Suicide - who is selfish?

[StringingIT]

People who take their own lives I have often heard them being referred to as selfish. However, if somebody is only here to please others and keep others happy - then who’s really selfish?

Whilst those who commit suicide are often mentally ill, I do believe they can be selfish in some respects, although they can’t help it, as those you find them suffer. It’s also selfish if they decide to involve others, such as train or tube drivers who are then affected themselves for another persons actions,

@MaidenMotherCrone I shouldn't have written that comment so I apologise, I've requested it is withdraw.
I am very angry though. People like you are why mental health awareness days etc are a joke! We are trying to get across that mental suffering and illnesses are just that illnesses and that mental health can fail in the same way physical health can.

We are trying to get across that mental suffering and illnesses are just that illnesses and that mental health can fail in the same way physical health can.

This with bells on. People who take their own lives, (note 'own) are not selfish! They are sick. Someone recently called it 'cancer of the mind'.

i think the ones that involve someone else in thier death - jump in front of a train or bus for example are selfish as that poor driver will never recover from that.

The woman who gave birth to me was incredibly selfish.

Life was about her.
Her dependents didn't matter, I was a waste of space to be left.
She left permanently and selfishly when I was 13.

Because of her, i lost everything within a week.

Homeless and confused at 13.

Nope, no sympathy for anyone who put their kids through it.

It can seem that way to the person/people left behind, although suicide really is not a selfish act. I now know that the feeling the people in their life would be better off without them is what drives suicide.

Mostly I wished my DH had been able to put it off, wait, even just an hour, or a day, because in that time something may have happened to change his mind in him wanting to take his own life.

I imagine different cases will have different motivations so it's not as simple to say yes it is or no it isn't.

@bubbles1345786 Jesus you go from bad to worse.

People like me? You know nothing about me. You know nothing about my mental health problems. You know nothing about my husbands suicide, the devastation it caused.

Project your anger elsewhere lovely.

@LindaLa I'm so sorry

Hi all, thanks so much for your replies. It’s safe to say I’m in a dark place at the moment but fortunate enough to have people around me. Take them out of this then it’s fair to say it would be easier for me not to be here. I couldn’t do it to them. I have suffered with depression for long time, I think they sick of hearing the record being played again and again. But they do love me hence reaching out, I’m trying to get out of another hole yet again. The thought of living this cycle for another 40,50,60 years makes me think I want out. I suspect this post is the first step in me climbing back out of this hole. (Writing this post made me cry a lot and I feel better already)

I've had lots of personal experience of suicide. My best friend from secondary school who talked about doing it from age 8 (I remember being shocked in primary school.) My DP's uncle (wife left him and he wrote a long letter to his family blaming her for everything and as the reason that their children are without a father.) My DP's other uncle (just went out and did it days before his 40th.) My DP's two work colleagues (one was in serious debt, one was possibly hiding that he was a paedophile.) My point is that everyone is different and their reasons for doing it are very different too.
I will say I notice patterns. Young fathers, often out of work, frequent cannabis use. I know ten examples of young men who felt like failures as they couldn't keep a job (I blame the death of traditional industries) and addiction problems. Working class areas where men no longer have a community or a sense of belonging. As a mixed race woman, I controversially feel that young white WC men are badly represented in the media. This leads to feeling resentful and a bit lost.
So no, in the majority of cases I don't think it's selfish.

Also @StringingIT sending lots of hugs and please please talk to people. If not family then demand a crisis outreach team visit you immediately. Things will get better

I think it's horrible to call it "selfish" as though the person has done it to get at people or for dramatic effect. That might happen, sometimes, but for a person to be contemplating killing themselves, they are clearly very very unwell. Of course it's devastating for the people who knew the deceased, but unless someone has had experience of deep depression or is very capable of empathy, they have no idea of the ill person's thought process to be able to understand how the person has rationalised it as a good idea or the only remaining option. If someone was in severe physical pain and couldn't get it under control, people would often be a lot more sympathetic. It's a shame that mental illness isn't viewed with the same understanding, despite so many people trying to promote awareness nowadays

I've been suicidal plenty of times, although never (yet) acted on it. It's not selfish. It's desperation.

I think some people don't understand that mental pain is just as real as physical pain. If someone would be on fire and would scream and scream out of pain wishing for death, nobody would say they were selfish and should go on living with this pain. Mental pain can be just as bad.

@MaidenMotherCrone
You are deliberately missing the point. I'm not a bad person and usually not an angry one. I do however take exception to people saying that suicide is selfish. My sister was ill. My friend was ill. They were not bad, horrible people who wanted us to suffer.

I'm not saying suicide is okay and I'm certainly not saying it's easy for anyone involved- trust me I know it's not. It's hell and it feels so unfair. It really does.
Of course every individual circumstance is going to be different but the overall message is that suicide is not selfish.

misspiggy19 it's almost impossible not to "involve other people", even if it's just the person who finds you afterwards.

I imagine different cases will have different motivations so it's not as simple to say yes it is or no it isn't.

I think I agree with this. I suspect most people imagine people who commit suicide are in the deepest and darkest of depressions. However my own DM has informed us on a couple of occasions that when she is older, she will be committing suicide rather than going into a home or having treatments such as chemo if she got cancer. I think this is in absence of legal euthanasia. However she hasn't once acknowledged how she plans to do it and who it would impact if they found her. This is also coming from someone whose own DM committed suicide. She went to the house with her aunt and found her, although didn't see her herself but they had to call the services. So she's been on the receiving end of it and damaged by it. But will happily do the same.

I'm really confused and mixed thoughts about this because she isn't in some sort of dark depression. It's just a practical solution to her.

I certainly don’t think my DF suicide was selfish, not to me, he’d just been given a terminal diagnosis, he ended it without the suffering. I completely get why he did it, I was very shocked at the time, who wouldn’t be, but he wasn’t selfish.

Great question OP and i never really understood it either. IMHO people who are suicidal fall into two categories;

a)They are in crisis and with the right help and intervention,they wouldnt really want to do it and can move on and rebuild their lives
b)Those who are perfectly sane and have analysed their lives and made the decision that they wish to end it.

I think it is selfish. I realise that for someone to do this they have to be in unimaginable pain, but I still see it as selfish. It's a slap in the face to anyone who is battling to stay alive. Even more than that though, I think nobody should ever have to find someone like that. The pain you cause to someone by forcing them to find you dead, could well inflict the same pain on them that you're trying to end for yourself.

I think that anyone who has felt depressed enough to feel suicidal themselves will understand that it is not a selfish action.

Obviously there are some people who are lucky enough never to have felt like that.

Some people suffer terrible mental pain. Would it be seen differently if somebody killed themselves due to constant, unbearable physical pain with no end in sight? Or would that be seen as 'selfish', too?

I can understand that the surviving family and friends will feel terrible grief, and maybe anger at the situation they are left in. But to focus that anger on a person who has been suffering so badly that death seemed like the best option open to them... that seems like a lack of empathy to me. Perhaps sometimes people feel (misplaced) guilt at not having intervened, and then they find it easier to project that guilt onto the person who died?

My DF made sure no family member found him first, he called emergency services while everyone was out before he ended it.

I don't think dying by suicide is selfish. I don't think the word "selfish" should even enter the discussion.

What has kept me hanging on by my finger nails at times is that I know that however unbearable my pain, my kids would, at least at some point in their lives, believe the pain was more important to me than they were. I do not want them to have a life with an intensity of pain that I have (through abuse, not suicide), so I won't do it, even though it's often the most soothing option out there.

I've got a close friend who is in her 70s and her father died by suicide when she was a child. Without any doubt it influenced - negatively - almost every single part of her life until today.

When children don't feel important to their parents it causes them pain. Suicide is, to a child, the most extreme manifestation of that there is. Healing that wound can extend their entire life.

So people could then call it a selfish act. But I still think they're misunderstanding what is going on.

Still, nothing like condemning people who are a) mentally ill and b) no longer here to contradict you!