Why do we try to stop people who are threatening suicide?

Great Debates
1

So I have been thinking about writing this thread for a while, though for a couple different reasons I kept putting it off because I wasn’t exactly sure what the general reaction would be. I know the topic can be a very touchy subject and can be filled with emotion depending on each individual. So while I would like to tread lightly so not to offend anyone, I still would like to have your open-minded thoughts and opinions on the topic.

I have discusses with some of my closest friends as well as a very selective few family members regarding my views on suicide. I think my views are probably at the extreme end of the spectrum then of most people, though. After working in law enforcement for almost 4 years and taking a number of people threatening to kill themselves, I found myself often wondering why we are so concerned. When someone calls in and states they don’t feel like living anymore, we send out the police and EMTs and plead with the person to reconsider. To think of all the positive things in life. Why exactly? Isn’t it their choice to do whatever it is they want to do with their own life?

We have the right of free will and to generally do what we please. I don’t understand why when someone decides they don’t feel like continuing their lives for whatever reasons they may have, other people (non-family related or family related) get upset over this and try to get them to stop. To reconsider and think of whatever it is to have them see that living and breathing isn’t so bad. Why? Why does one care? Why do people with authority or anyone for that matter take it upon themselves to get them or plead with them not to do it?

If someone was dying of terminal cancer and they wanted to end their life vs spending their end in pain or drugged out, I agree with that. It’s their choice. Their life.

And while writing this a co-worker came up and we started having this same conversation. She said, “What about the people that would be left behind? Their friends and family?” in which I responded with, “Well where we’re they that person was alone? Do they really have a right to be upset? If they cared or were concerned about that person or cared about them enough to morn them if they decided to make the ultimate choice, where were they before hand?”

Maybe it is because I haven’t lost anyone close to suicide. Though there was a time when I planned out my own. While this was a very long time ago, a lot of people were upset with me. I couldn’t and still don’t understand why. There was crying and yelling. Demands and accusations. My response to them? “Don’t care about me after I’m dead when while I was and am still alive you have nothing to do with me. You didn’t care. You degrade me and make me feel like shit, but all of a sudden when I am gone I was the most important person in your life.”

So I don’t get it. I don’t understand it. Maybe I am ignorant and if I am, aren’t I in the right place to be set straight?

Also I don’t want Mods to think I am starting this thread and then not coming back to it. I don’t have the internet at home, so I will check back tomorrow and on my iPhone as well.

Thoughts? Am I the only one out there that thinks like this? Feel free to set me straight.

2

Several reasons come to mind:

  1. The person contemplating suicide doesn’t REALLY want to do it, they just don’t know of any other way to get the help they need.

  2. The person really DOES want to do it, but with the proper help, would be capable of living a normal life, and would be glad they were talked into it.

  3. A suicide oftentimes (usually?) leaves people behind, suffering for the actions of the suicide. Does society not have a duty to protect such people? (I’m not asking rhetorically - I’m genuinely curious about peoples’ opinions on this).

  4. In some ways, society bears the cost of a suicide, both directly (cost of cleaning up the site, cost of disposing of the remains) and indirectly (cost of supporting any loved ones who depended on the suicde for support).

ETA: I think a distinction needs to be made between suicide and self-directed euthanasia. A lovelorn 20-year-old holding a gun to his head because his girlfriend broke up with him is a different story than, say, a person who is dying of a painful disease and wants to speed up the process (so to speak). In the latter case I’m all for the right to die.

3

But suicide is a choice you can’t reconsider once you’ve gone through with it (assuming you’re “successful”).

Many people who (threaten to) commit suicide aren’t in their “right minds” at the time. It’s not the real, sane, clear-headed “they” who’s making the decision. If we go to great lengths to save the life of someone who’s drowning or having a heart attack or being mauled by a bear, why not make similar efforts to save the life of someone who’s suffering an attack of suicidal depression?

4

If you hear about them thinking of committing suicide, it’s because they haven’t done it yet. So they are either asking for help or aren’t sure. Or if they think their death would be a blessing to those around them, and if that’s not true, they’re thinking it because of mental health issues that could be treated. Then the distorted reason to do it might be gone.

5

Agrees with HeyHomie above.

Also, one would like to stress, that there are probably quite a few today who tried suicide once long time ago but was hindered by somebody, and are very happy for that today.

One of the problems with death is that you can’t regret it. While the person who tries to take his/her life don’t know it, life changes. A person who actually wants to kill him/her is in fact in need of help. So people help them.

If the suicidal person is in tremendous pain and dying beyond help, or for that matter a Preussian general in defeat, we need other threads to discuss those scenarios.

6

For the sake of argument: That “distorted reason” is the person’s natural way of thinking. It where their brain has gone on it’s own.

I always find it interesting how we as a culture at least ostensibly advocate “being yourself” - until it comes to mental health, where in many situations, being oneself is seen as a disease.

7

I get the reasons behind the reason they may want to do it. Though I think they should have the right to do what they want with their lives. Generally they do what they want anyways, I just don’t agree with people making a big deal about it… I guess I am trying to say.

8

Completely agree with this.

9

Sometimes it is a cry for help, if they want to off themselves really, they just will, no discussion. If they let you know, I think an attempt to steer them in another direction is always called for. Yes, I lost someone to suicide and there was no one that even suspected or had any conversation with them about it.
As for terminal patients, I think they do have the right. But then, When? The minute the lab tests come back? Right up to the point of not thinking clearly? AFter a million bucks is spent? When?

10

Those contemplating suicide (and I’m excluding cases where someone is an prolonged, agonizing pain due to cancer or something) are very often doing so because they’re suffering from what could well be a treatable disease, which is depression.

To say that people who want to die should have the right to do so excludes the possibility that they are not perceiving the world correctly, and that intervention could lead to improvement in their disease and a happy life.

In my book, saying we should never attempt to intervene in a suicide is like watching someone drown and saying, “Eh, they chose to go swimming. They’ve made their bed.”

11

However, if I were to think of a person in psychic pain the situation is different. Many teens commit suicide. I’m going to go ahead and brand myself and old fogie and point out that teen years suck monkey balls for a LOT of people - however, being an adult doesn’t tend to suck quite as much. It can actually be fun, enjoyable, rewarding, etc. I submit that a teen doesn’t have all the information they need to make a clear, well thought out decision regarding suicide due to limited life experience. In that situation I think intervention can be very valuable as it can offer someone who is suffering a different perspective as well as a glimmer of hope.

As to friends & family not being there before the crisis - well, people screw up, don’t they? My brother’s best friend (and a close friend of the family) hung himself when he was 13. If ANY member of our family had any thought that was going to happen we certainly would have intervened but we didn’t. Further, despite the lack of ANY positive feelings I have about his mother, who generally was an obnoxious, abusive harridan, I really don’t think she wanted her son to off himself. I can’t help but think that if he had been unsuccessful perhaps she would have been less of a shrew. I suppose my point is that if Ronnie had called a member of my family - my brother, my mom, my dad, me - and said he was going to hang himself we would have tried to talk him out of it. We would have rushed to his side to help him. Frankly, I don’t think that would have been the wrong decision - he was a child - he should have had an opportunity to have an actual life.

12

We can come up with all sorts of logical reasons why we’d want to stop someone from committing suicide, but I suspect that may be backwards rationalizing. I think it’s probably something more on the instinctual level.

13

Oops - I lost the first part of my post and missed the edit window, it said:

It probably makes the rest of my post make more sense.

14

But it is still a disease. If a child was born with diabetes, would you say they shouldn’t take insulin because diabetes is who they are, and if it kills them, well they were just “being themselves?” Of course not. But if someone was born with paranoid schizophrenia, and had suicidal tendencies because of it, they shouldn’t seek treatment for their disease, and be themselves, even if it kills them?

Maybe I’m being too pragmatic about it, but in my mind, a disease is a disease. Most people don’t think twice about getting treatment for a physical disease/injury, but as soon as it’s a mental disease, it becomes different somehow, and I’m not sure why. A part of the person is broken, to one degree or another, so why is a problem to fix it?

Which isn’t to say I advocate pumping every person who might have a mental disease full of drugs, far from it. Treatment means drugs, lifestyle changes, therapy, etc… and often times a combination of treatments is what’s best.

Add to the fact that many survivors of suicide (by this I mean both those who were talked out of it/decided against it at the last minute, and those who made an attempt but failed at it) go onto live their lives afterward and are thankful that they didn’t kill themselves. In my mind, that’s a big reason why we should do as much as we can to prevent suicides. Just because at this moment (be it hour, day, month, year,) they feel like the “only way out” is to end their life, doesn’t mean that an hour, day, month, or year from now they’ll feel the same way. They deserve that chance to find out, at the very least.

Of course, as is the case with many people, I see terminal illness/euthanasia as a different topic.

15

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. :wink:

Yes, people pretty much have the right to do what they want with their lives. Discouraging someone from doing something is not the same as taking away their right to do it, however. Given that suicide is often something that’s being considered by people in extreme distress - I hate to chalk it up to something like “irrationality,” but there you go - and considering it is, as the cliche goes, “a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” I have no problem with discouraging it big-time. If we didn’t discourage suicide I never would have known some of my favorite people.

That said, I’m moving this over to Great Debates. I think it’s better suited for that forum.

16

Suicidal people inflict serious pain on others in the process, and I mean besides the usual “your family/friends love you.” Someone has to find the body, for starters. Some suicidal people pick methods that are out in “public” - jumping in front of a train is common enough, at least around here. I watched a news report where engineers talked about post traumatic stress disorder due to seeing people calmly look at the approaching train then darting in front of it at the last minute. People who jump off of buildings not only terrify others around them, they also risk hurting or killing a bystander if that person happens to be in their path. I know of someone who killed himself by jumping off a balcony inside a multilevel department store in Chicago, and wonder how many shoppers still have terrible memories of that.

In discussions here of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, someone linked an article that has an interview with a jumper who survived his fall. He had what sound like very good reasons to a deeply depressed person (and as someone who metaphorically danced very near that ‘edge’, I can be a good judge of that), and says that as he fell, he realized that all of his problems could be lived with or dealt with, except for what he’d just done. He’s somewhat disabled now IIRC, and works to get help for others who might try the jump as well.

17

You’re right in supposing that if you haven’t lost a family member to suicide that you don’t understand. You just can’t. You won’t hear a family member of a physically healthy person who committed suicide describe it as a valid exercise of free will. My wife, who never harmed a soul in her life, had a very young family member who committed suicide in a graphic way, of which I won’t go into detail. She was only 19 herself, but had to identify the body at the morgue.

There may be some people in this world who deserve to have that degree of pain and guilt inflicted upon them, but I haven’t yet met any.

18

By that standard, my heart disease is a natural part of the way my body works, and we shouldn’t intervene with the process. I’ve seen people suffer from suicidal depression and recover; I can’t believe that there’s anything natural about it. People who are smart and healthy and young shouldn’t be wanting to kill themselves. I think there’s something chemical or electrical or something going wrong in their brains, and maybe we just haven’t figured it out yet. The three people I’ve known who attempted suicide and were stopped are all really glad they were helped. The one who succeeded, he was a great guy and we’re diminished by having lost him. Another who succeeded did it because he was dying and was sinking really fast. It was a shame, but I can fully understand wanting to stop the suffering.

19

I’m not an expert but I’ve had 2 friends and 1 cousin commit suicide within the last couple years so I’ve done a lot of reading/contemplating/discussing on the issue.

Usually people who threaten suicide don’t do it and people who do it don’t threaten it. But - the people who do it have usually threatened or talked about it at some point in the past (days, months, years earlier.) I think threats that are often seen as empty are actually a feeling-out process. If nothing changes and/or nobody seems to care, they’ll go ahead and do it later without bothering to threaten again. If you can make a positive change in their lives while they’re still in the threatening stage then maybe they’ll realize they were wrong, life doesn’t suck after all, etc.

If you’re just saying why don’t we let everybody who wants to kill themself do it, well, I don’t even understand that. Think of someone you care about. Do you want them dead? If you can’t think of anyone you care about then we’ve discovered the problem here.

20

Well, I’ll go out on a limb and say that anyone who calls a suicide hotline and threatens to commit suicide is ambivalent about the idea of suicide.

If they really wanted to die they wouldn’t call the suicide hotline, they’d buy a gun and put a bullet in their brain. The mere fact that they tell someone they’re considering suicide is proof in my mind that they aren’t fully committed. And the fact is, if someone really wants to commit suicide there’s no way the rest of us can stop them. The jumper on the ledge that the cops are trying to coax back inside could end the whole charade in a second, just by jumping.

I agree that an competant adult can make whatever decisions they like for themselves. But sometimes people aren’t competant, and when they aren’t competant we decide that they aren’t entitled to make certain decisions. But how does it interfere with the sovereign rights of a competant adult if the rest of us try to talk them out of it? They’re perfectly able to consider our arguments, and then go ahead. And if they don’t want the rest of us hassling them, they can just keep their mouths shut until the deed is done.

Most people who commit suicide don’t really want to be dead, they just don’t want to continue living with pain. Suicide isn’t an end, it’s a means to an end.