On Suicide

Well, honestly, when you get right down to it, there's only two real possible outcomes in a situation where a person is suicidal. Either they get over/fix their problems some way or another to some degree, or they actually kill themselves. That's pretty much it. Now, if someone close to me is considering it, I won't just be like "get over it, wimp", but I will try and steer them towards actually attempting to solve their problems.

I think we can all agree that if someone just kills themselves, all they have succeeded in doing is hitting the "Delete" button on their own existence and left everyone close to them in grieving and depression. Hardly a positive outcome for any party. And it certainly doesn't fix anything.
 
I had a friend who committed suicide a few months ago, the whole experience was very hard to go through, but I remember him being a selfless, kind person. He wasn't selfish at all, and I don't believe suicide is selfish. The state of mind people are in when they commit suicide is so low that they don't think their death would make a difference to anyone, that's not selfish, they just see it as the only solution to their problem. It's really sad though, something that I wish we could prevent more.
 
i'd also like to point something out that i don't think anyone's said here yet.

a lot of the time, suicide attempts are not thoroughly planned. suicide attempts are done in a fleeting moment of hysteria and grief when the person is not thinking straight and feel so desperate and horrible that it's the only choice they see at the time. [sure, you may have an idea of what you might want to do if you were to attempt suicide, but a lot of the time, people don't plan ahead months in advance.]

keeping that in mind, i feel as though it's not really fair to call them selfish. especially the people who attempt suicide that have mental illnesses - because there is something physically wrong. their brain is sick. their brain's chemicals are imbalanced and is as serious a medical condition as a heart murmur or diabetes.

telling someone to just "solve their problems" or "get over it" is never helpful, because you aren't in their frame of mind to understand how their pain feels to them. you might have gone through the same exact situation, but you will never understand the exact feelings of the other person because you aren't experiencing it through them. [ie: qualia/the explanatory gap] so what you feel might not be as painful but it is painful to them. and who are you to invalidate their experiences?
 
Judge Mandolore Shepard said:
I am actually quite against suicide. From a Catholic viewpoint, suicide is one of the Mortal Sins. No one that I know has committed suicide.
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Anyone contemplating suicide will not be thinking about what is or isn't a sin. It's a given that some will claim a moral high-ground, but that pedestal, it seems, is so high up that the person is unable to see, much less recognize, the mental anguish that exists within the mind of the person contemplating ending their life.

It is easy enough to say there are solutions to whatever ails a person, but finding those solutions is much, much harder than that. Before you can tackle the suicidal thoughts, you have to first identify and deal with the underlying causes. Is it medical? Is the person afflicted with a terrible disease that is essentially robbing them of their mental faculties, or causing them such pain that no amount of medication can relieve it? Is it chemical? Could the person in fact be taking medication that could be altering that person's mental state? Is it psychological? Could the person have experienced a traumatic event, or series of traumatic events, that has pushed this person into this situation?

It is easy enough to say committing suicide is a sin. But to put yourself on pedestal out of reach of the one contemplating suicide doesn't solve the problem. On the contrary, it could, in fact, exasperate it even further. You've heard, I'm sure, the phrase, "get off your high horse." It would seem this applies in this case.
 
Ah here I go again with the 'too much value over a human life' thing... my opinion on this subject is a touchy one to say the least.

I apologize in advance.

Suicide, to me, is that person's business and their business alone unless they choose to get help. If someone is debating suicide publicly, honestly, I'm usually not one to jump to their aid - even if I know them intimately. If someone is ready to check out of existence for any reason, by all means. Because having the ability to choose whether you die or not is a very personal thing. It's your life.. only you can truly make that decision, and you have the ability to take it away at any time. I know we're taught to help those in dire need (thoughts of suicide, for instance), and that life is valuable, but... I just have a hard time seeing it that way. Life is hard, and sometimes it's too hard. People are cruel, and sometimes they're too cruel.

Not everyone is able to handle it even with help. If they can't handle it, then they shouldn't.

It's painful to lose someone close to you, but if they wanted it that way.. then why sit in judgement of that?
 
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