Suicide. Act of cowardice or braveness?

“It’s a hell of a thing to kill a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have”.

I think it takes balls, but I know that’s going to be the unpopular opinion.

It simply takes resolve. Resolve can be a very bad thing indeed when misguided. And suicide is certainly misguided. A permanent solution to a temporary problem.

suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.. I LOVED THAT

It is an act of mental illness.

About a month ago, one of my great childhood friends committed suicide, and I went into a brief existential, thought-heavy period.

The question is not “is it brave” or “is it cowardly.” The question is “what was this person trying to tell us?”

Only then will you find your answer.

I found myself asking selfish questions like the one @dimitris has presented. I asked myself “could I have done something?”, “was he reaching out to someone and they didn’t answer?”, “what motivated him?”, “where do we go from here?”, and “how could he be so selfish?”

No. You must look at suicide as a message and interpret it free from ideology. Objectivity is key here. Attaching bravado or feebleness to a person claiming dominion over their sentience is dolorous and quite unnecessary. What we should be doing is attempting to enter the mind of the individual and look at the legacy. It is their final act and should be treated with respect, not as some philosophical plaything.

@Grisaille Good points.

This brings up something else, though – recently someone committed suicide (it was close to where I work so that’s how I know the how/when/where) by jumping off of a parking garage on to the street below. I don’t think anyone on the ground was hurt, but it most definitely caused an enormous scene with many many witnesses.

I wonder what the motivation is behind suicide in such a public and horrific fashion. I can only imagine the awfulness for the witnesses – unsolicited involvement in such a sad situation.

I think it can be either or neither. Or possibly even both (brave in some ways, cowardly in others). Suicide itself is just an action (albeit an incredibly dramatic and permanent action). The reason for the action can be cowardly or brave…

Neither bravery nor cowardice. Desperation.

It doesn’t take bravery. It takes extreme selfishness. It takes thinking that your problem is so terrible that you need to off yourself and leave that problem for your friends and family to deal with…without you.

Would you call the people that jumped durning 9/11 cowards or brave?

@JollyTiger The Unforgiven. Damn good movie. Excellent soundtrack. Love it.

That my friend wasn’t suicide!

extremely cowardly. in mythology, the most anti-hero thing to do is to kill yourself. it’s not only going back to your comfort zone but retreating way way back all the way to the womb because you can’t deal with maturing, moving forward, and facing challenges that will ultimately help you grow and give you higher understanding.

Just playing devil’s advocate here, but in history, the Romans and the Japanese would commit suicide to uphold their honor. Either to avoid the dishonor of capture or to counteract some dishonorable action. They were considered brave and honorable to do so.

@MissAnthrope Good call on the seppuku/hara-kiri. Yowch!

…and I’m still curious about public suicides.

I agree with @holden—desperation. It’s about ending the pain. In the end, the pain is depression. I don’t care why you are depressed—if you lost all honor because you lost billions of dollars and can no longer support your family, or you lost honor because you chose the wrong side to fight for, or if you just murdered your wife and don’t want to live without her or in prison for the rest of your life, if it’s chemicals in your brain, or whatever. You just can’t see anything but pain forever forward, and you can’t put up with it.

Should we have to put up with permanent pain? Is it cowardice to end it?

Well, I suppose it depends on whether you believe that it is reasonable for people to understand that the pain won’t last forever. Personally, I think that you are in a kind of altered state of consciousness when you take your own life, and reason is no longer a part of your mental make-up.

Bravery and cowardice are irrelevant. They assume a person takes their own life for reasonable reasons. They assume it is not brainwashing of some kind.

When you are in that kind of pain, it seems unfair. It makes you angry. If you’re angry for people letting you be in pain, for letting you be alone and unloved and uncared for, then a public suicide might seem like a good way to get back at people. If you think you’re doing everyone a favor, you’re more likely to do it in a private way.

My brother lived for close to 20 years with the nightmares of what he had seen and done during the Vietnam war. He watched his best friend who was walking next to him on a trail, be blown to pieces, and had his friend’s body parts rain down on him. He came home to an ungrateful nation who taunted him for being in a war he wanted nothing to do with.. he was drafted and forced to go their at the innocent age of 19.

In horror he watched small children laden with bombs blow themselves up along with his platoon members.

After years of struggling with his nightmares and guilt/grief over things he had been a part of, he decided he couldn’t take it anymore, so he held a revolver to his heart and pulled the trigger. He was no coward. He was my hero, and no one will change my point of view concerning him.

@scamp A fine example.

To those that say suicide is cowardice – you have never felt true mental anguish. That is all.

@Grisaille Thank you. I’m so sorry about your friend. I understand some of what you are going through. I asked myself all those questions when my brother died too.

I think it differs from case to case. We all have different motivation. In the end, the only thing that belongs to us, is the moment of death. We all have the birthright to our deaths, chosen or not.

Any motivation that leads to suicide, leads to mental illness.

Or a well orchestrated scam. Same difference.

@ChazMaz I don’t quite understand you first statement. The popular thought among many is that mental illness leads to suicide, not the other way around. After suicide, you’re no longer ill, you’re dead.

@scamp My macabre humor finds that last line funny. Shame on me.

@Grisaille , shame on me too for saying it then, ha ha!!

To those that say suicide is cowardice – you have never felt true mental anguish. That is all.

@Grisaille – Thanks for putting into words what I was feeling throughout this thread and unable to express. It takes a great deal of suffering and mental anguish to get to the point where death becomes a reasonable option.

Trying or succeeding in suicide takes mad balls.

I think that when the pointlessness of ones life reaches and surpasses the pointlessness of committing suicide, it becomes logic and an act of relief.

Both. You’d have to have guts to kill yourself, but the only reason you would is if you just couldn’t stand the thought of one more day. Sometimes the absolute hate of life is enough to make up for bravery.

I’ve attempted 6 times. It’s an act of cowardice. I did it because, well I was suffering from severe manic depression and feeling at the bottom of that hole is 100x as intense as feeling rock bottom just because you had a bad day. I did it because I was scared, alone, lost, deeply sad, angry and a million other feelings of unworthiness that cannot be expressed in words. It’s just the worst feeling ever and more. BUT I’ve found a holistic remedy and haven’t attempted since. I look back and think “why?!” and I make myself sad that I would ever have considered, worse, attempted such an act.

As one who’s been there, it’s also selfish. Even with a mental illness. You are only thinking of yourself and not about anyone else who cares about you or how they would feel if you were gone. It’s also brave, literally, men are more likely to use a gun, women, pills. But the act is still selfish. It’s everything and also wrong. There’s always help, all you gotta do is ask.

It does take courage and it depends on the method at hand. I do know if I was going to commit suicide having a very powerful handgun which would completely blow my head off instantly would be much more preferable to a long drawn out attempt which fails and you end up worse off .I can understand why some people think suicide is selfish because of the pain caused to family and friends ,but if they knew this is genuinely what the person wanted maybe they would feel more ok about it.It is certainly not their familys fault and no one should make them feel It is.No it is not wrong to commit suicide .Schizophrenics are much more likely to commit suicide than people without a mental illness.It is not their fault they were born with Schizophrenia .It is a horrible mental illness to have been born with as any mental illness is. I believe that Jesus Christ , who whether he was the Son of God or not, he was a real person and I believe he would have the compassion to forgive a human being who made the decision to commit suicide.I know Jesus Christ suffered terrible pain and humiliation and he endured It and he would not want someone to commit suicide but If they said to him,Jesus , please forgive me I want to end my life ,Yes he would forgive them.Jesus showed mercy and so he would forgive a suicide.

I believe people commit suicide because they are in such deep pain, they cannot imagine any other way to fix the pain. I don’t believe anyone really wants to die. I think they want the pain to stop. Yes, the person may genuinely want to do it for the pain to stop, but if they could find another way to alleviate the pain, I think they would no longer want to die.

The problem is whether you can get out of the pain some other way. So often, we get so depressed, we don’t even try. Then we die. I don’t know what the stats are for schizophrenics, but 20% of bipolar folks die of suicide. It’s probably worse for schizophrenics.

I don’t think suicide is cowardice or bravery. It is problem solving. It’s not even the wrong solution, I think. However, if you have just the tiniest bit of luck, there are other solutions that don’t involve death. Those solutions have many more advantages, not just for the people who care about the victim, but for the person who can have a decent life, if they manage to take care of their illness.

It is possible to take care of the illness. I’ve done it. I know many others who have, as well. If you give it time… only a few months… you have every chance of finding a different way out of the pain, which, by the way, is the worst possible pain, I believe. Far worse than torture applied by humans.

My husband committed suicide. Left me and his children behind to try to cope with his actions. I dont know if it is a coward or what but what i do know is that leaving the ones behind that you say you love is a pretty selfish thing to do. Especially when you know that your children will be the ones to find you.

The thing about suicide, is that you’re dead. You’ve ceded the ground to those who are still alive. They get to tell the story about you. You can’t defend yourself any more. I think people who kill themselves know that, and have decided that that doesn’t matter. They can’t take the pain any more. No matter what anyone else says. No matter what might be said after they die. They will be dead and it will be over and they won’t ever have to think about how much of a failure they are again.

That may be selfish, but I don’t think they would do it if they could think of a way to tolerate the pain of life. It probably leaves survivors with a lot of guilt. Wishing they could have done something. And survivors have to find a way to stop killing themselves with guilt. Getting angry at the person who died is one way of getting past them. Calling them names is a way of distancing yourself from the suicide. Selfish and irresponsible and weak. Poor excuse for a human.

But that’s not where it will end, I don’t think. That’s just a step in the process. In the end, though, it’s your life to make of what you will. It must be very hard to let go of someone who kills themself.