I don't see why you are surprised, it wasn't a stupid comment.
it takes a real coward to commit suicide. more cowardly than murder in my opinion, at least it takes guts to murder someone.
oh well, at the very least, suicide helps weed out the weak!
flame away!
I dont think someone who makes that decision has the capability to think clearly about what they're doing. Depression is not a decision, it puts people into a really clouded mental state where cognitive ability is affected.
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A few weeks after crashing head-first into the boards (denting his helmet and being unable to move for a little while) following a hit from behind by Bob Errey, the Calgary Flames player explains:
"I was like Christ, lying on my back, with my arms outstretched, crucified"
-- Frank Musil - Early January 1994
I would suggest almost every suicide is the result of mental illness, whether diagnosed or otherwise. Suicide isn't something a sane person normally does.
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i will clarify, if someone does it due to a mental illness, that's another ballgame.
are there cases where its not a mental illness though? What healthy minded person just decides to kill themselves?
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A few weeks after crashing head-first into the boards (denting his helmet and being unable to move for a little while) following a hit from behind by Bob Errey, the Calgary Flames player explains:
"I was like Christ, lying on my back, with my arms outstretched, crucified"
-- Frank Musil - Early January 1994
I just found out that one of my dad's uncles killed himself in my grandparents house when my dad was in high school. He was the last of the kids at home and so he had to help clean up the mess left from the guy shooting himself in the head. Know I know why my dad has no desire to own a gun or go hunting or anything.
The other suicide I know of was when one of my friend's fathers hung himself in an old granary. He was found by a couple of elementary school kids and he'd been hanging for a couple days.
In both cases, I think the two were mentally ill. The uncle had received electroshock therapy before killing himself and the father had struggled with depression all of his life.
It's tough to know what frame of mind a person would have to be in to commit suicide, since I've never been at that point. I don't know if I'd agree with you Gimp, but it does seem to almost protect a person from dealing with their problems sometimes. It almost always ends in people being scarred for life...which seems pretty selfish to me...but like I said I've never been at the point of depression where death seems better than life.
i will clarify, if someone does it due to a mental illness, that's another ballgame.
Maybe, but certain types of mental illness can be controlled. I know people can kill themselves out of a broken heart and that is almost inevitable, but many, many who do are just selfish cowards who take the easy way out and leave their loved ones to pick up the pieces.
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Maybe, but certain types of mental illness can be controlled. I know people can kill themselves out of a broken heart and that is almost inevitable, but many, many who do are just selfish cowards who take the easy way out and leave their loved ones to pick up the pieces.
i agree. maybe in extreme cases i wouldn't be as critical. but for the most part its pure cowardice.
Flameswin, you have no idea if your helping him would have even stopped the inevitable. Suicide is the most selfish thing a friend can inflict upon people. I had a similar instance with a family member, only their depression was destroying my life and i had to remove the person from my home and they died a month later.
I say remember him for who he was, and not how he ended up.
i agree. maybe in extreme cases i wouldn't be as critical. but for the most part its pure cowardice.
Ultimately, I think the only situation where a perfectly sane, rational and right of mind person could consider suicide is to escape a terminal illness. Otherwise, I would suggest that virtually every person who attempts it is facing some mighty significant demons, at least to them.
That said, I can understand the sentiment. For my own part, it took the murder of my aunt to snap me out of the desire to kill myself. At the time, I was convinced that my death would have been a relief to my family. Watching the reaction of everyone around me, and the grief was enough to convince me that life was something precious after all. It took almost a decade more before I could seriously tackle my depression, and begin to overcome the rest of my demons, but for someone who values life, I can understand why they feel suicide is a cowardly act.
Speaking of my aunts murder, her soon to be ex husband was the killer, and we knew he was depressed about the breakup. We also knew he might have been suicidal, but he was actually in some form of counseling, iirc. At the time, the general attitude of my family was the same as yours - it would be cowardly for him to kill himself, easy way out, special place in hell, etc. Not surprisingly, after he killed my aunt, everyone wished he had offed himself.
Two years later, one of my uncles committed suicide. He had battled drug and alcohol addiction for a long time; my aunt that was killed was his strongest supporter, and with her gone, he no longer had the strength to face down his demons. Outwardly, we thought he was getting better. But when that news came, nobody called him a coward, nobody insulted his memory. All we did was hope that he had finally found peace.
Is suicide cowardly? I don't think so. It takes a lot of strength to battle your demons... For most of my life, I had felt like I was treading water. I had just enough strength to keep my head above the surface, but there were so many times that things threatened to overwhelm me. It actually takes a lot of courage to withstand the emotional battering you face. The battle tires you out, however. Slowly, inevitably, it wears you down. When you finally lose your strength, it pulls you under. I don't view sucides as cowards, but rather as victims of a personal war.
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Maybe, but certain types of mental illness can be controlled. I know people can kill themselves out of a broken heart and that is almost inevitable, but many, many who do are just selfish cowards who take the easy way out and leave their loved ones to pick up the pieces.
Mood is a huge mystery to the medical sciences. Think of it this way: mood affects your quality of life every single day. It affects your productivity, affects your sense of optimism about the future, affects your relationships and your sex life in equal measure. Your mood can even kill you--and for millions of people it does.
But we don't really know why it does any of these things, and the mechanisms by which mood is regulated in the brain are very poorly understood. There are some drugs that work well for some people, and there are people who can't find drugs that help--and the trouble is that medical science doesn't yet understand exactly how these drugs even work in a lot of cases.
But there is one thing that is abundantly clear. Depression and bipolar disorder--both disorders that affect mood--are diseases of the brain. Killing yourself isn't normal--no matter what your circumstances are. Our minds are quite resilient under normal circumstances, and plenty of people deal with horrifying situations without committing suicide. Others commit suicide because in spite of nothing bad having happened to them, they just can't get any pleasure out of life no matter what they try.
I think of it this way: suicide isn't good or bad, cowardly or brave. It just IS, much like dying of cancer or liver disease. People who commit suicide are people who have died of an illness, an illness that claims millions of lives every year, and which doesn't have a cure--though it does have treatments that can help a lot.
Anyone who doesn't think depression is a legitimate illness hasn't met a person who is truly depressed. Depressed isn't when you feel sad because your team didn't win. Depressed is when you can't bring yourself to get out of bed for days or weeks on end, or when you can watch a hilarious movie and not crack a smile, or look a loved one in the eye and feel only emptiness inside yourself.
And no, I'm not a sufferer. But I am close to one--someone with bipolar disorder. It's serious stuff, and thank god for drugs. But it's a disease. Suicide isn't a normal behaviour; it's a pathological one.
flameswin, I'm sorry for your loss. But I feel 100% confident in saying that you didn't cause this to happen. You may find that cold comfort now, but when you've grieved for your loss I hope that you can let go of the guilt and move on with your life. It's what your friend would want.
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A good friend of mine found his grandfather dead in his bathroom via shooting himself in the head. He also had to clean up the brain matter.
As much as i feel for you, and the guilt that usually automatically comes with finding out someone close to you has killed themselves, i can't possibly agree more that it is not your fault.
I personally believe that suicide is a selfish act. But, i also cant' possibly imagine what it feels like to actually seriously want to kill myself, so, i do feel some sort of sympathy to your friend for living with that kind of despair.
I have sympathy for the situation, not the person themself though.
Everyone is responsible for his or her actions in life. I agree that some of us have a better starting position than others which makes this issue murky at best.
I have less sympathy for those who have had a descent start at life and go down that road, than someone who has had basically the blunt end of the stick his/her whole life.
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I have sympathy for the situation, not the person themself though.
Everyone is responsible for his or her actions in life. I agree that some of us have a better starting position than others which makes this issue murky at best.
I have less sympathy for those who have had a descent start at life and go down that road, than someone who has had basically the blunt end of the stick his/her whole life.
Mental illness does not know boundaries like income level of the family, social issues within the family, schools people attended, whatever. Mental illness presents itself in every cross section of society.
This is no different than cancer, heart disease, ....... whatever.
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Mental illness does not know boundaries like income level of the family, social issues within the family, schools people attended, whatever. Mental illness presents itself in every cross section of society.
This is no different than cancer, heart disease, ....... whatever.
Seconded. Depression really is a silent killer that cuts across social lines, and it's astonishing the ignorance our society has toward mental illness. Anyone who thinks a suicide who suffered from depression was "selfish" needs to give their head a shake.
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