curious assertion

Meanwhile, 90 percent of all people who die by suicide have a diagnosable mental illness,

There are no post mortem tests to establish someone had a mental illness.

Harold A. Maio, at 6:00 am EDT on June 5, 2006

Suicide on the Miind

All people considering suicide must be closely monitored until the positive effects of medicine and counseling change their thinking. Medicines can take up to 6 weeks to make a difference in thinking. And as we know, some medicines can contribute to suidical thoughts in some people. And we must ensure that people who need medication are taking it. I doubt any school is doing this kind of monitoring. It is such a tragedy to lose anyone to suicide — we need to focus on illness of the brain as much as we due cancer and heart disease and get rid of the stigma of depression and other mental illnesses. Seriously mentally ill people are today’s throw aways. We need to do for mental illness what parents, family, government and society has done for the mentally retarded.

Dawn L. Warner, at 11:05 am EDT on June 5, 2006

“...people who do kill themselves are generally not retarded and put considerable thought into the project.”

Indeed it is likely that the majority of those who kill themselves are not mentally challenged, but is this the only criterion we (ought to) use in determining competency?

I think the claim that 90% of those people are certifiably mentally ill is an important consideration. On your logic, a retarded person should not be allowed to kill him or her-self and you’ll find no disagreement to that her. But why is it that you disregard mental illness as being an equally sufficient detractor from an individual’s ability to put “sufficient thought into the project"?

GW, Larry,, at 5:30 pm EDT on June 5, 2006

Re: Larry

Larry,

You seem to be saying that suicide is just like any other decision. It is not. Suicide is most often associated with depression or other mental illness. The suicidal person is incapable of thinking rationally about this decision.

An irrational decision, made due to distorted reality, is not just like any other decision. This is the reason involuntary hospitalization or other coersion is used to force a person into treatment. As the saying goes, “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”

This article is not referring to someone who with a terminal illness who makes a so-called rational decision to end suffering and expense, so I will not address that possible motive. This article is referring to college students suffering from depression or other mental illness.

Nathan, at 8:25 am EDT on June 8, 2006

Having Thought It Through ...

I imagined this discussion would be much broader and much more extensive that it has been. Since it has not, I’ll weigh in. I have two things to say on the matter.

The first of my points has been expressed so succinctly by Larry, I have little to add to his thesis.

[Note: I will say “chooses” suicide, knowing that “commits” suicide is the pejorative verb of choice of the psychological community.]

Second — and I know the “inspirations” for choosing suicide are broad-ranging — I am a big fan of suicide in almost any circumstance ... even as a solution to “life‘s problems.”. Indeed, I would say the probability is much greater than 0.70 that I will meet my end at the time and place of my choice via that route. I am somewhat angry — annoyed may be a better choice of words — that my government has gone to some pains to make the process much more difficult for me ... and probably much more violent as well. I think the political and societal circumstances that put Jack Kevorkian behind bars border on being “criminal” at best, uncivilized at worst.

About me ... I am male, almost 70, I am healthy, very active (and frequently do way more than hold my own with 4.0 tennis players in their twenties). I have two grown (very successful) sons with families, and I have two beautiful grandchildren. My attitude about suicide has been a very sore point with my older son and his wife, and it has led to their not wanting me to have an on-going relationship with their children. I think that makes sense for them, but how can I change a thought-through philosophical perspective based on someone else‘s decision about a marginally related matter? I think I have lived a very interesting and full life. I am a terminal agnostic, but I’m confident if I ever come to terms with the existence of an Unmoved Mover, it will not be a personal god like the one who is so important to Christians, for example.

I essentially believe we’re all going to check out sometime anyway, so, since I have lived an interesting and full life up to this point; my choosing to end my life at a time of my choice will be a matter of very little consequence in the scheme of things. I understand the theory that “suicide is a selfish act that seriously affects the lives of those who love you and are “left behind,” but I have always thought I could explain my decision in a manner that would help my family understand that, for me, it was a thoughtful and positive decision. Truth be known, I am confident the “selfishness theory” is bogus anyway ... it is those who are left behind who selfishly want the one choosing suicide to conform to their needs and expectations, and, when s/he doesn’t, they attempt to transfer their selfishness to the one who chose suicide.

Now don’t misunderstand my focus on suicide ... although I have seriously considered it in the past and am almost certain I will die by taking my own life, I have never been all that close to “going there” ... I have never gotten out a climber’s rope, cut it to an appropriate length, and fashioned a hangman’s noose. No, I don’t have one stored in my closet just in case. I don’t have a supply of a lethal substance stored in my medicine cabinet to use when the mood strikes me.

Will I admit that when I have been “closest” to choosing suicide I have been “depressed” in some manner or other? Yes. Will I admit that being drugged will probably alter my state of depression? Yes. But — and this strikes me as being an important point — my infrequent states of depression are not random events brought on by unknown forces (chemical imbalances); they are reactions to “life’s problems.” Will the problems go away when I am drugged? No. So, I suppose, were I to take the preferred actions of a psychiatrist, I would be a drugged individual less reactive to the life’s problem that caused the “depression.” Of course a psychiatrist would say I am better prepared to deal with the problems, the typical rationalization that keeps them in business ... and prescribing drugs. It is the psychiatrists’ self-fulfilling prophesy based on their circular logic that suicide is a consequence of depression (or mental instability). Nonsense. I love Mary Pipher’s remark that “no one cries out for his therapist on his deathbed.”

Now, before being “bent out of shape” by my thesis that there are more than a few quite rational individuals choosing suicide— and I haven’t even got to suicide for those either in great pain or terminally ill — read about Carolyn Gold Heilbrun’s decision to end her life by suicide.

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/n_9589/

I’ll add my prejudice that if we could end the psychiatric stranglehold on virtually every aspect of suicide — where are the biologists and chemists when we need them? — we could probably initiate some first-rate studies of the phenomena independent of the starting point that only the depressed and mentally ill choose it.

RWH, at 5:15 pm EDT on June 8, 2006