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

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=Marley23]
Not to put advice gurus out of business or anything, but while we shouldn’t take our loved ones for granted - we all do it - that “live every day like it’s your last” stuff doesn’t work. At least, not for most people. It’s emotionally exhausting and not practical. People lose track of each other and sometimes they just get busy and screw it up. Your interpretation that this constitutes ‘not caring’ is wrong and inaccurate, although in my experience it’s pretty typical of depressed thinking.

It really isn’t, though. You can’t stop somebody else’s seizure or heart attack, but somebody who kills themselves can be stopped - it’s clear that talking to someone who is suicidal can make a difference, and you’re indicating the same in your posts by.

Unfortunately reality intrudes. If I called and talked to everybody important in my life every day, it’d be hard to work and go to the store and sleep and do the other stuff people do because they assume, usually correctly, that they will still be around tomorrow and so will the people they want to talk to.
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Let me make it VERY clear. As clear as one can make something clear. I** am not suicidal.** I am trying to make a point and used an example that happened many, many years ago. Past tense. I am making an argument and used a pervious incident in my life as an example. It is nothing more, nothing less.

And I get what you are saying that it is hard to always be in touch with your love ones. Though with the passing of someone very close to me that I lost contact with due to my own selfishness, that FourPaws pointed out in some form, I make it a point to keep in contact with those people. Whether it be a short email, a text message or a phone call. There is always something.

82

[QUOTE=BrknButterfly]
I don’t see where it is in someone else’s business to say, “Hey. I am not letting you do that.” Where is it a right for anyone to get involved?
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Even if there were nothing else - and there are other reasons, as has been discussed - the damage done to survivors would be a good enough reason.

I get that, but I said “depressed thinking,” which you either know from experience or are still having. I don’t mean to be obnoxious about this, but it sounds very much like you’ve got continuing depression issues even if you aren’t suicidal, and as this conversation has gone on it’s sounded more and more like you’re talking about rationalizations for why it wouldn’t be such a big deal to anybody else if you were suicidal again.

It’s obnoxious to do this kind of thing, I know, but I have to call it like I see it. I think you should consider talking to someone. And no, it’s not just because you’ve raised this topic. Other people have done that in the past.

83

Can’t speak for others, but I stop people from trying to commit suicide because I care about them, and I have stopped quite a few.

Love

84

BrknButterfly, do you mean something along the lines of: “Why does this person care whether I die, since they didn’t seem to care about how I was doing when I was alive”?

See, if I saw a person in danger (say from a car accident), I’d try to save them. But it wouldn’t be because I care about that particular person. In a sense you’re right that I wouldn’t do it for THEM because I don’t really care about them, I’m doing it for ME, because I don’t want to go through my life as the guy who wouldn’t lift a finger to save a toddler from getting run over by a bus.

But what’s wrong with that? I’d save my wife from the bus, I’d save my kids from the bus, and I’d also save a stranger from the bus. And I’ll go home and live the rest of my life with my wife or my kids, but if I save that stranger I’m not going to invite them over to my house. A quick “Whoah, that was close. Thanks, buddy” is about it.

So would I do something wrong if I saved the guy who accidentally walked in front of a bus? Why do I have to care about them as an individual to help them?

And I understand that the real problem wasn’t that the people around you stopped you from committing suicide, it was that they didn’t pay much attention to you when you weren’t committing suicide, so why should they start now? But I don’t care about that stranger walking down the street until he’s about to accidentally step in front of a bus, and then suddenly I do. But yeah, it would be nice if your family cared about you more than a stranger would, but the point is that it doesn’t take more than a teensy amount of care to want you not to commit suicide. While paying attention to your actual life would take a bit more, which was apparantly beyond them. Sorry about that.

85

My view is that virtually all people who commit suicide are quite simply, not in the right (or best) state of mind. Why? Because no rational person wants to outright end their life. I’m an atheist and because I don’t believe in any form of afterlife, I put all the value into the life we have now on Earth. Few would argue that suicide is a rational thought, and I think one of the goals of society is to ensure others have a good life.

I can see where the OP is coming from though. I’m also a libertarian so I fully believe in individual rights as well as a person’s choice to euthanasia. The difference between euthanasia, in which an already-dying person chooses when to end their life in a rational, sane matter, is considerably different from suicide, where a person often hasn’t considered everything and is generally having a hard time and about to make an irreversible choice based on a bad state of mental health.

So for me, it all comes down to asking how capable the person is at making a life-ending decision. You wouldn’t believe a PCP addict saying he wants to die. Mental health issues can easily distort things in such a way that makes you feel like suicide is the only way out, but it never is. Life, in my opinion, is the ultimate and end-all thing to have and keep as long as you can.

86

I lived with an Uncle of mine who was normally a very gloomy and depressed person; his wife of fifty+years had died of cancer and his children mostly ignored him. The fact that he had spent years as an alcoholic abusive SOB probably had a lot to do with his lack of family. He frequently discussed suicide and then one day he just stopped talking about it and became a jovial, good natured, funny and friendly sort of guy. He confided certain things to me and he wrote notes to his children and grandchildren. Two days later, he blew his brains out just a few minutes before I usually got to his place. Unfortunately, his fifteen year old granddaughter came to see him----he heard a car turn into his gravel driveway and pulled the trigger. I later learned that the fact he had put his affairs in order was NOT a sign of his improvement; it meant that his decision was taken and all the notes he wrote were apologetic in nature. Even had I known that, I doubt I could changed his mind and I am still not sure that I should have tried. His life was basically finished and he was sick of going through the motions. But he was willing to dump the details of dealing with it on me and I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive him for that. It was just her bad luck that his granddaughter walked in on the mess before I did and I am positive I’ll never forgive him for that.

87

Grave, I accept your apology, thank you.

I asked my wife if she minded if I told her story, and she said okay.

About ten years ago she had just turned 20 (not 19 as I said earlier, my mistake). She was driving home and saw that fire trucks and ambulances had stopped traffic on the other side of the highway, and wondered what was going on. When she got home she got a telephone call from a person who said he was a detective who said her younger brother had been in an accident. He said he was dead. She didn’t believe it. It didn’t sound very realistic, it had a distinct air of unreality. She laughed and said yeah, right, I know he put you up to this, put my brother on the phone, please. She didn’t believe it until her mother got on the phone and said it was true.

When she got to her mother’s house the detective told her what had happened. Her brother had been on his bike and had ridden it directly into oncoming traffic on the highway. He was the accident she’d just seen. It wasn’t an area that you could really cross, there was a divider, and he’d appeared to just deliberately ride into the path of oncoming cars. The detective said it was an apparent suicide. Her mother collapsed screaming.

It fell to my wife to go to the morgue to identify him. She couldn’t bear to look at the body and it wasn’t certain that he’d even be identifiable, so they asked her if she could identify his backpack. She could, it was his. It was caked with her brother’s blood and brain matter. He’d been her closest companion for her entire life, and now he was dead by his own hand and she was looking at his brains.

She later learned when going through his things and cleaning out his locker at school that this wasn’t an impulsive act, he’d been planning it for a while. In retrospect she now reaizes that he’d had untreated emotional problems, possibly bipolar disorder. It took a long, long time before any of them were really all right again. The grief has subsided and they can take pleasure in his memory, but some of that pain stays with you forever. His absence is palpably there at every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we always go visit his grave after dinner.

So with access to the magic time machine would I prevent him from throwing himself in front of a car, breaking every bone in his body and cracking his skull open so that his brains fall out and traumatizing my wife and her family for the rest of their lives? Seriously, do you have to ask? I’d have him committed, handcuff him to a stop sign and slap the shit out of him, whatever it took. When somebody’s emotional state gets that wrapped up on themselves, they bcome so fixated on themselves that they forget they’re not living in a vacuum and that the things they do have consequences on everyone around them whether they like it or not. It’s not “just his business,” because he’s not the one who had to pick him up off of the highway and deal with the aftermath. I would have stopped him because he was a tall, good looking, funny, talented kid with his whole life ahead of him, but I also would have stopped him for reasons that had nothing to do with his personal well being. I would have stopped him because of the agony and horror he selfishly put my wife though. For years. Mostly I feel sadness and pity for him, but I never even met the kid and I get mad at him sometimes. The suggestion, the thought that I wouldn’t stop him is ludicrous. Unthinkable.

So yeah, it’s a touchy subject.

88

Wendy O. Williams (of the Plasmatics) reportedly wrote this before killing herself:

I don’t believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm.

Euthanize people who have terminal illnesses? Absolutely. We’ll euthanize a beloved family pet, so why not this?

As at least one other poster stated, people who “attempt” suicide—waiting for people to talk them down etc.—haven’t made up their minds, IMO. Otherwise, we’d always be too late.

My sister used to work with a doctor. When he committed suicide, he mailed a letter to the police, left a check for the ambulance people, told which clothes he wanted to be buried in, etc. THAT is planning and nobody was able to stop him.

A sister of an acquaintance tried to commit suicide last Christmas. She stepped in front of a bus, only she didn’t get killed.

89

Oops, meant to cite the source of the quote:

90

I can’t speak for anybody else but I personally get a big kick out of the look of disapointment on their face after I resucitate them.

Next, I offer them a candy, but as soon as they reach out to take it I pop it in my mouth and say “Psyche!”

Other times it’s fun to revive them, and when they come around ask them where they left their car keys. Once they tell you, smother them with a pillow.

91

[QUOTE=Scylla]
I can’t speak for anybody else but I personally get a big kick out of the look of disapointment on their face after I resucitate them.

Next, I offer them a candy, but as soon as they reach out to take it I pop it in my mouth and say “Psyche!”

Other times it’s fun to revive them, and when they come around ask them where they left their car keys. Once they tell you, smother them with a pillow.
[/QUOTE]

You are sick, you know that? Really, really sick.

:smiley:

92

Pravnik, I read your post and it was hard to read. Thanks for posting it.

93

You guys have given me a lot to think about. Thank you. :slight_smile:

94

Thanks for your post. In my long life I have seen this happen far too many times. Suicide is the most selfish thing a person can do. I stop everyone of them I can, no other thought or action is possible for me. I know that the difference between suicidal and happy is only the breath of a single thought.

Love to you and your family.

95

I once had a list of phone numbers to call for a charity; I do not know how, but I sensed one woman I talked to was considering suicide, I told her," please correct me if I am wrong ,but I have the sense that you intend to kill your self",she gasped and said"How did you know"? I talked with her for awhile and told her," there was other ways to deal with problems that would not be as final " I watched the obits in the paper for several months but her name never appeared so I had hoped she was still alive.

My cousin’s son commited suicide because his girl friend dumped him, his father came home and saw him hanging in their garage, that was about 30 years ago and the father still hasn’t come to terms with it.

Monavis

96

Here’s the answer, it’s because people are selfish motherfuckers and they only care about pushing their own agenda. When someone dies, there’s one less workerbee in society which they don’t want. Q.e.d.

97

This is an old conversation, and you are talking to someone who hasn’t been here for two years.

98

Indeed. This is one that doesn’t need to be revived.