffer any legal or professional conseqjences? Probably not.

Im not sure how much mental health training paramedics have to get, if any, but at least now police supposedly receive some training on the subject and how to help mentally ill people

[Broomstick]

@phouka

No one is saying that all people with any mental illness are always helpless and incompetent. What some of us are saying is “anyone who commits suicide by throwing themselves under a train should be assumed to be so damaged by their mental illness that they were incapable of making a rational decision.” From there, the conclusions that “people incapable of making rational decisions should not be held accountable for their actions” and that “irrational people who harm others should not be hated but pitied” follow. I’m making the additional argument that “if we treat the act of suicide by train as the irrational impulse of a damaged person, we can take steps to prevent future suicides of this nature as well as minimize the harm done to innocent bystanders.”

Do you find any value in this argument? Any value at all?

I see value in the argument but I do not agree with it. Yes, some train jumpers may be completely detached from reality but I have to wonder if some are so filled with anger/despair they want to hurt others or even take others with them when they go.

If EVERY suicidal person used a method that involved others as train jumping does I’d be more inclined to agree with you but they don’t. Some, in fact, are careful not to physically harm others, meaning they may be intent on killing themselves but still have sufficient moral compass and competence to safeguard others.

What’s the difference here? Why do some go out one way, and some go out another?

Depression is NOT a monolithic entity, I’d even go so far as to say each depressed person’s depression is unique. Perhaps it’s not one disorder but several or many, such that if we could identify the differences we could better predict who is likely to harm others while harming themselves and who are unlikely to hurt others. I’d think that’s a worthy topic of research, don’t you?

[Broomstick]

@Tollhouse

How would you assume he was a jerk, anymore than a story of a man who had a heart attack on an airplane that you didnt know? Do you normally as a matter of course assume people you never met are jerks based on the outcome of their illness?

Someone abruptly dropping dead of a heart attack is not a jerk. Someone with severe heart disease who puts themselves into a situation that might increase the risk of a heart attack AND could inconvenience and/or endanger others is a jerk.

Someone who kills himself is not inherently a jerk. Someone killing themselves in a manner that inconveniences/traumatizes/endangers others is a jerk.

Perhaps you would then say my grandma was nothing but a big jerk for having the nerve to cause problems upset and inconveinience to people as a result of her dementia?

If your grandmother was so far gone in dementia she was truly morally incompetent then no, but “dementia” doesn’t automatically mean “completely incompetent”. One can be demented AND a mean jerk at the same time, just as someone can be demented but still as sweet-natured person.

I don’t assume mental illness, even severe mental illness, automatically renders a person into a moral incompetent. You do.

[Tollhouse]

@Broomstick

If EVERY suicidal person used a method that involved others as train jumping does I’d be more inclined to agree with you but they don’t. Some, in fact, are careful not to physically harm others, meaning they may be intent on killing themselves but still have sufficient moral compass and competence to safeguard others.

What’s the difference here? Why do some go out one way, and some go out another?

This contradicts what you said earlier. You said that mental illness exists on a spectrum. But now your wondering why if some people commit suicide by train, why dont all those who suffer from mental illness commit suicide the same way?

Why? because all mentally ill people who commit suicide do not suffer from the exact same illness and symptoms. So not all of them have the same exact outcome of their illness.

[Broomstick]

@Tollhouse

Too bad you were not educated at the time of her tragic death, so that you could understand what the heck a serious mental ilkness is. Book learnin is a wonderful tool, that…

Too bad you refuse to understand that I can “understand what the heck a serious mental ilkness [sic] is” and still come to a different conclusion than you. My sister was VERY CLEAR who she intended to hurt with her death and how, and apologized to those hurt whom she didn’t feel deserved it. She was very clear that the method she chose was chosen in part to minimize risk to innocent bystanders. The suicide note went on for three goddamned pages, I still have a copy of it. I’m not sure why you disbelieve that.

She battled clinical depression for 17 years and it was no secret. The family was absolutely supportive of her seeking and receiving treatment. We were all thoroughly educated about it as she (and we) rode the roller coaster of mental illness.

Newsflash: knowledgeable adults can disagree about the end-game of serious illness. If we were discussing cancer this might be discussion between fighting to the bitter end with chemo and radiation and surgery vs. hospice vs. euthanasia. I don’t assume someone who wants either heroic measures to the end or euthanasia is ignorant of the disease despite their support of something other than my own viewpoint. I don’t assume those disagreeing with me here are ignorant. You do. Why is that?

[Czarcasm]

@Tollhouse

And did this so called paramedic suffer any legal or professional conseqjences? Probably not.

Im not sure how much mental health training paramedics have to get, if any, but at least now police supposedly receive some training on the subject and how to help mentally ill people

I guess he thought it was just a cry for attention and that she did it that way because she wasn’t serious about killing herself…but it might just have been both. It may be that making a public spectacle of death is a way to declare to as many people as possible that, although the whole world is against that individual, she/he has full control over the outcome of one final battle. What happens may inconvenience(and most probably upset) certain individuals, but by that time the potential suicide has turned so far inward that “individuals” is a remote concept at best-the world as a whole is the Adversary.

[Broomstick]

@Tollhouse

This contradicts what you said earlier. You said that mental illness exists on a spectrum. But now your wondering why if some people commit suicide by train, why dont all those who suffer from mental illness commit suicide the same way?

Why? because all mentally ill people who commit suicide do not suffer from the exact same illness and symptoms. So not all of them have the same exact outcome of their illness.

We don’t know that. Hence my call for more research. Maybe it IS the same chemical imbalance, maybe it isn’t. We don’t know. Maybe it’s other environmental factors that make the difference, maybe there’s a gender difference. I don’t know. I don’t think you do, either.

[Tollhouse]

@Broomstick

Someone abruptly dropping dead of a heart attack is not a jerk. Someone with severe heart disease who puts themselves into a situation that might increase the risk of a heart attack AND could inconvenience and/or endanger others is a jerk.

Someone who kills himself is not inherently a jerk. Someone killing themselves in a manner that inconveniences/traumatizes/endangers others is a jerk.
If your grandmother was so far gone in dementia she was truly morally incompetent then no, but “dementia” doesn’t automatically mean “completely incompetent”. One can be demented AND a mean jerk at the same time, just as someone can be demented but still as sweet-natured person.

I don’t assume mental illness, even severe mental illness, automatically renders a person into a moral incompetent. You do.

Then you have not been reading my posts. I stated clearly that mental illness exists in a spectrum. Your the one who seems to not understand this, one reason being you state that any person who commits suicide by train was in full control and was not psychotic, or in such a state that his judgment was seriously impaired, Since you havent met and interviewed the man, (have you?) you cannot presume this. In fact if any presumption shouod be made its that a man who smiles and waves before jumping in front of a train must be seriously impaired, But according to you, you know for certain he was not impaired, psychotic etc.

[Czarcasm]

@Broomstick

Too bad you refuse to understand that I can “understand what the heck a serious mental ilkness [sic] is” and still come to a different conclusion than you. My sister was VERY CLEAR who she intended to hurt with her death and how, and apologized to those hurt whom she didn’t feel deserved it. She was very clear that the method she chose was chosen in part to minimize risk to innocent bystanders. The suicide note went on for three goddamned pages, I still have a copy of it. I’m not sure why you disbelieve that.

She battled clinical depression for 17 years and it was no secret. The family was absolutely supportive of her seeking and receiving treatment. We were all thoroughly educated about it as she (and we) rode the roller coaster of mental illness.

Newsflash: knowledgeable adults can disagree about the end-game of serious illness. If we were discussing cancer this might be discussion between fighting to the bitter end with chemo and radiation and surgery vs. hospice vs. euthanasia. I don’t assume someone who wants either heroic measures to the end or euthanasia is ignorant of the disease despite their support of something other than my own viewpoint. I don’t assume those disagreeing with me here are ignorant. You do. Why is that?

With cancer, sometimes you can battle with all your heart and soul, receive the best in medical care, have the full support of friends and family…and still die. As with cancer, mental illness can sometimes be stronger than all efforts to combat it. A three page suicide note sounds like a symtom of the disease to me, not a deliberate attack of someone in their right mind.

[Tollhouse]

@Broomstick

We don’t know that. Hence my call for more research. Maybe it IS the same chemical imbalance, maybe it isn’t. We don’t know. Maybe it’s other environmental factors that make the difference, maybe there’s a gender difference. I don’t know. I don’t think you do, either.

We dont know what? What are you talking about? Are you now saying that mental illness does NOT exist on a spectrum? im honestly not sure what you mean by “we dont know that”