Ok, then I apparently misunderstood your post. C'est la vie (or mort).

Um, yes you are:

Um, no I am not.

I did not say I knew who had experience and who did not- I made no assumptions, no judgements on who had what experience.

I was just commenting that it is interesting to me the difference (in general- not just with the LoT group)- because experience can certainly change your view.

I've had personal experience with a family member committing suicide - my uncle, in 1985. He was my favorite uncle and it was very formative in my development.

I'm still saddened, baffled, angry about his death. Sometimes one more than another. He was an alcoholic (though we didn't know this) and had some trouble with his school board (he was one of those 'inspirational' teachers they write movies about) and his death, by self-inflicted gunshot, came as a complete shock to all of us. But then, my father's side of the family was taught never to discuss their feelings.

As a result, I find that my patience with alcohol abuse and people who do not seek help for (or communicate about) depression is limited (though my compassion is not.) Also as a result, my nuclear family began to seek counseling, and to discuss how we were actually feeling instead of pretending happiness or stiffupperlippery - and I believe that this has really improved our lives. I feel very sad for people who feel that they have no choice.

On the other hand, watching a parent's health deteriorate into consistent misery over twelve years is very difficult. If my mother was making a different choice than she currently is, I would not feel the sort of anger that I felt toward my uncle. Sadness, sure - but I would understand.

I have yet to post here, although some of you may remember that a couple of years ago, my roommate took his own life.

I still vividly remember all of it as if it were yesterday, all the anger, all the sadness, all the questions that would never be answered. And yet, looking back on it, selfishness doesn't quite seem the right word. Helplessness seems more accurate.

Granted, I honestly don't know what he was thinking and won't profess to. What I do know is that he had a 9-year-old daughter that he absolutely adored. That much I know for certain. And I honestly believe that his feeling that nothing was ever going to get better was so strong that it even outweighed his knowing that his death would devastate her. I often wonder if he truly thought that his absence would be less hard on her than if he stuck around. His life was spiraling downward quickly and I think he was just completely overwhelmed by the circumstances.

And I suppose that my point is, it's very easy to feel anger towards people that end their own life. Not so easy to recognize that, in most cases, their mind's chemistry has led them to believe that this is the only solution. And to subscribe that to selfishness only really works if they are, in fact, in their right mind to begin with - which most of them aren't. It is asking someone who has lost the capability for rational thought to act rationally, and that often isn't possible.

In my particular case, the anger eventually faded away, only to be replaced by profound sadness. He was a good person, a loving father, a friend to many. He just lost his ability to recognize that in himself. He lost the ability to seek out rational solutions. He lost the ability see things as they really were. And I just can't hold any anger towards someone because they lose their ability to cope.

While instant death is an "instant solution" for some, others choose the slow death way of killing themselves through drugs, alcohol, obesity, anorexia and other bodily abuses. The big difference between these suicide attempts and the man jumping off the DLH is that there is a solution and a path to recovery while one is still alive - if it hasn't gone too far and the damage isn't too great.

The quick solution is seldom the best or moral solution. If you have responsibilities and personal ties, suicide is just another form of running out on them, so it is selfish in the bad way. However, I think suicide in the "rational" sense only happens in overly philosophical plays and novels. One has to be awfully pained, or awfully confused, to think seriously that there's no better solution.

It is interesting that, when someone is suffering from enormous physical pain, such as from a terminal illness like cancer, suicide is often seen as a justifiable route. And yet, if that enormous pain is mental, rather than physical, their inability to cope is often viewed as weakness, selfish ... the easy way out.

I think that sometimes we forget that such mental anguish is often no easier to live with in the overwhelming pain-sense, but because it is less (for lack of a better word) tangible, there is often a more "suck it up and deal with it" attitude from outside observers.

The difference, of course, is that in many cases, there are resources, medication, etc. that might be able to truly help the mental sufferer. And we can't understand why they don't take better advantage of those resources. And yet, from my experience in dealing with a person who was severely depressed, telling them that there is help available is something that they perceive as absolutely inconceivable. It is quite possible to get to the point to where you think your problems are so severe that you are completely beyond being helped.

Making matters worse is that, quite often when someone tries to tell us that they are severely depressed, the only thing we can think of saying is "things will get better." But to a sufferer of extreme depression, those words of hope are absurdly simplistic.

I've never had to, but what I would do in such a case (assuming the person is, say, older than 30) would be to guide them through the events and phases of their lives to point out that EVERYTHING changes ... in the hopes they grok that, even though it seems their misery cannot change, it will nonetheless whether they like it or not.


This has helped me thru "suicidally-contemplative" (though not suicidal) times when it really seemed to me that the future was unwaiveringly bleak.



AND public mojo to MBC for his views on this subject. We do not give the same consideration to the mentally afflicted as we do the physically, and there 's no way we can expect rational behavior from someone in the irrational state of suicidal.

My current question is- is the tendency to consider or commit suicide potentially genetic?

My son attempted suicide- his father lost a brother to suicide and now a second brother is considering it due to his divorce.