Please read me if you feel that committing suicide is 'selfish'

[wheresmymojo]

This is slightly a TAAT but I feel it's such an important topic I wanted to start a new thread about it rather than derailing one this has come up on.

A lot of people feel that suicide is 'selfish'. Selfish because of the impact on family left behind, anyone who sees the suicide (if it's in a more public setting) or has to deal with the aftermath and anyone who might be directly involved through no choice of their own (e.g. train drivers).

I completely understand why it seems selfish.

As someone who has been suicidal many times (albeit only one unsuccessful attempt) I just wanted to explain why the person isn't selfish.

Once you get to the state of depression where you are suicidal you are really no longer yourself. You look like you, you talk like you, but you are not you. Your brain has been overcome with chemicals that mean your actions are no longer 'your actions' any more. Your thoughts are no longer 'your thoughts'. Major depression is like an alien has taken over your brain.

It's a long slide (usually) - you become less 'you' and more the 'alien' every day. By the time you're suicidal 'you' have pretty much vacated the building.

You can't see suicide as something negative for your family and friends or the pain that it will cause because all you can see is how much better off they will be without you. In a twisted way you are doing it partly for them, because you feel you're just dragging them down. You're making their life difficult and they'll be so much better off without you.

As for others who may find your body/train drivers/etc....when you are that suicidal you don't really think about them. Not because you're selfish but because the illness makes you have complete tunnel vision. All you can see is your pain and how much you want to die. You are not capable of thinking about the impact on people who might see/deal with the aftermath.

I guess that's the bit I want to make clear....you aren't making a selfish decision not to think about them, you aren't capable of thinking about them.

You're not in charge of your thoughts any more, the illness is and it just wants you to die and it blocks out anything that might make you think twice.

Sorry - this is an essay but I feel it's important to try and get across what it's like. I genuinely feel that by the time I feel suicidal I'm no more 'myself' than someone who has dementia might be 'themselves' just in a different way.

Than you for this post op. Very insightful and compassionate and I completely agree with you.

I understand that people are unwell, but why would you want to inflict that on someone else

Because the pain and mental suffering they are/have been in for months/years is now crippling, to the point where they've been crushed so much that it needs to stop. There's NO actual help.

Very few people actually understand and have time to help someone through crippling mental illness.
No one seems to want to hear negative things they just want the person to 'snap out of it', but they can't! The brain is an organ but no one seems to recognise this organ can get poorly.

If there was better consideration and compassion for others and a much better mental health service there'd be a lot less deaths by suicide.

It is absolutely not selfish, it's ending someone's suffering. I'm sorry to those who have lost a loved one to suicide but please take a little comfort from the fact they are no longer in pain and suffering. Dealing with grief is entirely different to dealing with suffering constant mental health issues.

Thank you for this, OP.

My MIL's neighbour took her own life, leaving a husband and two young kids. My MIL's take on this was entirely about the neighbour's selfishness and how disgraceful it is that a mother could do that to her children.

The neighbour had PND.

My MIL is a GP. Suspect she's not very good at her job.

My sister committed suicide aged 39 she had been suffering from depression for many year's, leading up to her suicide she kept saying i don't want to be here anymore, i don't think it's a selfish act they see it as the only way out of the pain there suffering

@aurynne

I'm sorry about your father

Being the Devil's advocate... but that is precisely the definition of "selfish", isn't it? A person who does not think about anybody else.

What I'm trying to say is that selfish = 'a person who does not think about anybody else' which is different to:

' a person who is mentally incapable of thinking about anyone else due to illness'.

Literally incapable.

I think society is selfish in forcing people to make this choice. Some people just don’t want to be here and can’t do life. Why can’t we let them go peacefully if that’s their choice?

My DH has suffered with severe anxiety almost all his life. Not only is he suffering, but so am I and the DC. Treatments are only having a minimal effect.

Probably my post will be deleted, but i feel it would be best for everyone if he could go in a controlled environment, with assisted euthanasia. Why are we forcing people to live in this pain?

If they do decide it’s too much, their only choice is to use a method which will impact on other people or is frankly horrid.

Of course there are many people who can and do get better. Euthanasia should only be permitted after all options have been tried. But if the depression/anxiety is treatment resistant then why should the person carry on suffering for the rest of their life? That is inhumane and selfish imo

I think people who are still saying it's selfish are missing the point.

The person committing suicide is incapable of rational thought. Literally incapable.

They are not the person you know who is just very sad or desperate. They are not the person you know.

In the same way that someone with dementia isn't the same person and they have no control over their ability to form rational thoughts, it's the same with severe depression.

Parts of their brain have gone into shutdown - that's why as a sufferer it feels like 'something' else is taking over. This can be seen on scans of the brain of people with severe depression.

It is not them, they are not capable of rational thought at that point. It is 100% the illness.

I feel like I want to shout this from rooftops as so many people who haven't been there don't get this point. Severe depression is not just being extremely sad and desperate - it is more than that...you physically/mentally cannot process things in a rational way once you reach that level of severity.

As such it's not possible to be selfish as they are lacking the capacity. They look like the person you know, they talk like them but they are not fully them...

My father who i adored commited suicide when i was 9 years old and my brother was 8 years old and to this day im 62 now and still think he was selfish he left our family devastated my mom in pieces and me and my my brother without all the things that my friends with dads didnt have, no adult conversations, no dad during my teen years, no dad to walk me at my wedding, he didnt get to see his grandchildren , he died that long ago i can barely remember what he looked like i have one tiny faded picture of him, can only remember a few things he said or did so yes he was selfish he deprived me of a lifetime of having my dad in my life

I don't disagree that the person doing is obviously severely unwell however it is ultimately a selfish act that only 'improves' things for that individual

Well you could also argue it’s selfish for somebody suffering to have to stay alive for your benefit

@PolaDeVeboise DFOD
I've reported your shitty comment

Pola if you read "Depressive illness, the curse of the strong" you will find that people who get clinical depression tend to be the people who take on more and more and tend not to say "no" - they have simply been too strong for too long.

Did you know that depression is a physical illness? So in fact, saying that someone with depression is selfish is a bit like saying someone who is quadriplegic is lazy.

I don't think people were saying suicide in general is 'selfish' (though some may argue that) but to kill yourself by throwing yourself in front of a train is desperately selfish. My heart goes out to anyone that desperate they feel the need to do such a thing, however to do so in that way can traumatise many other people. Train drivers affected by such incidents have been so affected by it, that they in turn have had their mental health so negatively affected that they commit suicide, or end their careers, or need large amounts of therapy. Teams that have to pick up dismembered body parts can be traumatised and get PTSD from the scenes they clean up. Suicide will always hurt somebody, the family, friends, the police involved. It'll never be easy, but certain methods can affect so many people and lead to more suicide. That, in itself, is selfish.

If I am ill and can’t get out of bed to go to a wedding it’s not my fault. If my thinking had unravelled to the extent that I was suicidal it also wouldn’t be my fault. This has happened to someone close to me and it made him unrecognisable. So many experiences people didn’t really get u til they have shared them. A person can have selfish behaviours without being selfish. It’s such an awful situation. Sorry for those it has touched in different ways

I totally get you OP.

Many a time I have stood on the concourse, trains cancelled, one year I was delayed going on holiday, but I always feel sad for the circumstances that led to the person taking their own life.

I still get home, however much delayed. The person who is gone must have been so wretched that all rational thought was gone. The be so overwhelmed that ending your life is the only way out is something that the vast majority of people will never understand.

Having had quite severe undiagnosed PND I can understand why suicide can seem the best way out. I wasn't suicidal but I was convinced that my boys would be better off without me and that I should move away; to me it was a totally logical course of action.

Until you have been there I don't think you understand how real the pain is of mental illness. It's like people who don't get their pets euthanised because they can't bear to part with them. Who is being selfish there?

I just want so say Thank you for posting this. I have so many things I would like to add to my post but struggling to articulate them. I have been there when I was younger before children, and now my eldest daughter is battling severe mental health issues. Thank you.

A suicidal person is self-evidently psychologically malfunctioning, consumed with psychological pain and unable to make rational choices
Labelling suicide as an act of selfishness seems to me a completely counterproductive way of looking at a situation which contains an enormous amount of pain and suffering for all who are affected

I have suffered from severe depression for 20 years including very regular suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts.

Whenever I am in the suicidal place mentally, I will think about the emotional pain loved ones will feel about it.

But then I think about the almost constant emotional pain that I have been in for 20 years and will continue to suffer from - why should I have to feel constant pain just so others won’t feel pain? If I find it painful to live and others will find it painful if I die, why does their pain trump mine?

Severe depression is not just being extremely sad and desperate - it is more than that...you physically/mentally cannot process things in a rational way once you reach that level of severity.
This ^^. You don't realise just how screwed up your thinking has become until the point when (hopefully, and thankfully for me so far) you break through to 'normality' again and your thinking seems absolutely crystal clear, like a thick blanket of fog has suddenly and quickly dissipated. It's like the effect that PMT can have on your thinking only so much more severe (and you don't know if it will clear).
Unless you've experienced it I don't think you can really understand.

What you have described is selfishness though. Selfishness is not considering others. People can behave selfishly without being culpable which you have also explained quite well. Selfishness and innocence isn’t mutually exclusive. Perhaps a better way to describe it would be to say that depression is so incapacitating that it completely prevents empathy and rational thought. I think that people often associate selfishness with a moral defect and are very judgemental yet no one disparages syicidal people for being irrational. They understand that depression interferes with rational thought. It interferes with empathy in that same way, if anything it interferes with empathy because it interferes with rational thought (hence the belief that suicide will benefit loved ones).

Like everything it comes down to situations.

My mother killed herself in my early teens.

She destroyed my life in that moment.

I lost my mother, my childhood and my home (kicked out by sd).
I was blamed and told it was my fault.

Home was always filled with nastiness , a real house of horrors.
I think she was selfish. She disliked me so much she left, permanently.

All she did was teach me how to be a parent.

I raised kids exactly the opposite way she would.

As a child of suicide do I think it's selfish, yes.

Do I love my mother?
Forgive her?
Think about her?
No. Only when I see something about suicide do I decide to think about her.
She was selfish in life and I won't let her selfishness enter my mind now she's dead.

What about people who kill themselves to get them selves out of trouble with the police?

I know someone who was sexually abused by a family member for years, the minute she told someone he threw himself in front a train.

He was selfish, cowardly and did it for his own good, to save himself for what was going to be a lifetime in prison.

Since that happened I think anyone who inflicts it on other people (train/car drivers) and having friends and family who work on trains and have suffered I think they are selfish for doing it that way.

It is dreadful from both points of view - to be in such pain - and to think your friend/relative was in such pain.

Please tell your family/friends if you feel this way, at least give them a chance to help - the dreadful sense of failure I feel is difficult to come to terms with.

@LostAllHope

You really believe euthanasia is the best hope for your mentally ill husband?? How about we as a society support him to have the best quality life he can have, the same way we should with physical illness.

To those saying suicide is selfish it might be easier to see it in terms of the disease of depression killing someone rather than the person killing themself. As someone who has been there I know my mind wasn't operating on the same level as it is now. I truly believed that it was the best thing to do for those around me. You also believe you are so insignificant that those directly affected will be able to brush it off.

Sorry but i think it is unbelievably selfish to commit suicide in a public place.

Someone jumped off a bridge into the river below no thought for the people who were on a commuter boat heading towards the bridge, including my uncle who was driving the boat and all he could do was watch this person fall,and hear him hit the rocks.

He fell into a deep depression in the 6 months following, nearly drank himself to dealth due to suffering from PTSD. We as a family have had to help get him slightly back on track, but he will never work again cause of the PTSD, he can't even step foot on a boat again.

A job and passion (he has sailed all over the world) he has had his whole life is gone, because someone chose to jump off a bridge