Suicide

[Mr. DS]

But in the case of suicide, my dealings have been almost entirely with devastated families.  Seeing their raw pain and grief and realizing that, in so many cases, some decent psychiatric care or meds would have made that hurt unnecessary, have perhaps colored my perceptions of the act.

Certainly no ill will to Dr. Menard for pointing out the illogic of my position.  But emotions, as Mr. Spock says, are the antithesis of logic.

I have more or less seen the same thing in my life which why I have a hard time understanding suicide.   I can't see why any parent would want to leave their kids behind.  Nor why any kid would want to put their parents through the agony of burying them. Once again though, this is based on what I have seen and felt. Which brings me to Ghouck who has brought up some very valid points.  Where I may feel the way I do, someone with depression or who is suicidal may not get me. Hence my illogical nature as well looking at the topic as 'selfish'.  But I can also understand why I could be labeled 'selfish' for feeling that way as well. 

[Allhallowsday]

...Life is amazing.  Every day is a new day, and a year or less can be a huge difference in your life and your outlook.  People who are considering suicide should always give time a chance.  Time does incredible things.

Wise words. 

[ghouck]

Life is amazing.  Every day is a new day, and a year or less can be a huge difference in your life and your outlook.  People who are considering suicide should always give time a chance.  Time does incredible things.

True, but you have to be at least a little optimistic to believe in that. The problem with depression, (the root of most suicide), is that optimism doesn't exist.

OTOH, If you're a serial pedophile, I say go for it! Yea, I expect a karma ding for that, but I'd rather see a pedophile end their own life than go on ruining others lives, especially children. 

[Trevor]

OTOH, If you're a serial pedophile, I say go for it! Yea, I expect a karma ding for that, but I'd rather see a pedophile end their own life than go on ruining others lives, especially children. 

I'm going to ding your karma, ghouck but ding it + 1. I suffered abuse as a child and as a teenager and would like to see abusers put themselves out of their misery rather than carry on the abuse. I was abused: it stops with me. People who know my history will quite happily let me look after their kids because they know that it stops with me ~ the only thing they worry about when their kids are with me is that they know I will spoil their kids with toys, sweets, etc. 

And just to add to the subject, I have attempted suicide once in 1983 when I was submitted to all forms of abuse in a boarding school. Thankfully, I didn't succeed and am grateful that I didn't as my mom would be on her own now.

[ER]

Japan's suicide forest. It almost seems like someone else here mentioned this place but...

http://www.seekjapan.jp/article-1/767/The+Suicide+Woods+of+Mt.+Fuji

[asimpson2006]

I've dealt with people committing suicide a few times in my life.  When I got into High School some girl's ex-boyfriend hung himself because she cheated on him with another man.  It didn't effect me that much since I really didn't know the dude and the entire Freshman class was still trying to end their charades of who they really are and be ourselves.

The second one I had to deal with hit everyone really hard.  It was my senior year and close to the end of High School and a star on the Football team went missing.  I think most of us knew something wasn't right with this, but we still hoped that he was alright.  Well the next day I came home from the mall, and my grandmother had told me that they found his body and that he killed himself.  I wasn't close with the guy, and I really wasn't even friends with him but he still hit me really hard.  That Monday at school, or I should say that entire week after we found out that he was dead was really hard for everyone.  Everybody was sad and morale was low, and the rest of the school year was never easy or the same for anyone.  What made it even worse was that he never showed any signs of depression or any type of trouble prior to it.  We never did find out why he did this to himself.         

[ER]

Almost everyone here seems to know someone who took his or her own life. I guess I'm lucky in that I don't know anyone first-hand who did this except I do know distantly of two people who went to my high school when I was there, not in my class or exactly well known to me, each a couple years older, who did in later years do themselves in. Maybe there were others but those are the only two I've ever heard of. In reading through these posts, I'm left feeling that much more fortunate.

[CheezeFlixz]

I've known over the years a number of people to attempt or commit suicide, I've had a step father to do it, a good friend recently a few months ago, my wife had two brothers to do it and many others.

So at some point I stopped analyzing it, trying to figure it out, seeing if there were signs I missed, was there something I could have done and asking the eternal questions "Why?" Last week a a school mate of my daughter attempted suicide but failed and my daughter was trying to understand it. I thought for a minute I could wax poetic and explain the mindset that drives someone so young to attempt something so foolish, but experience kicked in and I said "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" She looked a bit befuddled so I went on to say "Understanding what would cause someone seemingly mentally and physically healthy to do such a thing is just one of the mysteries of the universe and as you travel through life, pay close attention as there are many more." 

[BTM]

Well, as someone who's struggled with depression most of their life and actually contemplated suicide on a number of occasions (never really attempted it though.)  I figured I should add my two cents.

For starters, I kind of hate those who refer to suicide as a cowardly act.  I think people who have that mentality obviously have NO idea what it's like to be extremely depressed and feel that there's no hope left in life.  I've spoken to a lot of people like that (I refer to them as "The damned normals"), who seemed to think depression was something I could just "get over" or "snap out of". 

For example there was a period of my life when I had strong religious convictions. One of the many things that began to erode those away was not only the constant depression, but the complete lack of support from my so-called brothers and sisters.  I got all kinds of interesting advice, like how I should turn to God, rebuke the depression, command the depression to leave me in the name Jesus, etc, etc.  It must have been a bit of theological conundrum for my fellow church members: a sincere Christian being depressed all the time?  Surely, God wouldn't allow that, so OBVIOUSLY, there must be something wrong with me!  I was clearly holding on to some "secret" sin or simply not spending enough time with God. 

Granted, some of them meant well, and were sincere, but they didn't have any personal experience with the kind of depression I had, and thus, no real means of trying to support me.  Then there were other people outside my church, people I'd know who tried to "consul" me by basically saying, "Quit complaining, some people have it WAY worse than you!" and then proceed to tell me about their problems.  (This was a common technique of my mom's.)

The kicker though is I can remember feeling depressed and lonely ever since I was little child.  I'd have all these weird, existential thoughts about the meaning of life and the points of things, and find myself feeling lonely and missing my friends from school (even if it was just over the two day weekend.) 

Anyway, until you know what it's like to be depressed (not just sad, or bluesy) I mean, getting up in the morning and being unable to think of ANY reason why you keep living from day to day, until you've experienced that you don't know what depression is like.  I know most of you reading this have families, i.e. spouse, kids, and probably a gaggle of friends and stuff.  Well, imagine having NONE of that.  No one to comfort and support you in life.  Imagine feeling that every thing you do to try and improve your station in life just isn't bearing fruit.  Could you live like that? 

And for people who say, "Well, what your family?  How would they feel if you passed away?"  Well, for a lot of people their families are the part of the reason they're depressed.  And plus, to that logic I always say, "Well, I'm supposed to just keep on living because some people might miss me if I'm gone?"

So, anyway, that's my take on it.. sorry for rambling a bit, but it's a touchy subject for me. 

You want to know what to say to a depressed person?  Well, listening would help, and letting them know you care, you appreciate the things they do for you, or things they've done, and that you'd miss them if they were gone.  To me, that would help.

And if anyone's curious, I'm on meds and I see a psychologist.  I have my good weeks and bad weeks.  Luckily, the last few weeks have been okay. 

[Torgo]

I've had 2 close friends kill themselves over the years and I had a friend of mine in high school try to kill herself by downing an entire giant bottle of aspirin.

I've gotten in some pretty bad mindsets sometimes, but nothing as to where I've wanted to harm myself or even think about suicide. I went through a really bad bout of depression this past spring through the summer and I worked through it with a case of leaning on my mom, family members and therapy.    Don't know what was causing it actually. I tend to really beat myself up a lot.

I've really had a tough time periodically since 2003 when my father died on August 13th.  I thought I would be thrilled when the bastard croaked and in fact the last words I said to him was "I wish that you would just drop dead". I got my wish 1 1/2 days later. He died of a brain aneurysm in his sleep.

I didn't know how to react with my dad's death as we had hit rock bottom between the 2 of us and he had pretty much been cut off by the rest of our family (long story).

Plus, this came right after my oldest sister lost her 1st baby at 7 1/2 months pregnant so we were dealing with that as a family and hoping that she wouldn't try to kill herself as she was threatening to.  She hung in there though and he and her husband now have an almost 4 year old boy.  I also had some really bad financial issues going on at the time and it just seemed like the world was collapsing around me.

But I just kept my head as high as possible as tough as that was and tried to keep in mind that things would get better. 

[BeyondTheGrave]

I never knew anyone who committed suicide personally but sometimes I worry about my grandfather. In US the highest rate of suicide is the elderly mainly because of what most posters put before: Being a burden on others. My grandfather is going on 83 and sometimes he jokes with it but I feel for him, He might be 83 but the still drives and does everything on his own. When he goes for to the hospital for whatever reason I can just see the depression on him and not wanting to live. He is a strong man and its hard for me to see someone that willfull in a state of vulnerability.

[Psycho Circus]

I was going to post something big and long winded about past suicide attempts and depression, but I feel BTM said alot of what I was going to write. Except, take away the religious stuff and replace it with relationship stuff. Basically, I found that people around me, my girlfriend, my family, didn't help at all. To keep a very long story short, I had a horrific relationship, was disowned by my family, ended up homeless and had tried to kill myself, thus spending my 19th birthday in hospital at one point. I dug myself out of that hole on my own, that's what you have to do.

You have to at least find one thing to focus on, work, a hobby, anything and put all your effort into it. You must also keep reminding yourself, that you won't always be depressed, things will get better sometime and you won't feel bad. Life can change, even if it's in 5 days or 5 years. Don't miss out on the good times. 

[Hammock Rider]

 Well I've thought about it too, very seriously. For several years I was severely depressed despite medication and therapy and I thought about suicide. Luckily  I never followed up on those thoughts. I guess there is something positive about being lazy after all.

I agree too that people come out of this kind of thing on their own. Friends and family can be supportive, if you're lucky but they can't make you want to live, that has to come from the depressed/suicidal person. One thing that helped me was believe it or not, movies. I could go on and on about this but in order to keep it short and sweet I'll say that Yojimbo helped me out. The scene where Mifune throws the branch up in the air and decides to walk in the direction it points somehow clicked with me and made me feel it wasn't so bad maybe to be completely directionless. It worked for this ronin, and he was pretty cool. The Samurai was down and out, just like me but he seemed pretty comfortable having apparently nothing, because he really had all he needed, his wits and his skills. A very minimalist approach to life, but it helps you keep the important things in sight.   While I didn't have skills with a sword I did have other skills and I decided to become my own Yojimbo. It didn't all happen quite that fast , with a burst of light and a song from a heavenly choir, but that movie helped plant the seed that eventually lead to me fighting through all the bad stuff and moving on to make a fairly decent life. It just struck the right chord at the right time, and I'm grateful for it.

  I know that's a very over-simplified version of things and sounds maybe hokey or corney to some, but maybe I'm a little hokey or corny too. At any rate that's my story.

[BTM]

I was going to post something big and long winded about past suicide attempts and depression, but I feel BTM said alot of what I was going to write. Except, take away the religious stuff and replace it with relationship stuff.

Well, I could talk about those too.. family wasn't too supportive, bit of abuse here and there (won't go into detail), not too long after I moved out my mom (my OWN mom) said to my stepdad (while I was sitting right there), "You know, we should have had a house warming party for Mike, as it's not likely he's going to ever have a bachelor party."

Not really sure what she meant by that, either she thinks I'm gay, or that I'm so pathetic I'm never going to get married.

You have to at least find one thing to focus on, work, a hobby, anything and put all your effort into it. You must also keep reminding yourself, that you won't always be depressed, things will get better sometime and you won't feel bad. Life can change, even if it's in 5 days or 5 years. Don't miss out on the good times. 

I'd like to believe that, really I do, but it's hard to believe that sometimes, because as, I've said, I've suffered from depression for over a decade and, despite my efforts (getting a degree, trying to go out and meet people, putting up profiles on dating sites), things really haven't gotten any better. 

Well, I'm out on my own, I guess that's better.

So, it's just hard to stay upbeat sometimes. 

[Doggett]

Thank you Rev for posting this subject.  I hope everyone on this board realizes that they have friends here who care.  Regardless if of any of us ever meet face to face.

Ain't that sweet.
Karma for you.

You have to at least find one thing to focus on, work, a hobby, anything and put all your effort into it. You must also keep reminding yourself, that you won't always be depressed, things will get better sometime and you won't feel bad. Life can change, even if it's in 5 days or 5 years. Don't miss out on the good times. 

I think that's the trick. Find one positive thing you can do, to keep ther bad emotions away.