[mactrey]

To me suicide is an reaction to this thought: "things are bad for me, and they are never going to get better." If you think your life might get significantly better in the next couple of years, you probably aren't likely to commit suicide.

I'm sure many people experienced sudden and traumatizing depression with the onset of Covid. But we mostly all knew it would be temporary - we knew things would get better again, even if we didn't know the timelines. There wasn't a "forever" there, so suicide wasn't a common reaction.

[HWR_14]

About 1/3 of people who attempt suicide do so in response to an immediate trigger, and if stopped, never try again. That's why immediate intervention has such a good success rate. And that's ignoring the people who are going through a longer term but still temporary (certainly less than a year) struggle.

I think you're assuming "this is when a rational actor would commit suicide". And for some people, e.g. the terminally ill, this is true.

[Lutger]

This is a good point. But I do also think that a perspective of despair is part and parcel of depression. It may depend of the kind of depression though.

From my own experience with depression, it's the lack of joy rather than the sadness that is hard to suffer through. It's helplessness rather than sadness, a loss of feeling rather than feeling too much. But depression shrinks any perspective on tomorrow and just leaves you powerless in the here and now, though not in a good way. It's more like having to give up because everything is too heavy, a felt sense of not being able to affect your world. Sadness itself due to bad events is usually not a problem, it's part of life even if we attempt to eradicate it. The problem begins when you get stuck in the sadness, and then everything shrinks away in a dark void where you don't feel sadness nor joy, just a heavy, tired numbness.

Sometimes a depressed person's initial stage out of a depression is the one where he or she is most at risk of committing suicide. Because you need to feel some sense of control and overcome your fears in order to do it.

[twox2]

From what I've been told, suicide is often impulsive, and when it's not impulsive it's an escape from some kind of psychological or physical agony - like you're in a burning building and jump out the window. If you're in a room that's on fire, then knowledge that it won't be on fire a month from now won't keep you in the room. I think it's a tough subject to generalize.

[mPReDiToR]

Personal anecdata:

Going all the way down in the 90's made me aware that "this too shall pass" is a way of life I live by.

As a coping mechanism, waiting out the tough times seems to work.

I wonder how many people could be helped by knowing that the glib "it gets better" is true, "but you have to feel like this until then" is the part they don't remind you of?

[TylerLives]

I wouldn't expect Covid to be the main reason for suicide, but a small nudge to those who are already close to it.

[tailspin2019]

Wow, this is very insightful