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No. Suicide is, by definition, an act that someone intentionally commits upon themselves. Suicide is a choice. They killed themselves; no one else killed them regardless of what drove them to that point
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I agree with most stuff in your post except for this. This is a typical cookie cutter response from someone who has never been in that place where a person is contemplating killing themselves, or talked to someone after a suicide attempt.
By the time that the person reaches that point where they pick up a knife or gun or pills or whatever they feel that they don't have a choice. Its especially amplified when a person has a mental illness like depression where they feel like there is no path but to end the intense pain and torment that they are feeling.
I'll tell you a personal story. Back when I was about 10 a immediate family member went through a very rough time, I won't go into super detail because I don't want to and don't feel that its appropriate.
She suffered pretty much in silence, she didn't show symptoms in the light of day. She didn't complain or moan, she didn't sit around and cry, then one day one event drove her to the point where she took a whole lot of pills and we came home and found her sprawled out on the kitchen floor.
Of course an ambulance was called and she was sent to the hospital, and the bloody awful thing about it was that first visit when she was lying in a hospital bed all tubed up with her arms in restraints.
Then we spent those dark days after in the hospital waiting room staring at each other in our little nuclear family and we all said the same thing. If she would have asked for help, and we never saw this coming, and she seemed ok, one little incident shouldn't have done this.
Now remember this was in the tough guy 70's as well. But we as kids were forced to go and sit down with a trauma Councillor who would also be working with her and they tried to dig up nformation from us to help her and also to make sure that in terms of mental states that we were ok.
Now kids are incredibly resilient, but I made the decision to never talk to her about it, and never bring it up again, bury it and let it go.
She came home and we tried to pretend that it didn't happen.
So here's the crutch.
After I hit adulthood I finished with the military and school and floated around directionless, and I eventually began to look at my career and my personal relationships and my views of them began to skew. I began to really hate myself for no good reason, I didn't think I was good as a person, I would get angry, I started to drink more and more. But I was always seen as that good guy to hang out with. I was smart and engaging in conversations and fairly outgoing, but I really had to work with it. Then little things and comments began to upset me and anger me a lot, I slowly began to withdraw from my friends and make up excuses not to hang out with my family. I would go to work and even when things were going well I would almost find little ways to ruin my successes internally. I began to mistrust people and except for work became fairly reclusive (I am still that way to this day in a lot of ways).
Then the wave hit where everything, every emotion and every dark thought hit me like a wave. I was good at putting a happy outside face on. But the thoughts that I had were incredibly dark. I'm not talking about hurting others. I'm talking about hurting myself either to gain sympathy or a break, or just to end things
Then one day that family member that I talked about from the start pulled me aside at a family function, pulled me into a different view and started the conversation with "I think your in trouble, your fooling a lot of other people, but your not fooling me and your not fooling yourself". She made me get help no matter how much I resisted and just wanted to be left alone and I could deal with it myself.
You can't deal with it myself. I was lucky, someone saw those real signs that sometimes aren't apparent.
Talk to any mental health professional, any suicide survivor, they will say the same thing. to the person, suicide is not a choice, its a end point, to some a relief to some an escape, but they don't debate it when they get to that point.
Let me tell you something else, as I've grown older I've grown really jaded especially around people who pick on the vulnerable and know that they're doing it. Picking on a girl that's been assaulted or raped especially from behind a computer keyboard is repulsive, and I'm onside with Harper when he says its a criminal activity. They drove a 17 year old girl into a depth that they will never experience and then kept pushing until she killed herself because she felt that stigma would never ever go away. So is it murder? On reflection, no, is it manslaughter? Yeah I could see that their actions caused her death.
I think that we need to understand that the scumbags that assaulted her and spread pictures were the catalyst. The people behind their face book and email accounts sure as sh%t killed this girl. And her parents in their wildest dreams probably never contemplated how far down this poor girls despair and pain went because like other victims of depression she put on a brave face, and smiled and wiped her tears away every morning and said "I'm ok" or "I'm better then yesterday".
Anyways sorry for getting personal here. I don't think that you can convince me that her act was a choice and that the bullies on line didn't cause her death.
My story is certainly different then hers, but her story hits hard because while everyone can claim to be down at some point or depressed, I don't think we as the untouched truly understand how deep that well goes.