Is it wrong that my reaction to a suicide thread is "Woo hoo! New thread"?
That's one of my favorite New Yorker articles.
One aspect that I think is darkly fascinating is whether the suicidal person planned for who would find them.
I kind of respect my friend's decision to go in a hotel room for that reason. (He asphyxiated himself with a bbq grill, also darkly fascinating.)
Whereas a relative, (back in the 1950's) hung herself in her 7-year-old's closet. (The kid was in fact the one who found her.)
He took a bbq grill with him into a hotel room?
Yeah. Put a towel under the door.
Jeez.
My two suicide attempts (thankfully both far in the past) were both characterized by zero planning about who would find me. Attempt 1 (pills) I was found by my younger brother (11 at the time) who was pretty freaked out. Attempt 2 (wrists) I was found (still conscious) by my dorm-mate (freshman) who was if anything way more freaked out.
All that stuff about "oops, oh, I didn't really want to die"--I always wonder whether that isn't just the panic talking. If it took longer to fall, you might start wanting to again.
I am, by the way, totally serious. As an introvert and a pessiment, I have--statistically speaking--a more realistic view of life than most people.
The trick would be to jump into the Mississippi in winter when there's a lot of ice. That way no one finds you, usually. At least that's how it's worked in several cases around here.
My weird cousin (second cousin), was the one who found his Dad. Gunshot to the head in the study. No wonder he was weird.
I think 8 has a point. When you try to kill your body, your body has some tricks up its sleeve to make you want to keep it alive.
Gunshot to the head in the study
This makes me wonder how come Clue never features suicide as a possible solution.
6 - jeez, I guess there's perks to being your online friends.
You know what really sucks?
Rescuing a loved one from a suicide attempt, and then having doubts as to whether you did the right thing.
Yeah that's one thing you guys don't have to worry about.
I love "your body has some tricks up its sleeve."
He totally should have hit on the beautiful German tourist. I mean, what did he have to lose?
(And I probably ought to have posted 6 under a presidential pseudonym. Oh well.)
13 - what happened? That sounds really gut-wrenching.
your body has some tricks up its sleeve to make you want to keep it alive
But the people in the article seem to have come to a realization that stayed with them, not just a moment of panic and more suicide attempts after they were saved. Maybe other survivors killed themselves later, but the testimony we have is that they decide to live.
Doesn't mean that the adrenaline rush didn't permanently alter their brain chemistry. (Just to play devil's advocate.)
Aagh, I hesitate to jump into this thread for work reasons, but...
My mom was Vermont's chief ME for many years, and part of the job was investigating every suicide, homicide and suspicious death in the state. One case which often comes to mind involved a teenaged couple who made a mutual suicide pact: each held a gun under the other's chin, and together they counted to three. At the last second, she hesitated. He didn't.
20, yeah, like any major publication is going to write an article saying "and it was best for all concerned that so-and-so jumped off a bridge" or "and he left a note later saying he wished the first attempt had worked".
Choose life, my ass. Mere capitalist propaganda. [sourly]
Aagh, I hesitate to jump into this thread for work reasons, but...
Oh jeezie-mcqueenie.
Surely the technology exists to create an invisible suicide barrier. Like, nets that shoot out of the side of the bridge to capture somebody falling. It being California, they could pay for it by charging the people who were rescued.
22: and the moral of that story is, hold your gun under your chin.
24: HA! That was totally unintentional, I swear.
25: Or harpoons, to spear 'em on the way down.
nets that shoot out of the side of the bridge
Hi-tech! Why not tractor rays?
25 - Some sort of missile defense shield...
I'm not going to stop you, Frowner, if that's what you're worried about.
The main subject of the article, of course, is somebody who survived a fall off the bridge 15 years before his successful bridge suicide attempt.
When I lived there I remember being told that virtually all of the known jumpers (there was a statistic but I don't remember it) jumped off the side facing the city, rather than the side facing the ocean.
all of the known jumpers (there was a statistic but I don't remember it) jumped off the side facing the city, rather than the side facing the ocean.
That's in the article, yeah.
virtually all of the known jumpers (there was a statistic but I don't remember it) jumped off the side facing the city, rather than the side facing the ocean.
Well, duh. Virtually all of the unknown jumpers faced the ocean.
30: That's actually a pretty good idea. Being impaled on a harpoon is surely less dangerous than jumping off the bridge; and they could justify it by saying it's easier to recover the bodies that are harpooned. Mostly, it would fix the problem of extreme public hostility towards doing anything nice for suicides.
One idea that occured to me some time ago regarding suicide was that those of us who are to some degree marginalized, tend to have far more experience of suicide among our circle of acquaintences. Whether that marginalization is political or cultural or affective, being at the edges of "normal" seems to increase the risk of both mental health issues that are precursors to suicide and suicide itself. Kinda tautological, I suppose, but my point is that there is sort of a balance between enjoying the benefits of the non-mainstream and suffering the risks.
I've been fairly lucky in not experiencing the suicide of a close friend, given that it seems like most of my friends have had that happen at least once. Of people I actually knew/know, I've known of one unsuccessful suicide attempt (morphine OD, followed by several months in a coma with some brain damage and severe lingering physical effects -- not pretty), one person driven to stepping out of his life and living in a homeless shelter while everyone assumed that he'd killed himself (luckily he was found again and cleaned up his act), and one actual suicide of someone who I'd met and had a few conversations with, but with whom I wasn't close (jumped into the river, wasn't found for several months.)
I wonder how much we could infer about the specific motivations for a suicide from that question of who finds the body. For some people, it seems like it doesn't really matter, while others put a lot of thought into it.
Whenever I've considered killing myself, it has never seemed to be justified in terms of what it would do to the people I care about the most. Simultaneously, one of my greatest fears is being in a situation where I really needed to kill myself, and not having the means or opportunity.
36: It is? Because I just finished reading it and didn't see that.
If they only built a suicide barrier on the side facing the city, I wonder how many people would just jump off the unobstructed side. It would be an interesting experiment and could possibly disprove the idea that suicides are only about the ends and not the means.
19 - Without giving too much away, the person in question has had long-term chronic depression, has multiple health problems, and shuns all forms of medical and psychiatric care. Overall, I don't doubt that I did the right thing by intervening, but there are times when the depths of the person's suffering, combined with my own feelings of helplessness in terms of not being able to take away that suffering, lead me to ponder the alternate universe in which I did not intervene.
At that point, I tell myself that the guilt and self-doubt I would be feeling in that alternate universe is surely far worse than anything I am feeling in this one.
40: Hm, actually I can't find it. I thought I remembered seeing it in this article when it first came out. Where did I read it, then?
Heebie, you talk as though there's an agent beyond all the stuff that this other thing, the body, makes it do. Do we have to talk about Heidegger again?
39, I always fear needing to and not having the nerve.
The statistic that I can't remember was definitely exaggerated. But I'm still in favor of building a barrier on only the city side.
Do we have to talk about Heidegger again?
On other blogs, they just say, "Am I gonna have to get out the spanking belt?"
43 - Not so much an agent as competing factions.
I always fear needing to and not having the nerve
Don't sweat it -- not having the nerve can actually be a good thing.
43: Better Heidegger than God. Those threads go on forever.
I always fear needing to and not having the nerve
Before you go into hostile territory, insert your cyanide tooth.
He asphyxiated himself with a bbq grill, also darkly fascinating.
Back when I was looking into this sort of thing, the relevant literature assured me this kind of asphyxiation was the best combination of painlessness and effectiveness. And by locking yourself in a hotel room, you minimize the risk of getting interrupted/rescued.
All that stuff about "oops, oh, I didn't really want to die"--I always wonder whether that isn't just the panic talking. If it took longer to fall, you might start wanting to again.
This is certainly true - once the adrenaline rush kicks in and the body reminds the brain of the whole flight/fight thing, you're sure to wish you hadn't jumped. That kind of last-minute regret probably wouldn't happen without a strong physical stimulus. But does it matter? The jumpers in the New Yorker article needed a jolt of adrenaline to sort out their priorities; I take a regular dose of a prescribed SSRI. Does that make their non-suicidal desires less authentic somehow? What was it about the chemical state of my suicidal brain that was more genuine than the chemical state of my brain now?
22: Wow. The poor guy, I can't imagine how that would affect the rest of one's life.
My dad's mom killed herself, with a gun, when he was 13 (I think) and he found the body. He never talks about it and only once in a blue moon mentions her in passing. Mr. B. found an old picture of her holding Dad when he was a baby when they cleaned out grandma's (technically step-grandma's) house after she died--Dad had wanted to throw everything out and just be done with it, but Mr. B. insisted on going through stuff. Dad cried. Wow. I do think that a lot of his problems with empathy kind of stem from that and the earlier death of his sister in a plane crash (which was the start of his mom's depression).
Anyway. Yeah, obviously if someone's suicidal you should do what you can to keep them from it, even if it means institutionalizing them. My self-involved opinion is that most suicides are about either intolerable emotional (or physical) pain or else about a sudden super-traumatic event that it's impossible to imagine oneself living through. But of course if you stay alive, you *do* live through it, and emotional/physical pain can usually be treated (and should be more aggressively than it often is). Of course if, in the end, someone has a depression or chronic pain that doesn't respond to treatment, or a terminal illness, then suicide may be a rational option: but in most cases, it's an overreaction to a temporary state of affairs that feels intolerable.
It will be interesting to observe the evolution of the conflicts among "I feel sorry for suicides," "Fuck those selfish, patriarchal bastards" and "You'll never understand, man, you weren't there" in this thread.
First: worst thread ever
Second:
Doesn't mean that the adrenaline rush didn't permanently alter their brain chemistry. (Just to play devil's advocate.)
I realize you're playing devil's advocate, but this is silly. Putting aside the fact that there's no biological justification for this "what if?" that I'm aware of, if giving someone a shot of adrenaline is a way to permanently cure their depression and stop them from killing themselves, the downside is...?
Third:
As an introvert and a pessiment, I have--statistically speaking--a more realistic view of life than most people.
Is a joke, right? Cause you know, as someone who thinks such a sentiment is silly, I have -- statistically speaking -- a greater ability to determine the thoughtfulness of comments posted on the internet.
Sorry, I don't mean to troll. I've had a significant amount of experience dealing with severely mentally ill people, and consequently may have a lower than normal tolerance for woe-is-me melancholy.
41: I worry about getting to that point with my mom. Le sigh.
Also I agree with 52.
53: how often do I say i agree with B? I think I agree with everything in the last paragraph.
This is sort of a weird issue for me, because I sometimes teach end-of-life issues. (Using only examples that involve trolley tracks, of course.) My theoretical view is that there are situations in which suicide is permissible and reasonable, but I also think that most cases of suicide are not like this, and it makes me nervous to talk to students about the topic for fear it might come across as some kind of endorsement.
As an introvert and a pessiment, I have--statistically speaking--a more realistic view of life than most people.
I didn't say this, but it's true: there's a lot of studies documenting that most of us wear rosy-colored glasses, and depressed people see the world more accurately. The example I remember is assessing one's own attractiveness to the opposite gender.
if giving someone a shot of adrenaline is a way to permanently cure their depression and stop them from killing themselves, the downside is...?
I did say this, but I didn't say there was a downside.
One of my favorite songs is based on that New Yorker article.
depressed people see the world more accurately
But react to it more irrationally.
52: Well, that's an interesting question. Speaking as someone who is pretty depressed pretty much incurably, I guess I would be rather mad at myself if I finally got ready to get it over with only to be yanked back at the last moment by a rush of adrenaline.
What is the self? Nothing much, I always conclude. Nothing durable or immutable. There's no reason not to medicate yourself or (and it's a totally different scenario) compell the medication of others. There's no reason to be so attached to a point of view or a way of life that you get yourself seriously depressed about it. And yet I find this almost as depressing as depression, because it comes down to always distrusting my own reactions. If it hurts, if it upsets, if I like or don't like--that's just a sort of socio-chemical illusion. If I think my life is intolerable, that's illusory; this seems to suggest that anything that bugs me in life is equally subjective/illusory/trivial.
Honestly, the dissolution of the unified subject is almost the most depressing thing I can think of, but I can't argue against it.
one of my greatest fears is being in a situation where I really needed to kill myself, and not having the means or opportunity.
Yeah. Just went through that again with the kids. I made a point of telling them I did not expect them to do anything that would put them in any legal danger but they should not bother with antibiotics, hydration, food, meds, hospitals, etc. That should work quickly enough. Now I have to get it all written down again, witnessed, notarized, and distributed.
I think this "obligation to keep living" crap is vastly over-done. Once the kids are adults it's an individual's call, and everyone else and especially society and its laws, can fuck off.
Fuck this shit. I think we need to start making more fun of Ogged for being the kind of guy who watches documentaries about suicide. Ladies not beating a path to your bed? Huh, that's puzzling.
When I was down at the beach a couple of weekends ago, one of the other guys down there was a fellow I had only met once or twice and knew very little about, aside from the fact that he was divorced and raising a daughter by himself. Turns out it had been a spectacularly ugly divorce, that the woman was an alcoholic and mentally ill, with a second daughter from a previous marriage.
During the last year of the marriage, he wouldn't allow her to be alone with either child at all, but had not initiated divorce proceedings because his attorney said that he had only a 50/50 chance of getting full custody of his biological daughter and practically no chance of getting the other one.
Anyhow, he came home one night when the kids were at the grandparents' house, and found the woman in a diabetic coma (her third, he noted). He said he stood there and smoked a cigarette, trying to decide whether or not to call an ambulance. He eventually did, and said that to this day, he still regrets not letting her die but only admits it when he's drunk. He did get full custody of his daughter, but not the step-daughter.
54: I only meant that in a really weak and general way, as referenced in 58--not as a strong statement along the lines of "oh, because I'm a pessimist I can evaluate everything more accurately in all situations". I think it's funny to say, though.
The Golden Gate Bridge was designed to accommodate trolley/some kind of light rail tracks, should those be installed in the future.
I didn't say this, but it's true: there's a lot of studies documenting that most of us wear rosy-colored glasses, and depressed people see the world more accurately. The example I remember is assessing one's own attractiveness to the opposite gender.
Query why we should assume that this accuracy persists in all areas.
That'll spice things up for the Ethics 101 trolley questions.
58: That seems like a relatively specific case. There's also research showing that out-of-shape people estimate the slope of a given hill to be steeper than fit people do (seriously). Human perception is screwed up in all sorts of ways, and our ability to predict the future is miserable. There are plenty ways that optimists have the more accurate worldview -- incidence of fear of flying, for instance, versus actual risk of a crash. Or parents concerned about their child being abducted by MySpace predators. Or people worried about becoming the victim of violent crime generally.
Besides which, it seems like a mistake to me to conflate pessimism/skepticism with depression. They're very different things, and a depressed person's view of the world is often extremely inaccurate.
63: Netflix was out of "The Sorrow and the Pity".
Does anyone know if any animals commit suicide? Is self-awareness required?
57: On Twin Earth, a brain-in-a-vat throws itself onto trolley tracks in an attempt to end its wretched bodiless existence.
Unbeknownst to the brain, they're actually fake trolley tracks, where trolleys never run, set up to fool the tourists from Real Earth who come to enjoy the fine bottled XYZ.
However, when the brain throws itself onto the fake trolley tracks, it's shot by J. L. Austin, who was aiming at his donkey.
Was the brain's death a suicide?
Thanks, Katherine. Between the two of us we'll get this thread back on track...TOWARD FIVE INNOCENT ORPHANS!
Re: "woe-is-me melancholy"
How much proof do we have that people who attempt and/or succeed in suicide are clinically depressed or prone to some other clinical mental illness? Anecdotally, there sure seem to be a lot of suicides of people who haven't exhibited enough outward symptoms of severe depression or other mental illness to be diagnosed.
Many times in my life, my thinking has gone like this: I'm depressed; I wonder if I should kill myself; if I did kill myself, my problems would be at an end, but other people's problems would just be beginning; if I really am about to kill myself, why not just hop a train or walk out into the wilderness and hang out, and preserve the possibility of returning at a better time? And then, if I'm prepared to do that, why not just stick it out and see if things get better or worse before I make a life-altering or life-ending decision?
So for me, a lot of the time, a form suicidal ideation prompts me to look at my life and problems with a less pessimistic eye and resolve to do better. Which is probably not the process that a lot of people who kill themselves go through.
63: Ladies not beating a path to your bed?
Just find the right kind of lady.
aid that to this day, he still regrets not letting her die but only admits it when he's drunk
Assuming he was drunk when he said this?
Holy crap. 64, and this whole thread, is depressing.
(Cause otherwise it would be, y'know, a contradiction. I was trying to figure out if he could make that statement while sober and be describing a situation rather than making an admission but I don't think that is the case.)
Minneapolitan is making sense.
Does anyone know if any animals commit suicide?
Some animals refuse to eat and starve if they're bereaved of their longtime mate, I...umm...have always assumed. This might be a lie.
I don't know about permanent alteration of brain chemistry, but the adrenalin rush that comes from jumping off a bridge is awesome. It doesn't have to be that high, just enough so you have time to get past the initial freakout and register the sensation of falling. I jumped maybe 35-40 feet once, at a time when I happened to be incredibly depressed (coincidentally -- there was no suicidal intent). My ass hurt like hell from hitting the water, but I was elated for days.
71: Whale beachings, possibly.
69: Humans are awful at understanding true risk. Whether they over- or underestimate it is probably situational, but they're unlikely to get it right.
Suicidal people should just go bungee jumping.
Would major medical insurance cover bungee therapy?
How much proof do we have that people who attempt and/or succeed in suicide are clinically depressed or prone to some other clinical mental illness?
There are outliers, but my understanding is that there are some fairly common warning signs, which certainly implies that it could be classified as a clinical illness. A regular progression is followed, and many people who kill themselves do in fact plan it out carefully.
Disgraced samurais are a major exception, however, and complicate the literature.
So: is there a pro- or anti-suicide consensus? If there isn't one yet, but one develops later on in the thread, can that be announced in an update to the main post?
64: Wow. There's a hypothetical for the philosophy profs.
71: I think they do. Certainly animals under stressful situations sometimes just up and die for no apparent reason. Most animals probably aren't intelligent enough to figure out *how* to kill themselves, but I know I've read of stressed prey animals, for instance, changing their behavior in ways that makes it much easier for predators to catch them.
Damn, I was hoping 88 or 89 would tell me that George "The Animal" Steele had killed himself.
Not that that would be a good thing, but funny in context.
81: Some guys I knew jumped off Key Bridge in DC, just because they were jackasses and thought it'd be cool (they got away with one broken leg between 'em). Pretty weird, considering that a family friend had tried to kill herself by jumping off the same bridge years before.
Interestingly, you don't even need to bungee jump: sleep deprivation compares pretty well to pharmaceuticals, if I remember my psycopharma classes properly. Its efficacy wears off with repeated use, though, so it's generally only appropriate for cases where medication is contraindicated or hasn't worked.
I, for one, and strongly against all this anti-suicide talk. People should have a right to commit suicide, and others should have to deal with the mess. (The suicidal person should try to keep the physical mess to a minimum, though.)
I'm not saying we have to approve of it. We can look down on someone for leaving children with no one to care for them, for instance. But I don't think we should have a right to say when someone should be restrained from ending their life.
74: yeah, thinking about suicide makes you feel you have nothing to lose. That is paradoxically liberating and cheering -- you realize that hey, if I'm willing to contemplate this, there are a ton of less drastic measures I could take that would improve things.
I read about a different study of unsuccessful suicides who had in some way permanently crippled or blinded themselves which said that no one in the had suicidal feelings any more. It makes you wonder how much suicide is a form of self-punishment. What I read (in biographies and fiction) of XIXc European suicide makes it seem that feelings of worthlessness and failure are one of the major motives.
I did have a friend who worked a suicide hotline who said that there were some individuals whom she had a hard time giving a good reason not to kill themselves. The combination of bad health, lack of friends, and serious job and financial problems is pretty potent, especially when the friendlessness is the result of rejection. One guy had a three-year streak of disasters nothing good happening at all, with almost no resources and no realistic prospect of anything getting better.
Is there a blood test for clinical depression? Is it possible to distinguish clinically depressed suicidal ideation from non-clinically-depressed suicidal ideation? Or is the ideation proof of depression? Is there more here than"X was suicidal for reasons that don't make sense to me?"
90: If intentionally changing your behavior in a way which negatively affects your survival prospects counts as suicide, then aren't all smokers suicidal?
B gets it exactly right, IMO, in 53: " My self-involved opinion is that most suicides are about either intolerable emotional (or physical) pain or else about a sudden super-traumatic event that it's impossible to imagine oneself living through." This is precisely how I felt at a particular point when I seriously contemplated suicide. I didn't especially want to die, just could not bear to keep feeling the pain, particularly with no real sense of how long it would continue.
It didn't help that the only people I told, the people I then thought closest to me, responded with variants of "You're a fucking psycho," and "Quit trying to be so melodramatic." I was scared, essentially writhing in emotional torment, and just desperately wanted to someone to care enough to help make it stop hurting.
A brief spell on anti-depressants and finding new friends who actually did care got me over the hump, thank God. I learned I could, in fact, deal with more than I thought I could. But damn, for a very dark period, there really did seem only one way to end the suffering.
95 is just shitty. Virtually all of us have people who care about us and would be damaged, sometimes more than we realize, by suicide. I mean, fine: if you *genuinely* have no living family or close friends, go ahead. Otherwise, no.
87: It occurs to me that there would be no Unfogged if we just said, sensibly, "sometimes yes and sometimes no".
Sometimes purple underpants make you look like a prat who works in marketing, sometimes they don't. Sometimes Tevas are acceptable, sometimes not. Sometimes gay chicken is okay, and...
Bungee jumping: like Ibogaine for suicide.
WTF? Has everyone on this goddamned blog tried to commit suicide?
Even if we think that most people who commit suicide do so for the wrong reasons, and haven't thought through their options well enough, that doesn't mean that all haven't. If I commit suicide (and I don't currently and haven't ever had any intentions to do so, though I've contemplated it a little), it will be because the prospects for treatment seem to remote to be worth the intermediate pain.
And part of it is that I don't value my own life, in itself. I value good experiences, but if I don't expect to have any good experiences for another four years, even if that were followed by thirty years of good experiences, I'd prefer to just end my life, which I value as neutral. 0.
Is there a blood test for clinical depression? Is it possible to distinguish clinically depressed suicidal ideation from non-clinically-depressed suicidal ideation? Or is the ideation proof of depression? Is there more here than"X was suicidal for reasons that don't make sense to me?"
1) No; but brain scans have shown identifiable brain activity that can be read as depression. I'm not sure that all depressed people demonstrate this, though.
2) I don't know.
3) No, it's merely one possible indicator. A pretty strong one, though, I think. But it can also be an indicator of other things including (imho) sanity for, say, people with terminal illness. Which means--I think--that suicidal ideation isn't necessarily a symptom of depression in the "that person's brain clearly isn't working right" way; it might be a fairly rational response to what is, in effect, a painful undertreated chronic illness.
4) Yes, there is. Most mental illness is diagnosed the same way other things have traditionally been: by assessing symptoms over time. There's no definitive test that proves the diagnosis is correct, but a good diagnosis isn't just "wow, that seems weird."
Suddenly FL realized -- he was the only guy in the room who had never tried it...
When I was in 10th grade, my best friend committed suicide. What a sorry day. He was a real confederate: a talented guitarist, an innovative prankster, shy and sharp as a tack. How could any of his friends see that depression, that kind of pitched, sloping depression, for what it was, mired as we were in the emotional morass of high school? It felt like real failure on my part but neither I nor any of his friends had the emotional experience at the time to help or even ask him whether he needed help. There was so much talk about warning signs. (Let's please not let this thread go that way?) Even in hindsight, and with the full vantage point of adulthood, he's so clearly in my mind a misanthrope, the sort who thrives on unhappiness and the opportunities it offers to skewer other people and just be unaccountably nasty.
I think Velleman has a piece wherein he argues that an individual suffering has the right to end her own life, but that given that public acceptance of such a view would create a strong pressure for someone to end her life just to cease to be a burden (the idea it would be long before their life wasn't worth living). So that legally the prohibition should remain, but we should extreme discretion in, say, prosecuting doctors who help terminally ill patients die. Benign looking the other way.
My aunt comitted suicide by hanging herself from a beam in the basement. There were warning signs, she was in treatment, had been mentally ill for years. I don't know whether it would have been better or worse had it been a surprise; as it was, it felt like watching an oncoming train rushing towards you and only being able to move a little bit sideways.
101: Sure, it's shitty and very selfish. I'm not denying that. That's not a good enough reason to restrict it.
22
Maybe. Or maybe he just counted to two.
104: I haven't, just thought about it.
106.3 continued--of course, one of the major problems of depression is that it creates a kind of tunnel vision: you lose perspective and tend to obsess over things. Like, a messy house can send you into a state of utter despair. I imagine that a big part of suicidal ideation for depressed people is that unlike the rest of us, who occasionally think "fuck, I wish I were dead" (and not just as a joke), depressed people tend to sort of fixate on that idea. I know that when I was suicidal, part of the problem was that I was *so* fixated on being unhappy where I lived that I really had no perspective on it; once I started taking meds I realized, "oh yeah, I don't like this place, but I do have a few friends here and you know, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life here." It's weird how something can go from being just intolerable to not-ideal-but-eh with a little change in the ol' brain chemistry.
David Hume thought suicide was acceptable, so I don't see what the 18thcenturyists could possibly have against it. Don't they all worship at Hume's gouty feet?
106.4. I've seen it asserted that a suicide was clinically depressed in the absence of a clinical history. Even if there were a clinical history, if it just consisted of noting negative feelings and behaviors that seems to be begging the question.
There is a history of invalidating personal choices of various kinds on the basic of psychiatric diagnoses based on little more than the wrong choices themselves.
How odd that you suicidal people are vaguely humorless.
Virtually all of us have people who care about us and would be damaged, sometimes more than we realize, by suicide.
You mean I have to worry about the feelings of the sensitive guy at the next desk before I make the decision? I have to worry about the unknowable "more than we realize"? I'm willing to be neat about it 'cause I think guns or explosives indoors is seriously inconsiderate, messy, and expensive, but that's about it.
I barely remember my Hume, and anyway, a lot of the 18th century guys were interesting, but ultimately wrong.
112: But there are people who try to fix their brain chemistry (i.e. their depression) and don't find any way to do so.
Ogged has a great sense of humor and laughs at suicide.
Ha! Ha! You suicidal wretch! You're hilarious!
I'm with Bio. Now we're required to continue living for other people? Spare me.
Can one be vaguely humorless?
114: Well yeah, there's such a thing as shitty diagnosticians and bad doctors.
116: See, I think that there's something fucked up--not crazy, but fucked up--in an attitude where one's individualism is that hostile to other people's feelings. No, not the sensitive guy at the next desk. But, like, maybe your parents. Or friends.
David Hume's essay "On Suicide".
106.4: People are just now starting to figure out that "breast cancer" is largely composed of four or five completely different mutations, which react completely differently to different drugs.
For example, Herceptin works pretty good if your tumor overexpresses erbB2, and does fuck-all if it doesn't.
I'd be shocked and amazed if "clinical depression" doesn't end up including a bunch of completely distinct brain dysfunctions.
I'm with Bio. Now we're required to continue living for other people? Spare me.
I think I read somewhere that trying to get people to stay on for the sake of others, when they don't want to for their own sake, generally doesn't work and tends to lead to nondecreased unhappiness.
118: Yeah, that's why I said (more than once) that chronic untreatable illness creates a rational case for suicide. Nonetheless, it's also true that sometimes the problem is mis- or *under*treated depression.
My grandmother committed suicide, at about 65 and rather neatly. Pretty much everyone besides my grandfather learned to accept her death as her choice.
125 yes, but jesus, people. We're social animals, we exist in social networks. To some extent we all *do* live for other people. People in isolation go crazy; imagine what it would be like to be the only living person on earth.
126: Yeah, I didn't know you meant to include mental illness under "chronic untreatable". A lot of people talking about physician assisted suicide would use that term meaning to exclude depression.
Relationships, need I remind you, are one of the major causes of suicide.
129, see 53:
if, in the end, someone has a depression or chronic pain that doesn't respond to treatment, or a terminal illness, then suicide may be a rational option
Relationships, need I remind you, are one of the major causes of suicide.
From something you said above, I gather the lack of them is, too.
Jesus Christ. I feel like everyone in this thread is being like the tourists walking by the person pacing on the bridge and asking him to take their picture.
Anonymous Coward - if you're not seeing someone, please try to get some help. None of us would want to see anything happen to you.
imagine what it would be like to be the only living person on earth.
I'd have so much time to read. I imagine I'd learn how to fix glasses as well.
133: Based on 105, I think Anon.C. isn't in immediate trouble on this front.
everyone in this thread is being like the tourists walking by the person pacing
i.e., "hott". I was taking at face value AC's assertion above that s/he was not suicidal. But now that I scan the thread looking for it, I am not seeing it. So AC, if you are suicidal, try seeing a therapist to talk about it and move on.
133: Anonymous Coward said earlier "I don't currently and haven't ever had any intentions to do [commit suicide], though I've contemplated it a little." How is everyone in this thread being like the tourists in that situation?
105: if I don't expect to have any good experiences for another four years, even if that were followed by thirty years of good experiences
What would cause you to expect to have no good experiences for the next four years? Is this a hypothetical scenario, or is a prison sentence imminent?
I was taking at face value AC's assertion above that s/he was not suicidal. But now that I scan the thread looking for it, I am not seeing it.
That's what I was thinking.
If AC could please clarify whether this is something in the past or whether s/he still considers this an option, I'd feel better. I know some people are pointing to 105 but the mood of the second paragraph seems to go against some of the things claimed in the first.
But I still want to be hott like the German tourist on the bridge.
120
No, but you shouldn't kill yourself to spite other people either.
139: It was pretty a hypothetical. To be more realistic, I'd have to think about it a lot harder.
133: Thanks, Becks. My doc doesn't think a seratonin-based antidepressant will work for me, but he has me trying one more (I've already tried three others) for six weeks before he switches me to lamictal. It's not really working, and that's frustrating.
143: "kill yourself" s/b "be hott"
If there is a question whether AC is suicidal, that seems reason enough to me to suggest that AC seek out help. It's a little abstract to be giving fairly generic advice to someone I don't know, so I'll try a different tack and say that the least you can do, out of consideration of those around you and in hopes of nudging your evaluation of your life from neutral to positive, is to consider many remedies and not merely this irrevocable one.
TO ALL WHO ARE CURRENTLY CONTEMPLATING SUICIDE: PLEASE DON'T. THANK YOU.
147: "Brock Landers" s/b "OPINIONATED GRANDMA"
144 - I'm glad to hear that you're getting help and taking steps towards something that might make you feel better. Take care of yourself.
AC: I've known people to get good results from lamictal--that it's actually mood stabilizing unlike others of its genre--but obviously it varies & I know nothing about your specific case.
Of course we have obligations to each other. It doesn't mean I'm particularly interested in judging people who committed or attempted suicide for failing to or being simply unable to live up to those obligations--I've never been in that kind of pain; and lectures about choosing life in the midst of despair are going to ring a bit false from someone who's never experienced true despair. I have no interest whatsoever in giving out lectures about how selfish or cowardly it was for someone to kill himself and fail their families. But given the chance, yes, of course we try to stop someone. Even if there are situations where it's permissible and reasonable and there's really no hope--an outsider doesn't tend to have any way of knowing it. Of course you call the ambulance and talk them away from the bridge if you're able. (I wonder if anyone is actually really arguing otherwise--probably not).
I've known two successful suicides, one in high school (no warning, he planned carefully except for his timing such that the little sister he praised in his farewell letter was the one to find him) and one long after college (also no warning and careful planning). The tiniest sliver of regret is attached to the latter, as I saw her for the first time in several years about two weeks before she did it. I'd just read a short story by her, one about anonymous residents of an anonymous townhome community and the disconnectedness of their lives and the ways they never got up the courage to step outside the bounds of polite disinterest in one another, and told her I loved the story and wanted to read more by her but it never occurred to me that she might actually be feeling that herself in her fairly high-powered but wholly professionally-oriented life.
Bleah. People have the right to do what they want, yes, even that, but I think it's OK and completely fair for those who loved them to harbor a little regret, a little anger, a little pain of their own. And now I'm off to the fun weddings thread, which by now should be onto a tangent about fisting or something and that'll cheer me up.
52: I think the part about painlessness and effectiveness is right. My great-grandfather locked himself in the garage with the car's motor running, reclined the seat to a comfortable position, put some of his favorite music on the stereo (old blues), and let himself fade away. As far as I can tell everyone was happy for him.
I would like to ask the folks here who have suffered from or are suffering from depression for any suggestions you might have regarding the person I mentioned in 13 and 41. As I said, this person suffers from chronic depression and numerous health problems. I believe that the depression and the other health problems could be successfully treated, but this person is fundamentally distrustful of the medical community, and the depression exacerbates this distrust as well as making the person feel that it just isn't worth it to make the effort to seek treatment for these problems. I am really not in a position to force this person to get medical attention. So I ask those of you who have been there, when you were in the worst depths of your depression, what did the people around you say or do to help you get through it? Or, what was it you would have wanted them to say or do?
Since this is a suicide thread, I will simply unlurk to point out that subways (or trolley tracks, mentioned about) are a particularly crappy option. A friend of mine, in medical training but not yet even graduated, has already seen 3 people who attempted suicide that way and wound up injured but alive.
Though of course one can debate the meaning of a "successful" suicide attempt. I know someone who describes a successful suicide attempt as one where the person doesn't actually attempt suicide but manages to keep the boy/get attention/etc.
147: I believe that committing suicide is in violation of Unfogged's Terms of Use. Consult your license agreement for more details.
"doesn't actually attempt suicide"
do you mean "doesn't actually kill themselves"?
I intend to live forever or die trying, personally. It's robot body time when this one gives out.
157: I don't know. Star Trek has pretty much convinced me that evolving into an energy being is the way to go.
150: I would argue otherwise. Not sure how to go about refuting your comment, though.
Of course, if the person asks for help, help them, and try to talk them out of it if you can, but if they're determined and they seem pretty rational about it, don't stop them.
154: In addition to that, it's a form of suicide that involves an unrelated party - the driver - in a really bad way. They aren't just the one to find you, but they're in the position of watching it happen, and of being in control but not enough to stop it.
OT: I was holding William Lyon Mackenzie King in reserve if I ever needed to confess something, figuring it was an unlikely choice in any case. Guess not.
I love the song "Suicide is Painless". Also, "Everybody's Talking At Me".
144: Good luck; keep trying until you find the right meds. I had to try three things, and even then it took about a year until the dosage was up to where I feel pretty good, as opposed to "less awful." FWIW, Effexor, imho, is awesome.
153: Tough one, man. People who won't get treatment are hard to deal with.
I think the biggest thing, for me, was that I wanted people to be accepting of the fact that it was an illness, and to be cognizant of the symptoms of it. Things like: it taking me a long time to process and answer questions; finding noise extremely stressful; really just wanting/needing to sleep A LOT, not being able to get food for myself (and kinda just picking at what was put in front of me); just generally finding little daily tasks like showering or getting dressed to be major hurdles. My advice would be to just be as patient as possible. The upside, in retrospect, is that I really did want to just be left alone a lot of the time, so when being patient starts to just be a major pain in the ass, I'd say go ahead and go out. I did like company, but not in the way normal people do: I didn't especially want to talk or "spend time together," I just liked having someone around in the house sort of ignoring me a lot of the time.
Obviously your person's particular symptoms are gonna vary, so, you know, ask them what it's like if you can, and then tailor your behavior accordingly.
I think it's OK and completely fair for those who loved them to harbor a little regret, a little anger, a little pain of their own.
I don't think it's a question of fairness or not; people will feel what they feel. And I think that this is something people should take into account, but that (ime) depressed people are simply not capable of doing that because of the tunnel vision thing.
The question of course is whether having suicidal thoughts revokes your rationality license. I can imagine cases where that isn't true, where someone is fully rational and ending his life really is the best option, but those cases seem far rarer than those where a person is giving off all appearance of rationality, but abandoned reason some time ago. (Or perhaps, Chesteronianly, has hung onto reason but abandoned anything like a reasonable starting point)
One of the problems with being depressed is that you do lose the ability to... let's call it re-evaluate your own situation with any sense of objectivity. It's easy to fall into a pattern where your mental monologue makes the fact that the bed isn't made evidence that suicide is the best option. With that in mind, it would be hard to say, well, she seems like she thinks it's the best option, let her go for it; her ability to assess her situation properly is what's under debate.
163: More advice. Basically, just make everything as easy as possible. If your depressed person doesn't eat while depressed, get snack foods. I mean, seriously, not even things that need to be cut up, but things like pre-cubed cheese or pre-cut fruit or what have you. If they eat a lot, hey: let 'em. *Do* try to take them out for a walk if you can, because exercise helps. Ideally, a walk somewhere where they're not going to run into and have to talk to people, or worry about looking schlumpy. Bribes, like hey, let's go out for ice cream, I'll even go get it and we can eat in the car if you don't want to go in. That kind of shit.
The question of course is whether having suicidal thoughts revokes your rationality license.
I never understand this claim. There's an initial presumption for life that, while something we all usually feel, doesn't seem to drop out as a function of rationality.
But Cala, who are you to say that the fact that the bed isn't made doesn't make suicide the best option? That's going to lead you pretty far into paternalism pretty quickly. What if I think there's no situation in which suicide is the best option, and if you fail to realize that you therefore must be irrational? Oh, and how many other of your major life decisions to I have a right to control based on similar logic?
166: Make it easier for them to drink (water) too; I understand dehydration is really common and makes it worse.
163 & 166: Thanks, B. Your advice is very helpful.
153: Do you have a sense whether the health problems are causing the depression, or the other way around? Because one way to help get the person the help they need might be to try to address those other problems, ones that aren't as scary as ooh, mental illness, but can get the person into a routine (like, a daily walk if the problem is weight or something) that can make treating the depression a more likely possibility.
B has good advice.
165: I would question in return whether if life is worth living is something that has a rational answer. I guess when I said "rational" in my earlier comment I meant something like "their assessment is likely to be stable". Which, I guess, doesn't solve the problem.
who are you to say that the fact that the bed isn't made doesn't make suicide the best option?
I think it's perfectly fine to say that it isn't the best option. If nothing else, because the suicidal person themself would likely say the same thing, if they don't actually go through with it, after the acute crisis has passed.
This doesn't mean we should lock up anyone we suspect of being suicidal, but we do have an obligation to try to prevent people from taking their own lives.
That's going to lead you pretty far into paternalism pretty quickly.
Oh well? I think there's probably a rough consensus (though maybe not principled) about what would be a good reason and a bad reason, and I think that mental health treatment is preferably to shrugging and saying "Gee, they sure look rational enough, not my problem."
Actually, I think 172 does solve the problem, except for the question of how long and how consistently an opinion has to be held to count as stable. But determining that does require quite a bit of judgment.
168: BL, given that Cala has to grade undergrad philosophy papers, I'm surprised she didn't leap through the internet to strangle you when you made the "Who's to say?" move. I would.
If you want to disagree with something, or just want to play devil's advocate, by all means do so. But please don't write "Who are you to say?" like it's some kind of serious objection to anything.
I don't know. "Stable" doesn't necessarily mean "the right judgment." I'm not advocating that we lock up anyone with suicidal ideation, but it seems strange to say that the advice of the doctor should be, if the person's really serious about it and stable enough, to describe how best to angle the shotgun.
If you want to disagree with something, or just want to play devil's advocate, by all means do so. But please don't write "Who are you to say?" like it's some kind of serious objection to anything.
Instead, she admitted that...who's to say. That is, there isn't an immediately available principled pro-life justification. Instead, we have custom and/or consensus. And that's fine, but it seems to me to be pretty clearly opposed to a strong notion of individual determinations about an individual's life. I took this to be BL's point.
171: Do you have a sense whether the health problems are causing the depression, or the other way around?
A little of both, I'd say. It's somewhat of a vicious cycle. For instance, this person (aw, fuck it, it's a she--the English language really has no convenient way of discussing a person at length without resorting to gender-revealing pronouns) hasn't been to the dentist in a very long time, and she knows she needs to go because her teeth hurt, and also because the last time she did go there were things that needed attention that she never got taken care of. But she doesn't want to go, partly because there will naturally be some discomfort involved in getting the dental treatment she needs, partly because she doesn't want to see people, and partly because she feels the dentist will judge her for not having gotten treatment sooner. So the depression contributes to her decision to avoid treatment and live with this ongoing pain in her teeth, and the pain in her teeth is one of many factors contributing to the depression. On the other hand, she has other aches and pains that I believe are symptoms of the depression and not resulting from any other physical cause.
I remember one time sitting with my extremely depressed friend in the recreation room at the nuthouse, and realizing that the suicidal guy at the piano was playing "Please release me, let me go..."
Precious moments.
177: Well, I don't guess you'd want doctors to advise that in particular, but unless you're against physician assisted suicide too, I don't know how you could be against doctors ever helping a patient with depression with suicide, if that's what the patient wants, and whatever hypothetical standard guidelines we had were met.
178: No immediate principled one I'm going to bother to offer in comment box while I'm supposed to be grading to someone who apparently thinks that "paternalism" is a magic word that defeats other people's arguments. Suicidal ideation is a symptom of mental illness, and I didn't realize it was so controversial to say "hey, if someone is suicidal but seems rational, it might be worth a look to see if their rationality isn't being affected by the fact that their brain chemistry is measurably out of whack."
Christ.
Tongue in cheek in tone. 178 was basically my point.
I think that in terms of the "is life worth living" question, that it's kind of a meaningless question. Life just is living; it's not something you measure according to some external system o values.
I think the problem with rational suicides is that while in some instances (terminal illness is the easiest) everyone involved can agree that yes, they can understand the logic of suicide, in most instances people really can't. Part of this is that people who aren't themselves that depressed really just have no way to understand the severity of the illness, and part of that is obviously just stigma--the idea that since you can't *see* the disability, it isn't real.
On the other hand, I think it's just undeniable that we're not purely rational creatures, and that people who love someone who kills themselves--I'm thinking specifically children (even adult children), parents, partners--just *are* going to feel all sorts of things, regardless of whether or not the suicide is "rational" to the depressed person or anyone else. And again, I don't think depressed people are really capable of realizing this because one of the symptoms of the illness is not being able to deal with or assess other people's feelings; one's own feelings are too difficult to deal with (which is why one contemplates suicide).
What I'm saying is that in the same way non-suicidal people should ideally be empathetic and understanding of the depressed/suicidal person's limitations, the sick person should be empathetic and understanding of theirs. This isn't something you can really do, when you're sick, but I do know that it's definitely true that knowing--rationally--that if I killed myself that would be devastating for PK did help keep me from it. I also knew that it would probably be devastating for Mr. B., my parents, and my sister, but this knowledge was a lot more abstract and less important to me. Now that I'm no longer crazy, I can see that I clearly failed to realize what an impact suicide would have been on all of them (and on other people, like my friends and probably even some of you bastards); but at the time, I just was not capable of really realizing this in any meaningful way.
It's not just a question of length. Stable under what conditions? If psychiatric hospitalization and subsequent treatment would change the desire, is it "stable"? If so, well, that's a pretty fucking drastic step, but unlike suicide it's not irrevocable.
As to whether it's rational--it's not so much that it's irrational as that it's so at-odds with our basic biological impulses that for them to get overridden seems like a strong signal of very serious pain. If it's possible to be certain that that pain is never going to decrease and never going to become bearable, that's one thing, but that's not something that's easy to determine, and not something that can be determined without an active attempt to help lessen the pain or at keep the person alive past an immediate crisis & see if they feel the same way.
I'm not really talking about the terminal illness situation here, btw.
no longer crazy
Wait, let's not paint with too broad a brush here...
Apparantyl suicide is too touchy a subject for this blog. Who'da guessed.
Random Dead President guy--
I heard an advertisement on the radio once for a dentistry office that promised to knock you out completely while they did whatever dental work necessary and to abstain rigorously from any judgmentalism. Seriously, they were pitching their clinic to precisely the sort of person who's neurotically afraid of dental work and of being judged for not having taken care of it. This was in New York, but I'd imagine other dentists understand the market value of such service.
182: All I'm asking for is hypothetical standard guidelines where the stability of the desire is necessary, but not sufficient. My experience with college friends going through periods of depression suggests to me that "a really bad breakup" can give them a stable pattern of suicidal thoughts. I think it would be wrong for a doctor to assist with the suicide of a twenty year old because the cheese fries at the dining hall remind her of her ex, yes. Stability doesn't give you all that much.
183 before the rest of all that.
71: Lemmings.
96: Nietzsche: "The thought of suicide is a great comfort; by means of it, one gets through many a bad night."
155: You're saying that depressed people have lower empathy for people close to them. I agree. But I don't think it's a matter of "fail[ing] to realize what an impact suicide would have been on all of them", I think it's a matter of realizing, and not caring. You're a different person when you're depressed--a person who cares less about others' feelings.
It's exactly like saying that teenagers think they're invincible, and so they take a lot of stupid risks. No, teenagers just have a different way of looking at things. They understand the risk (as well as adults) but just don't care as much.
Things like caring about others aren't any more an immutable part of your character than mood is.
181: Ah, that explains it. I'm browsing with lynx, and it doesn't correctly render the <tongueincheek> tag.
189: Yeah, the "progressive talk" station in Chicago has started to run ads from a dentist with this pitch.
Suicidal ideation is a symptom of mental illness, and I didn't realize it was so controversial to say "hey, if someone is suicidal but seems rational, it might be worth a look to see if their rationality isn't being affected by the fact that their brain chemistry is measurably out of whack."
I don't know what the purpose of "if" is in that sentence. It seems to me that you're saying that if you are suicidal, something is likely to be out of whack. Seems reasonable. But you've already said that Person X seems otherwise rational. Unless I am unaware of diagnostic tools available to psychiatrists--entirely possible--we're just in a loop: suicidal then not quite right. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
We have a pro-life presumption. I'm glad of it, and think it's a good thing. But I don't know what it means to say that it's "rational." This might be because you have a better defined notion of rationality than I do that answers the issue; you're a philosopher and I'm not, so that seems plausible. I guess I'm saying that i don't see a lay "rationality" to the pro-life position.
You're saying that depressed people have lower empathy for people close to them. I agree.
Cf. Steve Page in the NYer article:
In 1993, a man named Steve Page threw his three-year-old daughter, Kellie, over the side of the bridge and followed her down ...
MotherFUCKER.
912: No; I realized that people would care, but I didn't realize what that really *meant*. And I did care that they would care, but I wasn't really able to feel that caring. I think you're differentiating between reason and feeling far too starkly; when your feelings are seriously muted by illness, you really aren't able to "reason" or know things in the proper senses of the words, even if you can think logically.
196: I did occasionally think that if I did kill myself, I would have to kill PK as well because leaving him behind would be too cruel.
190: I agree that the depressed post-breakup girl is someone we'd rather not see commit suicide. But if an external observer could tell that the depression was a result of the breakup, that's very good evidence that the depression will not last more than, say, a year, and so isn't stable. Wouldn't you agree?
I don't think we're getting very far. I don't really have any justifications for my position, and I don't know if you have them, or have the time to expand on them.
198: Your suicide would have been very, very bad, but that would have been worse. I realize you're unlikely (I hope) to find yourself in such dire straights again, so just sayin' to superstitiously ward off the possibility.
189: Thanks for the suggestion, JM. Actually, I've heard radio ads for the "we'll give you roofies!" denist in my local community, but the "no judgmentalism" is an added touch that they have not yet thought to advertise around these parts.
I did occasionally think that if I did kill myself, I would have to kill PK as well because leaving him behind would be too cruel.
That's not an uncommon thought, I realize, but I confess to not understanding it whatsoever. Which is okay with me, actually.
Throwing little Kellie first, though, & not even holding the child with him ... brrrrrrr.
912:
Holy shit, we're in for a long thread.
198: WTF WTF
I thought suicidal thoughts would generally be accompanied by "nobody cares about me, everyone can do fine without me, nobody will notice". Suicidal thoughts, despite realizing that someone else is dependent on you, that's scary.
200: Indeed. Although you have to admit that there's a certain kind of fucked up logic to it. But yes, even at the time I realized that that was a little nutso. I'm mentioning it just to demonstrate the ways that logic and feeling have weird effects on each other: obviously part of why I was thinking that was because I do love him and don't want to cause him pain. Luckily I guess I wasn't depressed/crazy *enough* to no longer be able to realize that even though I couldn't quite put my finger on it, there was something wrong with that reasoning.
I don't think of mothers who include killing their children in their thoughts of suicide as doing so out of spite or hostility, but of a sense of being bonded, responsible and connected all-in-all. Crazy, I suppose, but comprehensible. An indication of the strength of the bond.
I guess I'm saying that i don't see a lay "rationality" to the pro-life position.
This isn't exactly a thesis on "rationality", but I do mean it to be more than just a presumption in favor of life, or a simple equation of "suicidal" and "irrational".
How about something like the ability to weight events and choices proportional to their actual importance? This would presuppose some external standard by which the importance of events could be ranked; if you think that's a big problem, then I don't think there's much more to say, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that "if the person thinks it's rational, it is."
But I'm imagining a system that would sort out the intuitive difference between the elderly terminal patient who wants to end her suffering and her life (seems rational) and the moody teenager who does so becacuse the new Justin Timberlake release was delayed (probably needs to rethink that.)
197: Obviously I'm in no position to assert this strongly, but I suspect you're inaccurately judging your depressed self through the lenses of your current self. Having muted emotions changes your utility function (do I need to explain?)--it doesn't make you reason more poorly by any normative standard, it just makes you value different things. You disapprove of your depressed self's values, but that doesn't mean you weren't thinking clearly, even though it seems that way now.
204: Well like I said, realizing his dependence probably helped keep me from getting too serious about the suicide thing.
191: Not lemmings. They were pushed!!!!
Suicidal ideation is a symptom of mental illness, and I didn't realize it was so controversial to say "hey, if someone is suicidal but seems rational, it might be worth a look to see if their rationality isn't being affected by the fact that their brain chemistry is measurably out of whack."
First of all, I asked whether we had a way of independently knowing whether brain chemistry is out of whack.
I've been in medical situations listening to doctors and nurses who take suicidal ideation itself as sufficient to diagnose mental illness, and something to be treated by medication.
What I'm talking about is a circular argument. What else, beyond just suicidal ideation, is required to prove netal illness (and incompetence)?
912:
Holy shit, we're in for a long thread.
Yeah, it's a little spooky when B. is replying to future comments.
I guess I don't really understand suicide. You're going to die anyway, just suck it up for a while. Volunteer for dangerous rescue work or something.
208: Honestly, I remember those moments very clearly. I can tell you where I was and how I felt and exactly what I saw when I was thinking those things. I don't think I'm misremembering at all.
211: John, here are the diagnostic criteria for major depression.
"This would presuppose some external standard by which the importance of events could be ranked; if you think that's a big problem, then I don't think there's much more to say"
Yeah, I think that's our difference here. I don't believe in such a standard, because I've been at different points in my life where I've had different such standards, and I don't see how my current standards are any better, or how my future standards could be any better. Of course, by definition my current standards are the best, where "best" is judged using my current standards. That's a tautology.
An indication of the strength of the bond.
Something like that. I've always been fascinated that Sylvia Plath went to some lengths to make sure the gas didn't kill her kids (filled doorframe chinks w/ wet towels, left their window wide-open despite cold weather) ... and that Ted Hughes's paramous Assia Wevill not only gassed herself, but took their daughter Shura with her.
(Her ex, David Wevill, IIRC, teaches at UT-Austin. I used to try to dream up the single most appalling thing one could raise one's hand & ask him in class.)
213: Well, you think things like "yeah, I could just hang out feeling like shit and not being able to function for the rest of my natural life, but that would really fucking suck for Mr. B. and PK. Plus it feels like shit." I mean, when you don't have the energy to *shower*, you sure as hell don't have the energy to do dangerous rescue work.
214: Have you ever had the experience where you were trying to understand some concept, but were quite confused, and then someone said something that made it clear to you, and then immediately afterward you couldn't remember what your misconception was? I don't think that sort of thing is a slip of memory; I think there are some sorts of things that we don't form memories about, and so memory is not a reliable guide to them at all. I don't dispute that you clearly remember your general emotions and reasoning and conclusions, I just dispute that you can remember the emotional valence assigned to the concepts involved that made your conclusion back then rational.
Again, this might not apply to you specifically.
I've been having a thought all afternoon that I want to develop further and may do this evening, depending how things are going, which is that suicidal ideation has a similar (though obviously not identical) effect on me to viewing pornography.
210: I wonder if old Walt had any idea that people in his employ were hurling scores of small rodents to their deaths. Making rodent snuff films, even.
I read a very persuasive article once that said that a large amount of suicidal ideation is the result of a desire for revenge. You know the stereotype - "They'll be sorry when I'm gone." Suicide, in this rendering, is marked not just by abnormal depression but abnormal hostility.
220: I don't know about pornography, but I know I recognized myself in the Nietzsche quote in 191.
222: That was what enabled me to understand how depressed I actually was: I moved from occasional angry "ooh, those stupid people, bet they'd be sorry if I jumped off a bridge!" type thoughts, natural to many crabby people, to "Omigod, how can I possibly stand to live until I die a natural death?" Both sets of thoughts are possible, but the second ones are more motivating, if you get my drift.
which is that suicidal ideation has a similar (though obviously not identical) effect on me to viewing pornography.
Let us know how that comes out .... Maybe you can find an adaptation of Fanny Hill: "O! I die! I die!"
210: So lemmings aren't the depressed little rodents of lore -- I should've picked that up somewhere.
Random Dead President Guy---
If there are dentists around your town willing to put patients out entirely for semi-routine dental work, perhaps they'd be open to a pre-appointment suggestion to be completely deadpanned and non-judgmental. I don't know how close you are to your suicidal friend, but if you are going to take responsibility on for getting her to the dentist, perhaps you could call and tell them how best to help her.
153: You know, this seems contrary to what alot of people here have said, but I would leave out the lines like "Think about how X will feel if you do that." I don't really agree with this idea that depressed/suicidal people are less capable of empathy -- it's just that when you're own well has run dry, it's really hard to have to worry about filling someone else's half-empty cup.
"You're being selfish," or "I know you know better," or similar such lines really sucked when I was in that state. Oh, you think I'm smarter than that. I see. But hey, I am actually thinking about it, so apparently I'm not as smart as you think. And I'm selfish too. So, hey, my life felt hopeless before, but now I've added the knowledge that I'm stupid and selfish and that the best I can get from someone I thought might care is condescending judgment of my situation... You see where I'm going -- it doesn't help.
Be there when the person wants you to be there. Go away when they want you to go away. Check in anyway, every once in awhile, even when they've told you to go away. "I don't want to bug you -- just wanted to see how you are, 'cause I care about you." Understand. Don't tell them all the rational reasons that it's a poor decision. Tell them you understand why they feel so crappy and ask what you can do to make things easier. Kick someone's ass for them, if that'll help, or bake brownies.
But you know, when someone says stuff like, "There are more people than you know who would be really devastated if you killed yourself," it's perfectly rational for the suicidal person to think, "Oh yeah, then where the fuck are all these people now?"
219: I offer in response that maybe, being in the thick of it yourself, you're too easily dismissing my contention that my assessment of those memories is retroactive. After all, I *didn't* kill myself, partly because I knew then the things that I feel now about why it would be a bad idea to do so.
It saddens me that in this discussion, like in so many others on this topic, some people see the avoidance of paternalism as the greatest concern. Maybe this is done merely in the interest of exploring corner cases, and sure, maybe there are some circumstances where suicide could be a rational choice, whatever that means.
I just wish that even a fraction of the passion that gets directed toward fighting even the slightest hypothetical encroachment on individual rights in these conversations would be instead be directed toward questions like: Why is it that these people are in so much pain? Are there ways, through advancements in medical science and better social policy, that we can improve the lot of the depressed? Are there actions I can take to create a world in which fewer people feel this isolated?
I know people think they are being humane by proposing that we allow these hypothetical rational depressed people to kill themselves; I just think that it would be a lot more humane to put equal passion into trying to help those around us feel better. It feels like to many people are so attached to freedom that they are ready to just give up on their fellow humans, which seems more inhumane than humane.
it's just that when you're own well has run dry, it's really hard to have to worry about filling someone else's half-empty cup.
Well, I think that equates to "less capable of empathy." But agreed that it's not necessarily effective rhetoric.
Freud has a good spiel on how pain in general, including mental pain or grief, turns our libido inwards. It's part of the depressed condition in the 1st place, not a moral flaw.
214: It would seem that by those criteria, everyone thinking of suicide would be suffering from depression except those who were thinking of suicide in a cheerful, jolly way.
What does "suffering from depression" add to "suicidal" except a medical label?
"You know, this seems contrary to what alot of people here have said, but I would leave out the lines like "Think about how X will feel if you do that."
This is not at all contrary to what I think, just so you know. I am NOT suggesting guilt tripping as a treatment for suicidal ideation and major depression. I said people have obligations to each other, that's all. I realize that lectures about those obligations from a third party are bound not to be especially to persuasive to someone who's having a hard time just surviving.
227: Oh, I'm not saying that these are the things to say to someone to "talk them out of" suicide. I'm saying that these are the things that kept me from doing it and that I think they are, in fact, reasons why the "suicide can be logical" argument is deeply flawed.
Obviously saying things to someone like "that would be selfish" or "but think about so-and-so" isn't helpful; those statements contain implicit accusations. Although the "yeah, fuck you, I know that" response isn't necessarily a bad one to evoke--anger is at least a form of energy. I'd be more worried about the depressed person whose response was "you're right, it's terrible of me to think like that." The down side is that anger can cause the depressed person to pull away from you, which means you can't help any more and they become even more isolated.
228: Well, if you remember thinking that those things weren't actually a good idea at the time, then I won't dispute that at all. I was just responding to this:
"when your feelings are seriously muted by illness, you really aren't able to "reason" or know things in the proper senses of the words"
230: I'm defining empathy as the ability to essentially feel another person's emotions and suggesting that a depressed/suicidal person may not, in fact, be less able to do so but is only less able to shoulder the burden of being *responsible* for another person's feelings. Maybe we're saying the same thing.
It means you're also depressed, rather than just wanting to end your own life (which you could do for any number of reasons)?
This would presuppose some external standard by which the importance of events could be ranked; if you think that's a big problem, then I don't think there's much more to say, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that "if the person thinks it's rational, it is."
Yeah, that's the nub of the issue. I wonder if the word shouldn't be "rational" so much as "healthy." External standards seem to sit in opposition to strong notions of the individual, which is what, I think, Brock was saying. I think such standards, however elaborate, are either a function of custom or consensus. I'm fine with that, but I am, in some (many?) ways, somewhat conservative. It's the same sort of impulse that leads me to say that we shouldn't, for example, allow radical body modifications that require amputation. It seems weird and psychotic to me. And, while I might spin out more or less convincing justifications for my bar, the base on which it sits isn't going to be much more than "seems weird and psychotic." That doesn't feel "principled," but, at a minimum, I don't think I can do better.
So lemmings aren't the depressed little rodents of lore
JGO: I don't think that it's true that people only care about individual rights. There's plenty of effort going into the other stuff, including by people here. But at this moment some of us are talking about the rights aspect. And it isn't just hypothetical people for whom suicide might be rational. Some of us are thinking of actual people.
229: Partially agreed, but be careful about the false dichotomy. Just because we put a lot of effort into trying to cure depression doesn't mean we can't conceivably support a person's right to suicide.
And regarding whether it's just tautology to identify suicidal thoughts with irrationality/mental illness, can I quote myself & ask again what's wrong with looking at it this way:
"it's not so much that it's irrational as that it's so at-odds with our basic biological impulses that for them to get overridden seems like a strong signal of very serious pain. If it's possible to be certain that that pain is never going to decrease and never going to become bearable, that's one thing, but that's not something that's easy to determine, and not something that can be determined without an active attempt to help lessen the pain or at keep the person alive past an immediate crisis & see if they feel the same way."
Or, what 229 said.
I'd be more worried about the depressed person whose response was "you're right, it's terrible of me to think like that."
I have a friend like that. She's the sort who apologizes for everything, including apologizing. It's draining.
234: Actually there's research on the reason/emotion connection that supports what I'm saying with that sentence.
sorry, that last one was me.
What sort of "right to kill yourself" are we talking about here? Are we talking about the gov't not jailing doctors in Oregon; involuntary commitment standards; a moral right to off yourself in peace without interference from your nosy neighbors, friends and family?
I should note that the great-grandfather in 152 had no terminal illness, wasn't in pain, etc. He just felt old, and tired of life, and wanted it to end on his own terms. I suspect he was probably clinically depressed, but I'm sure he wasn't professionally diagnosed and I wasn't close enough to him to know for sure.
And yet I'm serious when I say I think everyone was happy for him. Not happy to have him gone (he was a nice guy), but happy that he made his choice and that it (by all appearances) worked out well for him.
Somewhat odd.
236: The criteria for "depressed" are about the same as the criteria for "chronically unhappy" (more than two weeks), and most people who commit suicide are chronically unhappy.
One thing to say about suicide is that it's a permanent solution for a temporary problem. However, being chronic is a criterion for depression.
Agree with #227, which actually sounds a bit like what B was describing. You mitigate the pain from the outside as much as you can, maybe nudge a little bit if you can get away with it. But mostly, it seems to me, you're waiting for the person to sort it out themselves. This doesn't apply to situations that are ameliorated by medicine (or anything that's can be "fixed," I guess), except, perhaps, at the margin of getting them well enough to seek help.
But, really, it might make sense to talk to experienced professionals and ask them what you should do.
244: And I probably agree with you on what the behavioral effects of those changes are. (I'm cursorily familiar with that research as well.) I just come to a different conclusion. Basically, different != less valid.
243: If she's like that about that specific thing, I'd worry that she was hearing everything as yet another reason to think of herself as worthless.
On the other hand, if she just does that because she does that, and isn't especially depressed, I have to admit I would not be able to tolerate her friendship. I'm sorry (not really) if that makes me a bad person.
Oh, and a totally pragmatic bit of advice. When you do make the time to listen to someone who is depressed, try to avoid doing it over drinks. Alcohol is a depressant (duh!) and will only make things worse in the long run.
Non-depressed rationales for suicide:
--Because you're terminally ill, or of advanced age, & don't feel like fighting it anymore.
--Because your enemies will do much, much worse to you if you fall into their hands.
--Because that's the only way you're going to pay off your student loans & at least leave your grieving family out of debt. (Assuming your life insurance doesn't have a suicide exclusion.)
--Because it's easier than having to confront your friends & family after they find out you're a child molester, serial rapist, whatever.
So obviously, you don't *have* to be depressed to commit suicide.
Random Dead President guy, I'm not sure how close you are with this friend, but let me stress this: you must resist the temptation to become the hero that fixes her. Offer your help, offer your support, JM's suggestion of running interference on behalf of her at the dentist is great, and B's provided some helpful suggestions.
But you are not going to cure her depression, and in my experience, you need to get that beat in your head now. You wouldn't expect to be the one that cured your friend's heart disease, so don't confuse help for a cure. I'm saying this because a depressed friend burned through about eight friendships in college because helping her quickly became a full-time job.
It will kill you; your goal here has to be to help her to get to the point where she'll see a professional who has the tools to help her fix what's wrong.
247: I'm willing to say that "chronic unhappiness" = low-level depression.
254's right. There's a good book called "How You Can Help When They're Depressed" that I read back when I was learning that I needed to realize that I wasn't going to save my mom.
229 captures what's been infuriating me about this thread.
subways... are a particularly crappy option
Suicide by train is very popular in Japan, despite its effect on the family of the deceased, who have to deal not only with their grief, but also with a very large bill. From Wikipedia: 'The costs to the surviving families by the railway companies' "delay fee" is often in the 100 million yen (approx. 850 thousand U.S. Dollars) range.'
241: You're right, of course, and I partially saw that false dichotomy mid-post. I guess I was just experimenting with talking about how it all made me feel, perfect argument be dammed. Like many here, I have first hand experience with the topic at hand, and of course thought that me offing myself made perfect sense. I believe my feelings spring from reflection upon myself in that state. The line Ogged pulled about no one asking the guy what is wrong struck me, because "No one gives a fuck about me. Why won't anyone ask whether I'm o.k.?" is an emotion from those days I remember strongly. So I think the sadness comes from using some of you as surrogates for "those people" who didn't ask--and imagining that back then you'd have rather defended my right to kill myself than showed some concern.
Utterly unfair, I know, but that's what happens when I try to aggregate vague impressions of 100+ comments with lots of memories.
257: oh my God. That is just horrendous. Talk about a "death tax".
she was hearing everything as yet another reason to think of herself as worthless.
Yep, that's her. She has about the lowest self image of anyone I've ever met.
IIRC, if anything, Japan frowns on suicide even more than the US.
259, 260: Yeah, tell me. It's not quite on the level of the Chinese government charging families for the bullets used to kill their loved ones at Tiananmen Square, but it's up there.
she was hearing everything as yet another reason to think of herself as worthless.
This is a symptom of depression, isn't it? At least, this is what stopped happening when I started on the SSRIs.
263: In the shame attached to it, yes, but the shame culture also contributes to high suicide rates.
Japan frowns on suicide even more than the US.
That would fit the de-emphasis on individualism, but -- help me out here -- don't they have a bit of tradition where suicide's involved?
257: The fact that people still do that even w/ such a tax (presumably) known to be in place, is important psychological information.
266: Right. It would explain the suicide bills, though.
262: Ugh, my sympathies. That's awful.
258: To be fair, people don't ask not b/c they don't care, but b/c they're afraid. Which is a result of caring. That, and they just don't know what to say or b/c they feel that perhaps acting "normal" will help, somehow, more than asking. Again, though, those are things that healthy people can understand, and depressed people just can't. IME.
I'm way behind on this thread but must share this little tidbit about the movie Ogged originally posted about:
Last fall the director of this movie was interviewed on the morning show on one of the big local news radio stations (I think he was trying to get the film distributed, and it was news because there are lots of people in the Bay Area who are understandably squicked about the project.) As my jaw dropped further and further, the idiot newscaster, who was just GUSHING over the movie, told the director that his movie "had an impact" and "knocks the wind out of you," then came back AFTER A COMMERCIAL BREAK (when any clueful producer should have had plenty of time to warn her off of those particular word choices) to say it was "impactful."
The station never responded to my "WTF!?!?" e-mail.
269: I understand them just fine, and I'm depressed. They might be things that people tend to misunderstand when they're depressed. I would imagine it's just projection finding convenient targets.
a moral right to off yourself in peace without interference from your nosy neighbors, friends and family?
That's the one I'm asserting. I have my own internal standards for who I am and I'm not willing to deviate too very far from those as I age. Once the mechanism that houses me falls below a certain level of performance I'm turning it off. I'd rather do it peacefully and quietly but I'll do it otherwise if pushed. I've been a child, I'm not going back there.
258, 269: B is right, of course, that this may be how people who don't ask are thinking about it. But it's REALLY important for the people who don't ask to realize what JGO is saying about how that is received by someone who is depressed. Periodically saying, "I don't know what to say or do, but I want you to know I care," does mean something.
269.2: Yup, I'm totally on board with those thoughts, and it gives me an occasion to state my agreement with your statements, IIRC, on the depressed mind just not doing a very good job of evaluating things. Because there were even a couple people who did ask--and I just blew them off. And yet then I thought no one cared. And maybe they didn't. Now I'm confused. I guess what I'm coming to is that this is all a very hard problem and I don't have a solution either.
On the other end of the scale in Japan, popularity-wise, there's the time-honored practice of seppuku, which is a good choice if you're out to make a statement.
When my mom went to see me in Japan, we paid a visit to the Tokyo central morgue. My conversation with the ME somehow turned to the subject of books, and when I mentioned that I'd read Mishima, he pointed to the door behind me and said, "he came right in through there."
When my mom went to see me in Japan, we paid a visit to the Tokyo central morgue
Because ...?
277: The element of surprise.
Actually, she's a forensic pathologist.
163: If she distrusts the medical community, is there any chance she could be persuaded to see some sort of alternative practitioner? Regardless of your personal tolerance for that kind of thing, talking to someone, having attention paid to her, and making some kind of statement about her own value by attending treatment are all good things; and these people are usually quite responsible and will gently encourage actual medical treatment as well.
[deleted discussion of my own experiences of non-med responding depression because... bleah, I'm sick of thinking about it, and it is actually going away. And I partially credit rebirthing for this, for somehow rewiring the way in which my mind connects to my body, and this isn't something I care to admit on this blog full of smart people who scorn such things, not that I post much anyway, but I'm posting as anonymous, and screw all y'all.]
Be a man, be a man
Belsen was a gas
Be a man
Kill someone
Kill yourself
Be a man
Be someone
Kill somone
Be a man
Kill yourself
Since the failed suicides suddenly realized they wanted to live, I see a business opportunity here: Psychotherapy treatments for depressed people in which you trick them into thinking they're about to die and then at the last minute, SURPRISE! You're still alive! Hooray!
I don't know what the best method of fake imminent death would be, though.
Ah, that explains it. I'm browsing with lynx
The mind reels. Still??
I got through a couple of bad patches of teenagerhood with thinking along the lines Minneapolitan described up in 74 or thereabout:
Many times in my life, my thinking has gone like this: I'm depressed; I wonder if I should kill myself; if I did kill myself, my problems would be at an end, but other people's problems would just be beginning; if I really am about to kill myself, why not just hop a train or walk out into the wilderness and hang out, and preserve the possibility of returning at a better time? And then, if I'm prepared to do that, why not just stick it out and see if things get better or worse before I make a life-altering or life-ending decision?
That still seems right to me. If it's depression and hopelessness, walk away; there has to be a glimmer of hope somewhere.
But for the two suicides closest to me, one with moderate-severe and the other with very severe mental health issues, I basically think of them as having died of their illnesses. Would that they could have been cured, but they weren't, and while they left a lot of pain behind them, at least they're no longer suffering (I want to say "at peace" but realize that it's a lousy synonym for "dead"). A couple of other cases, a bit further removed, I wish someone could have gotten to them in time.
trick them into thinking they're about to die and then at the last minute, SURPRISE! You're still alive! Hooray!
Kieslowski did something like that in "White".
NON-SPOILER ALERT: that happened near the beginning of "White", so you should all still get and see the movie.
Oh, whoops. My bad. Everybody still see it! And the rest of the trilogy!
I saw Red, but I haven't gotten around to Blue and White yet.
I guess Brad Pitt did something similar with that one guy in Fight Club, where he acted like he was going to shoot him, but then let him go.
Red is the best, I think, but they're all very good. White is more comic.
Blue is a bit too artistic (or something like that) for me. White also has Poland. I believe White has been referred to before in the comments, probably by Matt F, probably not by name.
Blue was too mysterious for me. Didn't see "Red" yet because the copy at the local video rental place looks like erotica. "White" was just right, except that i had no idea what he saw in her.
White also has Poland.
Never forget Poland.
I've known two people who committed suicide, and what's interesting to me is that although I wasn't especially close to either, of all the dead people I know, they're the ones who still come to mind most often years later, and the ones who still cause a pang of loss.
Although I want to agree in principle with 272, the older I get the more vividly I seem to relearn that we don't really belong to ourselves. During those nasty patches when suicidal thoughts slithered into my mind, imagining my mother getting the phone call was a pretty effective way of talking myself down.
I really belive my aged mother is the only thing that keeps me alive. My father, a distinguished professor of English Literature or some shit like that, killed himself when I was ten. My brother, a loathesome fratboy asshole, killed himself with a heroin OD some years ago. So I'm pretty much all she has left.
It's strange, this whole idea of staying alive for another person.
It's strange, this whole idea of staying alive for another person.
Because it's just a temporary crutch. It might get you through a few rough patches, but eventually you have to live for yourself.
Matt F., yes, I see your point. But for mere mortals who aren't James Brown, there kind of comes a point where you don't really want to wait for the end of the movie.
I say this just because, as many people have pointed out upthread, sometimes suicide is the rational choice. Not everybody's made to live in this world.
I realize this unfogged.com post has been pretty unpopular, but actually I found it really interesting. I made some teenage suicide attempts in the past, and I don't really believe in the per se value of life. It was interesting to hear from people with similar views.
the older I get the more vividly I seem to relearn that we don't really belong to ourselves.
IMX it's a bell curve of belonging to others over one's lifespan. I'm getting pretty far out on the right side.
No, eventually you just have to live. We're social animals; other people is a big part of what we do. If you need a "for", that one's as good as any, but the better trick is just keeping on keeping on even though the whys of the whole thing are a bit obscure.
Jeff, dude, you're misreading a lot of the comments on this post and you're taking it down a pretty dark path. I don't think anyone but you has asserted anything like "not everybody's made to live in this world" as a justification for suicide, and I don't think that's right. You sound like you're feeling depressed and disconnected. That's not a good reason to stop living. You've got at least one reason--your mom--to keep going. Build from there. And maybe try talking to a professional about how you're feeling? I've never really wanted to do that either, but I've never felt quite the way you're sounding, and I'm given to understand that it can help.
Thinking about other people always made me want to off myself when I was a kid. The thought of all that crying? Big turn-on. I wrote poems about dead mules w/r/t this when I was eight.
BTW, I am not infantilizing suicidal desire at all there. It's just the last time I was suicidal.
It was interesting to hear from people with similar views.
Jeff, just because some people are talking about the value of life in abstract, philosophical terms and, by that definition, saying it doesn't have a "value" doesn't mean that the majority of us don't believe that life is worth living. If you are thinking of hurting yourself, please seek help. This thread should not be taken as an endorsement that those thoughts are OK.
Well said, 298.
297: I hear you, but part of what makes the lesson more vivid for me is realizing how often you don't know what you mean to others. I also think where you fall on that curve is only one of several variables.
Whenever I have a close brush with death, I like to imagine my funeral and whether there would be anyone there who cries because they never got a chance to sex me.
I am totally Farbering this thread; I'll go away now and grade papers.
You know, this seems contrary to what alot of people here have said, but I would leave out the lines like "Think about how X will feel if you do that."
I have been told that that is the worst possible thing to say to a suicidal person, because he may well be planning to kill himself specifically in order to hurt X.
If you are in fact X, it gets especially complicated.
I haven't posted that poem here? It's sad.
Jeff:
I wasn't arguing that suicide can be rational, but just that the word is somewhat inappropriate for either decision. Definitely, the healthy thing to do is to want to live. The best information you have--other people's experiences--suggests that you should have a strong presumption towards living. On this thread, a number of people, in various guises, have admitted to having found themselves in pretty dire emotional straights. But they found their way through it. So, if anything, you should take away an understanding that things can and usually do turn around. Again, the strong presumption should be to live. If you're finding that hard, seek counseling. If that doesn't work, seek another counselor or psychiatrist. And again and again, as necessary.
You know what's a great tear-jerky song about suicide? Lucinda Williams' "Sweet Old World." (The Emmylou Harris cover is also lovely.)
Returning briefly and seriously to the topic, I finally dealt with pretty soul-killing depression by trying to think of some other non-fatal dire thing I could hold out as a last thing to do. (This was a totally untherapied depression, and I highly recommend therapy, of course.) But as an imaginative exercise, when things were really awful, I'd replace "I'll just kill myself" with "I'll just run away and change my name" (at least, when I got old enough to think of such things realistically). There has to be a last resort--I know the feeling of needing to know there was the possibility of an endpoint. But reimagine that endpoint somewhere else, like booking a one-way flight to Lagos. And when things get really bad, and the old desire to off yourself starts up again, you can think, "Goddamit, this world fucking sucks! I'm going to... I'm going to... empty my bank account and move to Nigeria!"
And now, thanks to miracle of the internets, Nigeria will be happy to come empty out your bank account for you. Progress!
We're social animals; other people is a big part of what we do.
(This is about as pseudonymous as holding a paper mask in front of your face is a costume, isn't it...)
Okay, so for me, graduate school has either caused, or just coincidentally lined up perfectly with, recurring episodes of moderately severe to severe clinical depression. Now I can more or less manage it. For me an episode of depression is similar to having an allergic reaction: there are triggers, I can learn to avoid those triggers much like someone might learn to avoid shellfish or peanuts.
Oddly enough, it's not stress that's a trigger. It's isolation, which of course is often a component of researching and writing, which also coincides with eating poorly and not exercising, which can turn into not leaving the apartment, which can turn into a bad interior monologue that keeps unhelpfully pointing out that no one would notice if I died for at least a week and maybe even two if it hit at the right point in the semester. Which leads to wanting to curl in bed in a little ball, which leads to more isolation, or Jane Hancock suggesting that I go to the store to run an errand in the hopes of breaking me out of a rut.
This is a long way of saying that Aristotle wasn't fucking half kidding when he said that man was a political animal.
I have the running away fantasy occasionally -- I hadn't really thought about how it works the same way as suicidal thinking but yes, it does.
Jeff, if you're not an 80-year-old facing the natural end of life with a terminal, painful illness or a Japanese samurai, you ain't who I was talking about when I wuz talking about rationality and suicide. In other words, 309 gets it right in pretty much every sense.
It's not ageist, it's chronologically discriminatory.
facing the natural end of life with a terminal, painful illness or a Japanese samurai
I'll take the samurai. But not for a while yet.
Also racist and classist, 'cause of the samurai.
313: I have no idea who you are, but then I'm stupid like that. In any case, yeah: grad school is way psychically unhealthy. This is one of those things we ought to emphasize more heavily to aspiring graduate students, imho.
313, 322: This is true. If you're not careful grad school + job market will make you physically and mentally ill. It certainly didn't do my health any good, and I did about as well out of it as could reasonably be expected.
313 is disturbingly like my own experience, but without any Jane Hancock involved.
Grad school cons: it will make you suicidal; if you survive, there are no jobs; if you actually do get a job, it will be at South Bumfuck State College and it will pay four bucks an hour.
Grad school pros: not law school.
No wonder grad schools keep attracting too many people.
(Kidding aside, the getting out of the house and going for a walk thing is very good. Isolation sucks. But isolation will pass.)
Burton's advice is still the best: be not idle, be not alone.
My nasty patches referred to upthread were almost entirely in grad school. It feels strange to say that, while I really really love doing research in my area of study, given the chance to make the grad school decision over again, there's no way I'd do it. It was the most psychically destructive thing I've ever done and I'm only recently getting my head clear from the experience.
310: Great suicide song - "Suicide Chump" by Frank Zappa. Fuck the "Don't Fear the Reaper" bullshit. There are many entirely reasonable and appropriate responses to suicide - and we've seen many of them here - but one appropriate response is contempt.
Wow. Grad school has been the best time of my life. But then, my depression was linked to not having any privacy, feeling like people were way too invasive and I had no time to myself to think.
I probably would have fared much better had I done grad school in New York. Also, I'd imagine grad school in the humanities is a somewhat different experience than in the sciences, although I'm not sure if that's an important difference.
The other disturbing thing for me has been how much grad school has been, in this respect, like most of undergrad, along with the first year after undergrad (but not, thankfully, the last year of undergrad, or the year before grad school, or part of a summer during grad school or a few other times). It's more accurate for me to talk about triggers for non-depressive episodes.
327: Amen. I love what it taught me, but no way would I repeat it.
In a lot of ways I feel like my grad school depression was just the low-level depression that had been there all along finally getting acute enough for me to notice. And even then it took the post-grad-school-first-job depression for me to finally just start taking meds.
When I was a young teenager, and my older brother was an older teenager, he remarked that he had been obliged to take a psychological test that included the question "Have you ever considered suicide?"
He said that they were trying to identify the abnormal people who had considered suicide, but he regarded considering suicide as being perfectly normal. At the time, I found this to be a very mundane observation. Of course every normal person considers suicide.
I was a very unhappy kid, but I'm a very happy adult. I'm glad I permitted myself to hang around to find better things.
we were so much less isolated in grad school than we are now. Such a great group of friends, now scattered.
"In a lot of ways I feel like my grad school depression was just the low-level depression that had been there all along finally getting acute enough for me to notice. And even then it took the post-grad-school-first-job depression for me to finally just start taking meds."
this sounds a lot lke my law school experience, excpet it was the fact i almost iddn't graduate: i still have not found a job
Didn't see "Red" yet because the copy at the local video rental place looks like erotica.
Alas, appearances are deceiving.
Jeff: I hear ya. Used to think how my suicide would crush my poor dad (albeit no one else). Nowadays, he's senile & would probably forget it if I *did* kill myself ... but I now have a 2-year-old.
Great suicide song - "Suicide Chump" by Frank Zappa
Unsurprisingly, I love this song.
I know that therapy on its own is supposed to help. CBT is supposed to work as well as anti-depressants, but I just can't understand this when you're talking about moderate depression. B's description of herself when she was suicidal sounds like she was barely able to think. Retraining your thinking is a good idea, but if you can barely get out of bed and feel physically weighed down, it doesn't seem like enough.
I no longer feel like I know what people mean when they say that they've experienced moderate depression. My grandmother had major depression which required hospitalization and ECT. I think of moderate depression as something which affects your functioning pretty badly. I don't know how you treat that without professional help.
339: I'm still (sort of) functional, and my doc diagnosed me with major depression. In my mind, moderate depression isn't chronic, it's short-lived and doesn't prevent you from being able to, for instance, get out of bed or do your laundry.