[31reasons]

You need to educate yourself with the science of choice and what happens during depression that changes your ability to make right decisions. Assuming that a depressed person is able to make the right decision is just wrong. How many times did you decide on something and than changed your mind? only this one is irreversible. Depression is curable with right support and medication. There may be few who are hopeless cases but 40000 is a big number and I believe its preventable for good.

[lhnz]

Were you previously depressed yourself or are you just trotting out the party line?

I have been depressed before.

While it's true that some people can take medication and receive platitudes and coping methods on how to deal with the facts of a sad and sorry life, this won't "cure" everybody.

What about those people that suffer for 10+ years?

---

In regards to the typical statements that depressed people have to hear day-upon-day:

When I was depressed (and I was very depressed for around 5 years) I knew that based on what I saw around me, I could probably expect to stop becoming depressed at some point of my life. However, it greatly annoyed me when people said "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" because when you've felt particularly bad for years and years, you're not dealing with something which is so easy to change, and it's in fact far more permanent than many things in your life. Time stretches without pleasure. Days are long but years are unimaginably scary.

Another statement which I would hear a lot was the idea that you shouldn't kill yourself because your family, friends and community need you. It doesn't necessarily sounds nice to a depressed person. Here's how I used to rationalise it: I was committing a selfless act of martyrdom by continuing to exist without pleasure - every day I would be nailed to a cross and for their pleasure would hang there on a side of a hill they didn't care to visit. "What did they get out of my suffering?!"

[mklim]

Similar story. In college I knew someone suffering from bipolar disorder. There's a lyric from Andrea Gibson's "Nutritionist"—"Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside." Every day for her for months at a time was just agonizingly painful for her to get through, beyond my abilities to accurately describe in a quick comment on the internet.

The vast majority of the anti-suicide efforts were just—insulting in her case, in a lot of ways. There were a lot of people and organizations telling her very loudly not to kill herself, and that it would get better if she just stuck it out a little more and saw a therapist. There was a legal and medical system willing to lock her up, for a fee, and keep her from actually physically harming herself. (This terrified her. She said her stay in a mental institution had been horrific and entirely unhelpful—they basically put her in solitary and kept her from doing anything at all, for hours. They wouldn't even let her have a pen and paper to write with because they were concerned that she would use it for self-harm.)

But there was nobody actually providing a way to make her life less painful. She came from a wealthy background and had good health insurance, so could afford weekly therapy sessions and psych meds. Some of the pills would work, for a few months or weeks at a time, but none of them were permanently helpful—and most of them took weeks to titrate up to an effective dose, so with each switch there would be a huge gap of time where she was as bad off as ever and nobody knew if the next pill would even work.

The anti-suicide efforts were like—it was like she was burning alive, and there were all these organizations and people in place determined to keep her from shooting herself to end the pain. But there was nobody who could actually stop her from burning.

I don't know. It's an awful situation all around. There are definitely a lot of people who are just temporarily upset or suffering from mild and easily treatable depression who do benefit from things like fences on bridges and national help hotlines. But more research is definitely needed. Someone else said in this thread that what we should really be doing is trying to keep people off the ledge entirely, not just trying to keep them from jumping, and I definitely agree there. What we really need is ways to keep people from wanting to die, not just ways to keep them from committing the act.

[chriscool]

I have been depressed too for years. What I can tell you is that one day, something wonderful and completely unexpected can happen and change everything :-) But you should not count too much on it though. In fact, I would say you should do the best you can to stop worrying about yourself and care about things that could help others. It's after you have done that for some years that the wonderful things are most likely to happen!

[lhnz]

That is actually more or less what happened to me, too. :)

Certain bad things which had been hanging around lifted, certain good things came into play. At that point I still had quite a depressed mindset but I had wanted to improve my life for so long and I had a lot of inner strength so I was able to grow a very positive, healthy mindset.

I really agree about trying to point yourself outwards and to help others around you. That's so important to me. In fact I have taken some off work recently just to create something which I believe might help people.

[brazzy]

You seem to mix up three different points/views, which weakens your argument a lot:

- The word "platitudes" and the scare quotes around "cure" indicate that blanket skepticism towards depression therapy of the kind I see from conspiracy nuts. You disqualify yourself from serious discussion that way.

- "coping methods on how to deal with the facts of a sad and sorry life" indicates that you believe depression is caused by external rather than internal factors. This runs very much against well established knowledge. If you suffer from external factors, those should be improved, and it's primarily up to you to do that.

- In cases of depression where therapy is ineffective for some reason, should this be considered morally equivalent to someone wishing to die to end their suffering from cancer, MS, etc.? This is absolutely worth discussing. The main problem I see is that we know that depression generaly is curable - so at what point do you decide that a given case is not?

[lhnz]

I'm not mixing up three different points/views, I was trying to give a faithful description of my own depression?!

My point was that I find the standard approach towards depression alienating because it completely discounts my own experiences. And as you neatly clarified, I disqualified myself from serious discussion of my own depression.

I don't think I have a better solution than what already exists, but I'm trying to get people to understand that human experience can't be completely generalised. When your framework disparages the remarks of people that have been depressed and have left depression surely there might be a problem there?

I will reiterate:

  1. I had depression caused by long-term external factors.
  It's popular to think this doesn't happen but it can happen.
  2. When I went to see a therapist I received platitudes and 
  coping strategies however as I had an external factor this
  felt like treating the effect and not the cause.
  3. It was really bad. I feel like I'm arguing with a bunch of 
  people that have no way of empathising.

It's not that I don't believe people can be cured but a combination of internal and external factors can make this difficult, and in the few case I know of people that have been depressed they have been "cared for" but not "cured" by the system.

[brazzy]

OK, I apologize. Obviously it's wrong for me to disqualify you from discussion your own experience - but it seemed to me like you were generalizing your experience to apply to everyone else and claim that depression therapy is humbug, which is also wrong. As you say, "human experience can't be completely generalised".

A therapist who completely discounts external factors in treating depression seems to me rather incompetent. But then, external factors can and should be changed by direct actions. But a depressed patient may not have the will or energy to change them - in which case the problem really is the depression. Of course, if change to the external factor is truly not possible, then coping strategies is really all that can be done.

[grimtrigger]

> right decision

You're asserting that not only a right decision exists, but that you are more aware of the right decision than the person actually involved.

[asolove]

I am married to a person who came very close to suicide and might have gone through with it except for the relative difficulty and the intervention of other people against her will.

After short-term medication, long-term therapy, and some lifestyle changes, we live mostly normal lives and have two happy children.

So you're damn right I'm asserting that there's a right decision and that I knew better than her in her chemically imbalanced state.

Now, this is one scenario that has a happy ending. I don't know what I would think about someone chronically and incurably suffering. But the idea of absolutely unfettered access to assisted suicide scares me.

[lmz]

Abortion is also irreversible, yet discouraging women who want to abort their pregnancy from doing so is considered in bad taste by most liberals.

[cldellow]

More nuance, please!

I think most women have thought about abortion to some degree and formed an opinion on whether it's the right choice for them, or under what conditions they would entertain the idea of an abortion versus keeping the child in an unexpected pregnancy. In these cases, you're right: discouraging women who have thought about the process would be seen as in bad taste.

But what if the woman was being pressured to abort (or to keep) the child by outside pressure? Then intervention would be seen as supporting the woman, not as interfering, and it'd be in good taste.

IMO, suicide is very similar. A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment. I don't think it's too much of a leap from that to the idea that a large proportion of suicides themselves are being done for the wrong reasons, i.e. the "outside pressure" of a brain that is suffering a mental illness.

[lmz]

I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking. How long do people have to suffer in order for you to say "this person's done enough thinking about it, he can go"?

[anigbrowl]

Speaking from experience, I disagree. I'm in favor of a generalized right to commit suicide as a fundamental ground of self-determination, but it can often be a compulsive rather a considered action; furthermore it can be based on a fundamentally irrational discounting of the future ('I'll never be happy again, my life can only get worse') which may be merely temporary or the result of developmental delays/deficits in handling emotional swings.

[Jtsummers]

> I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking.

[citation needed]

Most seems unlikely to me, at least for first attempts.

[thaumasiotes]

> A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment.

A different conclusion you could draw from this are that the failed attempts failed because they weren't really trying to kill themselves, a sort of regretting-in-advance, if you will. I feel pretty safe in saying that successful suicide attempts don't go on to regret it, and it's not at all obvious that the failures and the successes are examples of the same phenomenon.

[ux-app]

that's a horrible comparison

[lmz]

And why is that? It's her body and she has the right to remove the fetus in her. Why does she not have the right to put a tankful of Nitrogen in her lungs if she chooses to do so?

[ux-app]

Your statement implied that there was much in common with the two scenarios. There isn't. Therefore it's a bad comparison.

fwiw I'm pro choice on both issues.

[lmz]

And I am too. I am not anti abortion I am pro voluntary suicide.

"Just go to therapy it will be better" vs "Give the baby a chance you might grow to love it". How is it any different?

[ux-app]

Suicide in otherwise healthy individuals is (imo) a mental health issue. Abortion is not.

Your initial comment that I responded to implied that discouraging suicide is or should be in bad taste. I don't agree with this statement.

My position is predicated on the assumption that life is better than death.