Suicide - why do people it it?

[BoundaryGirl3939]

I got word yesterday that an incredibly competent, popular and capable women in her early 50s committed suicide. I'm shocked. She had it all. A devoted husband and two beautiful grown up children.

Her poor mental was blamed on her menopause but apparently her mental health deteriorated a good few years before the change.

I got to know her about 11 years ago(lived with her very briefly) but hadn't seen or heard from her since bar her profile on social media.

I just don't know what can make someone throw it all away. She literally had it all, and she was still young.

If I was to compare myself to her, I would not measure up to the level of drive and success she had. In a material sense, I've got very little. How could she throw it all away? Was it a moment of delusion or did she really know what she was doing?

I think you remove people's right to make their own decisions about life. I call that disrespect.

my own mantra after surviving... 'but for the grace of god go I!' i never want to get to that place ever again! i was lucky.. i work very hard on never going there again

What helped you out of that hole?

My dad committed suicide, when I was 9. I was told it was due to infidelity and money worries. I don’t find the word ‘commit’ offensive in this context…. People choose to be offended .

Anyway OP. I was told that it can be a hereditary trait, not sure how true this is, but I do often wonder if I will commit suicide one day. I have a had low moments, and fleeting thoughts. Then sometimes I wonder if it’s inevitable because my dad did 🤔

Might be worth asking mh to delete your post as although I’m sure that it has come from a place of shock, you may want to have a think about how you communicate.

Your post has made me cry. I’m glad you found a way through it 🩷

On the other hand, a previous suicide attempt is the biggest risk factor for death by suicide. It’s definitely not inevitable but unfortunately some people (including my lovely brother, who we lost after repeated attempts) are very serious about it and very determined.

I've recently been working with a bereavement charity that described suicide as often being "a permanent solution to a temporary problem" which made it even sadder to contemplate
It's such a terribly complex thing there's often no answers

A hundred and one possibilities. Maybe her life looked great from the outside but felt crap from the inside. Maybe there was something happening that overwhelmed her coping capabilities. Maybe she has been struggling not to do this for years. Maybe her mental health fell apart. Maybe it seemed the logical thing to do at the time. Maybe logic no longer had a place. Maybe her pain felt overwhelming. Maybe she believed her family were better off without her. Maybe so many things. But she won't have done this to hurt anyone else. She will have done this because in that moment she believed it was the only thing to do. We often know so little about the pain that others are hiding from the world.

personally, it's complicated...I often feel like taking back control. Life will end anyway - in some way (to my mind only) everything is meaninglessness because we will inevitably die. so why not do it sooner rather than dragging it out?
That's how i often feel.

I agree. This is a very insensitive and ignorant thread @BoundaryGirl3939 and I think you should report it to MN and ask them to delete it. The reason why many people take their own life is very complex. Even if they appear to 'have it all' you have no idea what's going on in their life, and in their head etc...

I know you didn't mean anything, but this thread is hugely disrespectful.

I'm so sorry that happened to your dad.

I don't think you will. I found out that for years my mother idealised suicide but didn't do it. I have never idealised suicide so it's not always genetic.

I genuinely am not trying to hurt anyone. I just know know why people aren't allowed to talk about it.

You don’t have to feel the pain of a physical illness like ms or rheumatoid arthritis to accept that it is painful and debilitating, and likewise you don’t need to analyse or scrutinise someone’s life or have people explain to you how depression etc feels in order to accept that sometimes people are in psychological pain so bad that they feel they have no other option than to end their own life. You don’t need to get it, you just need to accept it.
I knew a woman once who was in and out of hospital all the time with self inflicted injuries and suicide attempts. She had two little boys, a lovely husband, good career and was absolutely knock out gorgeous. She had also been sexually abused by her two older brothers for years. You don’t know what goes on in peoples lives from the outside anyway.

My plans to end my life by suicide were based on the same ideas. I genuinely believed that my DC would be better off without me, and that the trauma of losing their Mum would be less than the trauma of being raised by me.

Of course I was wrong, but at that moment I was so severely unwell that I really thought I was fucking their lives up. I don't believe that anymore, but it's taken years, and i was passively suicidal until very recently.

Genuine question, what is the right term to use?

We may never know what was inside that took them away from us .....

But they did the best they could until they couldn't any longer.

They never wanted to leave us.....

They just didn't know how to stay.

Yes I understand this. I'm so sorry to hear about your brother.

I do fear though, that whilst repeated suicide attempts are the reality for some people, the commonly held attitude that suicide cannot be prevented leads to an apathy about suicide. This apathy means that people do not learn about suicide prevention, people with suicidal thoughts feel even more hopeless and ultimately this will lead to excess deaths among the majority of people with suicidal intent who can survive and recover. For the majority of people, suicide is not a well thought through decision. Suicide can be prevented if those planning suicide are given the chance to pause, safety plan and realise that different options are available. And that's true, most of the time.

So terribly sorry again for the awful loss of your brother, and the struggle he went through before he died.

Died by suicide or took their own life.

'Died by suicide,' or 'took their own life.' Don't say they 'committed suicide.'

Changing the language (from commit suicide) takes the blame for suicide away from the patient and aligns it with other health conditions, and decreases the stigma that comes with mental health conditions. The term “committed suicide” goes back to when suicide was considered illegal and immoral, associating it with committing murder or adultery.

Sometimes people are in so much emotional pain or turmoil that they look for a way out. And that’s not all that could be going on, I think it’s very complex and you can’t tell what’s going on under the surface. People live with the burden of being abused, for example, and it may get harder over time, not easier, in spite of life or material achievements.

When I had to take a friend to A&E I was disgusted at how he was treated by the doctor, like a useless time waster taking away attention from people who are really ill. I hope things have changed now.

Decades ago my uncle who must ve been in his early 40s died by suicide.
His father had died recently ( my mum's too)
However he lived with his Dad in a council property that was being taken back in the coming weeks.
Tragically it was too much for the young man to deal with.
Having it all or a nice life is just surface stuff.
We have no idea about peoples real worries or past issues that cause them to feel so dreadful.

One of my friends from my teens/20’s took his own life. On paper he had it all, lovely wife, two kids, good job, nice house, lots of friends. But whatever he had, he had mental health issues and ultimately thought the world would be better without him. We’ll never understand why. He was always the joker of the group - tears of a clown and all that.

I think you have to have been in that place yourself to really understand it - I haven't.
But can you try and imagine feeling so awful that you see it as the only option?
A close friend of my DD's took her life last year - she had a loving husband and a one year old 😭😭😭
She really must have believed they would be better off with out her. Poor poor girl.

In training I've done it's referred to as "completing suicide". As others have said, taking the criminality out of it. But you could be excused for not having heard it referred to this way.

died by suicide, or died by self harm. we need to stop using the work commit!