Why do people commit suicide who have a home and homeless people dont commit suicide?

I’m not sure I understand what one has to do with the other.
Are you implying that in general people commit suicide due to their housing situation? That would be a very misguided assumption and a terribly shallow view of mental issues plaguing those who are suicidal in nature.

Because I if you survive on the streets, your survival instinct is allready kicking in…

Please link to an article or some stats to support this assumption.

Homeless people try to kill themselves all of the time.

Staalesen is pretty right on. I have one answer but I’m gonna try and drop it 2 ways to see which is easier to understand.

Version A:
People on the streets have already been through some traumatic, life-altering event before they ended up where they are. Whereas someone who has a home and life hasn’t necessarily had to deal with that much stress.

Version B:
The homeless can cope with stress and by the time they’re on the streets. Besides, they don’t have a lot of stress left to deal with.

The non-homeless can have a lot more stress in their lives. When things go wrong they could be looking at losing everything from their possessions, to their families, to their freedom.

You seem to think that suicide is primarily determined by whether someone has a roof over their head or not. This assumption is very much incorrect. Suicide, very generally speaking, is caused by having a “broken brain”, some type of brain imbalance that causes the person to become more depressed or manic and to seriously entertain suicidal thoughts. It can also be influenced by someone’s upbringing as well as their society’s outlook to suicide (for instance, it’s much more common in Japan in part because of their history regarding suicide and their social upbringings surrounding honour).

@dynamicduo: While there are numerous factors that lead someone down the path to suicide; not everyone who does so has a “broken brain” or even brain imbalance. Perfectly sane, balanced and healthy people commit suicide all the time. Believe it or not, people sometimes commit suicide for very selfish reasons; an unwillingness to face issues; to punish others; influence or drugs or alcohol; etc. What might seem insane to you or me is not necessarily so. Remember that each persons perspective is their reality.

I’d like to see any kind of stats that compare these two things. Until you show that homeless people aren’t trying to kill themselves, this topic is just your random assertion. That doesn’t make it true.

In reality, it might be that homeless suicides are not recorded very well.

Where in the world do you get the idea that homeless people don’t try to kill themselves??

Because apples are actually oranges and bananas are kumquats.. ... .. ... .. ........ ... .. pomegranate.

Being homeless can be a long, slow way of killing yourself. You need to make sure you punish yourself enough before you die. After all, you believe you are shit, and deserve only shit. Most homeless people are mentally ill. They are not learning survival skills on the streets. The streets are not giving them the will to live. The streets are the last stop before the last stop.

You want to help the homeless? Give them a home, and make sure they get services; especially mental health care.

I may not have been there (although I’ve wanted to be), but many people in my situation have been. Some make it back out. Others don’t.

At a certain level, when some becomes extremely rich, and starts to like he has achieved everything he ever dreamed of. His bank account is full of billions, he lives in a huge luxurious mansion, a luxurious car… etc. He starts to find this suffocating emptiness in his heart, because he has nothing else to achieve, all can achieve now is keep collecting more money which nothing new to him anymore. That’s why his life slowly starts to feel meaningless, and he starts to feel more and more depressed, until he gets to a level when he begins to believe that the only solution for this pain is by committing suicide.

However, that’s only one case out of many cases for why some people commit suicide, and of course it doesn’t apply to all rich people in the world either.

I believe it has a lot to do with the fact that homeless people dont have a lot to DEAL with as a person who works 5 days a week 8 hours a day at a dead end job with a family who doesnt love each other. (not saying this is always true). Homeless people dont do much, they just know they must survive, some how. A person working round the clock is under constant stress and pressure and sometimes this can get to some people. I also believe that homeless people can handle much more than some one who has been pampered all their life. I have heard of some people who commit suicide simply because something didnt go the way they wanted. How immature is that? A homeless person doesnt expect too much out of life. They live poorly, but simply (even in mind). I respect some of them.

How you feel about life is relative, and so is how you cope with it. While most of you were eating your Christmas pudding, I was sitting staring at the Christmas tree with my girlfriend and wondering how come
1) she got arrested for something she hadn’t done
2) we had a serious accident which turned my brand new car (which I still haven’t paid for) into junk
3) my daughter got kidnapped on Christmas Eve
4) her daughter got kidnapped on Christmas Day

And a few days later, some of you here on fluther were wondering how I can still post.

But since then, I’ve realised that
1) she was set free and the whole misunderstanding is more or less over
2) all of us are alive and well
3) my daughter is safe and I am following the legal procedure of getting her back
4) her daughter was returned a few days later

Since I’ve been in much worse places in the past (where there was no way to fix things), I have had the hope to cope. And I think similarly homeless people (though I’ve only really been homeless for a very short period in my life) have this hope that keeps them going. Who says they’re not also depressed? Who says they don’t go crazy? Or that they’re not alcoholics and junkies? That’s probably how they ended up there in the first place. But if there’s even a glimmer of hope, they won’t give up, and life still has meaning for them. As it should for everyone.

Clinical depression hits all demographics.

@Judi; I will vouch for that. ^^

This seems a lot like asking why do obese people, collectively, have fewer washing machines than people of normal weight?

I don’t know where you get the idea that homeless people don’t commit suicide. Everyday they live their “homeless” life is one day closer to their impending death. Suicide need not be quick and easy.

Depression does not know affluence.

how would you know how often homeless people commit suicide? many of them are probably without identification, and it seems that they’re often overlooked anyway.

@daloon: ”Being homeless can be a long, slow way of killing yourself. You need to make sure you punish yourself enough before you die. After all, you believe you are shit, and deserve only shit.”

that smacks of blaming the victim in that it implies some root intention of self-punishment. now, granted, many homeless alcoholics (and the classic alcoholic/drug user makes up only a sub-set of the homeless population, just a highly visible one) do hate themselves. getting from there to the stage of managing to find a place takes some doing. the stereotypical image of a homeless person doesn’t mean every homeless person.

as far as the rest of your post, homeless people go through plenty of stress and continuous stress breaks the psyche and drugs and alcohol do worse. your classic positive feedback loop. I don’t believe in the concept of mental illness. just thought I would throw that in though.

I spent a year homeless (well, homeless and sometimes managing to crash at friends’ or relatives) and especially for me, having hypoglycemia (which I did not know at the time) most of my thinking crunched down into where do I eat, when do I eat next, where will I sleep. massive stress.

@Ria777: You don’t believe in the concept of mental illness? Do you mind if I ask why?

You don’t hear about homeless people; they’re invisible. OTOH, people identify with people who have “stuff” just like them.

@AlredaPrufrock, true of some homeless, not of all. in my neighborhood, at least in warm weather, you see them all the time. though, also homeless people don’t look like stereotypical homeless people. (maybe you mean this?)

@bythebay, I went on one of my antipsychiatry screeds here recently and I feel kind of burnt out on it so I will just say that mentally ill doesn’t make sense for the same reason that religiously ill or politically healthy or romantically sick does not make sense. I don’t mean that in a flippant way. I could get into more of the philosophy of it except that Thomas Szasz has done it for me. also, as I said, I already had a flame war recently about it.

@Ria777: I understand your reasons for not wanting to get into a flame war. Thanks for the response.

I mean that, generally speaking, people in communities don’t want to acknowledge homelessness, because it carries with it a sense that you should be doing something about it, and the also serves as a reminder of how precarious one’s security can be. So the media doesn’t really carry a lot of news about homeless people. I you live in the city, you see it everyday, and live with it. Not so much in the ‘burbs.

When our power went out for 8 days after Ike, I used the laundromat and was struck by how expensive it is to keep your clothing clean if you’re on limited funds, and how difficult it would be to look for work without clean clothes.

@Ria777

Blaming the victim? Interesting. Well, when I’m sick, and I want to be homeless and lie in a gutter… yeah, I do blame myself for all my ills. I’m like you, too, in that I don’t believe the excuses that psychiatry gives me. They say it’s an imbalance of chemicals in my brain, but I know that it’s all my own fault, and I could get out of it at any second, if I only decided to do so.

Of course, they give me the drugs. I take them. And boy, I feel a hell of a lot better, and I no longer blame myself, and I no longer want to be in the worst place possible, knowing that that’s still not punishment enough for the absolute shit of a person that I am.

So, yeah. I’m guilty of everything you say, and more. And by the way, maybe around a third to a half of the homeless are bipolar. Every bipolar person I’ve ever met (and I’ve met a lot of them, including one who was formerly homeless) feels pretty much the same way, judging by the amens they give when I tell my story.

But that’s my experience. I blame myself for being the victim, and of course, that just makes things worse, and that spiral easily ends in suicide. Either the fast kind, or the long, drawn-out kind. My mantra, when I’m sick, is “I suck.” I struggle so many times each day to not go there.

Your story of massive stress from homelessness? When I’m depressed, it’s like a beacon of light for me. Or maybe anti-light. I deserve to eat food out of dumpsters. I deserve to sleep in a box, shivering in the cold. I deserve every bit of despiction people hurl at me. I deserve the kicks and the rapes and more.

People tell me I don’t, but I know better, although I don’t tell people all that often. Be careful of what you wish for, you might get it.

I feel that at any moment, it could be me.

@daloon: “Be careful of what you wish for, you might get it.”

that goes to the crux of what I said in my post. you imply that they wished for this stuff to happen. the stereotypical homeless person (i.e. the visibly homeless ones) tends more to repeat the same mistakes, day after day. I have some considerable experience with serving food to them in a soup kitchen. I recognized some easily identifiable patterns of behavior.

I’ve always questioned the word homeless. Perhaps the word should really be houseless, because perhaps some homeless people do feel at home in their environment regardless of whether they have a roof over their head or not. I’ve seen some pretty amazing bum encampments myself.
Anyway, I think all kinds of people commit suicide, but the media is partially, if not completely for our entertainment, and if it’s not someone rich or famous, we won’t hear about it. Alcoholism and drug addiction can be a form of slowly killing yourself in my opinion. For some reason though, if you’re a successful and functional drug addict, it’s not the same.
I have been really low before, and when I was younger and more naive, saw homelessness as an alternative option to suicide. But it would probably be choosing living a numb life of drug addiction, so it doesn’t really solve your problems, it just gets rid of the pain. Not to say that all homeless people have drug problems, but many seem to.

@Ria777: I was talking to myself.

Because people who have doesn’t hane homes dont have problems like the others who dave homes.they dont have money… they dont care about work or children

Actually, there ARE research studies showing that there IS a high rate of suicides or suicide attempts amongst the homeless:

http://psycontent.metapress.com/content/84p81135ltx1874n/

Also, there is my own personal experience. A female in my early 20s, I went through a long bout of financial difficulties beyond my control and was then literally dumped to the streets by my accusatory family who’d misunderstood my difficulties securing a viable job after college. My hypocritical “friends” didn’t help me, just judged my homelessness to be a societal stigma, even though I’d more than generously “risked my back” helping them in the past. Go figure. My self esteem had already been in the gutter as a result of not being able to secure decent employment despite trying really hard, and the homeless thing made me despise myself more than ever. But the worst part of all was probably the great physical discomforts…never a place to sleep, hunger, being stuck outside all night every night to bear the brunt of THE coldest winter on record for my city.

So yeah, there were definitely times where I contemplated suicide or at least demonstrated “suicide watch signs” to others. For example, when my best friend refused to let me stay with him at his family’s house one day and took his frustrations about my tough situation out on me, I would make threats such as “maybe I should just kill myself, then I won’t be a problem on the world anymore.” (which he coldly responded, “maybe you’re right, you should”) I also saw myself as a burden on others, such as the friends who got annoyed when I repeatedly asked them for help…which I heard on Dr. Phil is a suicide watch sign…but then again, I really WAS a burden, so I don’t think it was all that far from reality to think of myself as one.

The worst part was the suicide plan I actually concocted: go to my city’s #1 drug corner, buy a boatload of heroin any way I could, then commit suicide via intentional drug overdose. I’d never injected anything in my life, but it seemed like the best suicide plan. I saw it as a “way out” of the perils of a homeless life. I also saw it as revenge on my unsupportive parents, who judged drug users and overdose fatalities to be “losers”, to have to deal with their daughter dying that way. Thankfully, I eventually climbed the societal ladder and got off the streets..thanks to NOBODY else..but since then, I’ve encountered other periods of financial difficulties and my fears of becoming homeless again STILL haunt me. I’m emotionally scarred, and I think it’ll take many more years of financial stability before I’ll ever get over these fears. I’ve already promised myself that if I do ever end up in lousy homelessness again, the overdose plan will be carried out this time.

What I find ironic is the stats mentioned in the article I’ve linked. Most homeless suicides are of homeless people that have a high school diploma…which shows that like me, they were educated but probably felt like crap for being stuck on the streets after working hard in life, which might have led to their desire for death. The stats also show that most suicides do involve substance overdose. The only stat that isn’t similar is the gender stat—almost all are male. Hmm I guess I wasn’t so “abnormal” in my thinking after all.

I was homeless for 11 months at one time. Many are homeless because they lost a
source of income like a job or in my case a disability issue. Most of the day is rubbing
shoulders with people in the world you were once in. When you’re homeless it’s not like
you can do the routine as before. Although I lived in a new shelter, at least seven times
I was on anti-biotics. Yes, they keep them clean but some of the people have poor hy-
giene. Everyday you just live for the hope the cycle of extreme poverty you’re in will
change, and your life can be like before. Blood clots in the lungs was attributed to
living a homeless life. Never had peumonia before being homeless. Sometime the
food made me so sick. No matter how far you go, you know you have to return to
the shelter. All holidays are the same. Get up at 6am and be out of the shelter
by 7am. Unless the weather is really bad can you stay. Can’t never enjoy a movie
because half the people in the TV room are talking. One guy committed suicide
leaving 4 very very beautiful young daughters behind. You can’t help but be among
the alcholics and drug addicted that will never overcome their habit. When they die
not much is said because all in that lifestyle know the consequences.

When I hear of people’s homes being foreclosed or being evicted from their apart-
ments I get a little sick with anxiety knowing what they might go through. It hurts
to see many still living in that situation after all this time. Only by the grace of
God was I retored disablity and the county mental health department felt I quali-
fied for housing because I became so depressed. I really felt that if I didn’t get out
of that situation, I would commit suicide. I pray none of you have to go though that
hell..

only the grace of God I got back on my feet

If people are given the choice to end their life peacefully such as euthanasia, one would be surprised just how many would enlist at the chance instead of suffering.