Anthony Bourdain has died
bbc.com
bbc.com
"I should’ve died in my 20s. I became successful in my 40s. I became a dad in my 50s. I feel like I’ve stolen a car — a really nice car — and I keep looking in the rearview mirror for flashing lights."
Rest in peace.
If not, why would one immediately assume Bourdain was depressed?
Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Biploar, Anxiety, Suicidal Depression, Panic Attacks.
It wasn’t until I changed my relationship to all emotions and then sought out a variety of support to safely go deeply into my experience that I was able to find relief.
1 session of MDMA therapy lifted a decade of suicidal thoughts; session 2 a year later largely freed me of anxiety and paranoia; combined with a NARM therapist to help me heal developmental and shock trauma, yoga, holotropic Breathwork and a loving stable romantic relationship. And a lot of grace.
No meds, no longer a prisoner, and my life is vibrant and alive and the past feels like nothing more than a straight jacket I wriggled out of.
The often unspoken truth is that Trauma (developmental, shock, generational) underpins most all mental health issues (save issues of malnutrition, poisoning,tumors and TBI).
This is on the radar of few practioners who instead offer very limited tools to suppress symptoms.
And because mental health is actually a context, folks typically are surrounded by others who don’t have a very deep capacity to honor our expeirences and would rather try to “cheer us up” or change what we feel. The actual need is to have people who help us feel more of what we feel (that leads to deeper relief).
The Suicidal Impulse is a an impulse for the pain of our default mode network to stop. When we have unprocessed traumas, we are in a state of fight or flight and this activation is painful. It also leads to addiction.
Ego (default mode network) death and rebirth is possible without killing the body. It requires a safe context to release the old trauma and form new pathways in the incresed plasticity.
Know that there are actual solutions, it’s not your fault, and there are people here to help — but you will need to take responsibility for healing this as our current society is doing a terrible job thus far.
Holotropic Breathwork gets at the same mechanism of action, albeit a more manual process, and is legal everywhere.
Email me if you’d like to talk more.
A@175g.com
Anthony was inspirational to me in part because, among many reasons, though he lived his life in a very unusual way he was still successful and always adventurous.
The world has suffered a great loss today.
In a lot of ways this make sense to me, he was probably under a lot of pressure to be the guy that everyone really liked. Created this unrealistic expectation that was stressful to meet. Add in poor habits, maybe strained relationship and friends to lean on. It's not hard for people to feel like there is not point in going on with life.
EDIT: I am open to being wrong and invite a discussion of others opinions.
Would you be so kind as to point me in a direction to get more infos on this?
For anyone who has struggled with depression or severe anxiety, if you haven’t read the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, I encourage you to read it as soon as possible — it’s one of the best, most approachable, resources out there to understand not only many of the roots of depression, but many strategies to actually overcome it (it’s very different from traditional talk therapy, which is mostly focused on getting people to cope with their past trauma rather than resolve it).
https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...
So many of the things we call "diseases" can be traced to trauma. "Mental injury" may be a more useful construct than "mental illness". In the same way that your body can heal from a femur fracture, your psyche can heal from a trauma-induced mind fracture.
Practices I have found to be useful in dealing with childhood physical abuse and chronic emotional abuse:
- sauna/cold plunge (incredibly useful way to trigger fight or flight and learn to deal with conditioned fear response)
- pushups, pullups, yoga
- breath awareness and compassion meditations
- metric shit-tons of journaling
- reading stories of trauma survivors
- psychoanalysis, up to a point
- talking to friends (the right ones)
Anthony changed the way that I view the world and inspired me to explore the world's rich tapestry of life. We have lost someone who truly was a world citizen who built the culture that "different" could be good.
The man's struggles through addiction and journey to peak physical fitness in his late 50s is nothing short of inspiring. I hope that he is immortalized through his work.
Sad news.
Commenter was talking about alcohol. He drinks a lot of alcohol in most of the episodes I’ve seen.
"An estimated 88,0008 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women8) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. The first is tobacco, and the second is poor diet and physical inactivity."[0]
[0]https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co...
If you're in a dark place, please, please consider reaching out for help.
I love this community. We gotta look out for each other y'all.
But that’s just me. I didn’t climb anywhere near the same heights as he did which it why it made me think that. I hope it’s something more positive (as it could be for something like this).
Edit: Just to add, this death affected me so much more than any other celebrity. I look up to him so much for turning his life around and turning it into what it is. I forget which episode of his newer show it was but he goes out hunting with the guy and shoots a... deer/elk/something. He tells the guy it’s the healthiest he’s ever been. You could tell how much it meant to him to be healthy and be able to do the hike they did.
Don’t know why it stood out so much but I was so happy for him. It encouraged me to keep going.
Otherwise, somehow, and I may be wrong, I think suicide might be deep rooted to our toxic: media, culture, attachments, conditioning, etc. It does sound a bit wrong to say. It might because I’m in my early twenties and still live with my parents and have lots of time to think but I’m becoming more aware of how, maybe, be of the world not in the world is so important. It seems like escapism but again, these days: I’m not reading the news as much or partaking in entertainment especially the internet, I’m spending more time alone in solitude, watching the evening sky, I’m going on walks, I’m deciding what has meaning and what does not, I’m just living but with no fuss, noise, or ego. Some may think it’s a boring way to live but it may be a true way to live, I think. It’s almost as I live in my own bubble and I’m not sure if that’s a right thing to do or not.
To the point, suicide and depression are terrible and I think, in modern day, we have to have a strong inner self to conquer it or else we get sucked in. It also reminds me of Thoreau’s Walden or Wallace’s understanding of American culture.
>Suicide is a growing problem in the United States. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a survey Thursday showing suicide rates increased by 25% across the United States over nearly two decades ending in 2016.
I remember a while back that the general public's tone on suicide was a lot less sober. More of a "man up" sort of attitude. With a growing list of famous, financially successful people committing suicide, I can only hope that people as a whole start seeing it as a complex issue and the stigma of mental issues and stress can lessen so that people can get help. Or at least be able to talk to their friends/family when they first notice problems instead of hiding it until it's too late.
When people first start having these sorts of thoughts and even hint at it to other people, the whole "What are you depressed about? Your life is good" response so many people give only makes it worse, and hopefully it's beginning to go away. Depression has nothing to do with how "good" your life is on paper.
I recently initiated a suicide intervention for a loved one.
I would like to know what would make it better. Or at least what not to do.
I am relentlessly optimistic (cancer survivor, a learned skill). I definitely feel like my efforts here ("talking someone off the ledge") had mixed results at best. Good stuff for other cancer victims. Not so good for depression, suicidal tendencies.
Sure, I took careful notes of conversations with the various care providers, professionals. But I don't feel any better equipped to handle the next flare up.
PS- RIP Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Confidential deeply influenced me. My first exposure to his ideas, worldview was a "Trial By Fire" profile on his management style in HBR (?). I loved how he accepted everyone to work in his kitchen, so long as they didn't miss a shift. How it was his crew versus the world, every night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfYJE-qCVaM
Slides https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-21/dc-21-presentations/...
Extras https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=b...
You have a highly mobile and mercenary workforce, many alternate employment opportunities with similar benefits (e.g. none), a clearly defined goal (food, on time), high frequency of repetition and a short time to failure loop (great for learning or improving), a reputation with fickle customers to maintain, and a broader taste zeitgeist one has to chase.
It's a hard as nails job, but I learned a lot about management.
Also: un- or semi-documented immigrants usually work twice as hard as Americans, for terrible wages, and are the engine of almost every kitchen. So special note and tons of respect to all the people out there sweating to prepare food & improve their and/or their children's lives.
The illness is not all in the heads of the people killing themselves.
I'd say a grew up in a relatively conservative area, but throughout my entire life, society has recognized the seriousness of suicide and mental health issues.
Says who? Maybe if we put everything on that paper the scale would visibly tip but it may be the case that if we could perceive those things as they are such that they could be written down it would exclude the problem's sticking power.
By the way we should also confirm it was really depression.
> I remember a while back that the general public's tone on suicide was a lot less sober. More of a "man up" sort of attitude.
Not trolling: wouldn't this provide (weak, but nevertheless some) evidence that a "man up" sort of attitude was more effective at combating suicide than our attitude towards it now?
For any problem, there is an explanation that is simple, easy, and wrong.
Personally, I don't really feel the "here's the suicide prevention hotline's number", "you should talk to someone", or "you should see a doctor" lines, which seem to be replacing that, are any better.
"'Fuck you,' he says. 'You don't even cook. You're not one of us anymore.' Far from being offended (although I am hurt), I want to give him a big hug. Another drink or two and I just might.
I don't cook. I'm not a chef. The chefs and cooks who are better than I used to be - better than I ever was - know this and don't need to say it. They certainly don't need to say it to my face, like this kid, pressing me up against the bar now with the force of his rage and hurt. He will channel those feelings, appropriately, into a demand that I do a shot of tequila with him. Or two.
Which is a relatively friendly and diplomatic solution to an awkward situation."
- Anthony Bourdain, "Medium Raw" (I opened to a random page)
Another great artist lost to suicide. Anthony Bourdain reinvented food writing with his book "Kitchen Confidential", injecting a brutal honesty and punk rock ethos into the stuffy world of restaurant reviews and travelogues. He continued writing with more terrific work like "Medium Raw" and "Nasty Bits". It's not just that his writing was full of practical advice for diners (never eat fish on mondays, never eat mussels, bread is recycled, etc)... it's that he was brutally honest about himself, about his struggles with depression and drug addiction. If you read his books, his suicide should come as no surprise.
He went on to reinvent food television with "No Reservations", a travelogue show that celebrated highbrow and lowbrow in equal measure, that put third world street food vendors in the same breath with Michelin-starred chefs, that ate the weird stuff not because it was weird, but because it was a new experience. From there, he went to "Parts Unknown" on CNN, elevating his work's already broad international beat to a more explicitly political level, visiting little-known and often dangerous places such as Libya and Myanmar, celebrating the joy and creativity people took in their food, even in the poorest, most oppressed places on Earth. He was a cultural ambassador for all of humanity, the likes of which had never been seen before.
And then there was that time that !Kung bushmen in Namibia punked him into eating a warthog's asshole by convincing him that it was their finest and most exclusive culinary delicacy. And then laughed their asses off at him. And he ran that on tv.
I'm going to miss him so much.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7bw89a/comedy-545-v17n10
[2] https://robdelaney.tumblr.com/post/414007899/on-depression-g...
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Rob-Delaney-Warrior-Yardstick-Cabbage...
I read Kitchen Confidential when it came out. A hge fan and followed him ever since.
Sympathy goes out to his young daughter and his friends and family.
Alternatively, both alcohol and suicidal thoughts could be the result of a 'hidden common cause', such as drugs or unemployment.
Yeah, and maternities cause pregnancies.
Most people would tell me his life is their dream.
Rest in peace.
We need a more inclusive society for this reason. Things like bullying and other ego boosters at the cost of others separate people.
Not saying that depression isn’t a serious issue and that it can just be “thought away” though. But the drugs are really only helpful to some people, and there’s not much evidence to substantiate that this is just a chemical problem. There may be a chemical element, but IMO this is being exaggerated for profit. Meanwhile we aren’t dealing with any of the underlying social problems that probably play a much larger part.
I really recommend the book. If you're not convinced or just want an audio version, then I recommend the episode of the Ezra Klein Show podcast where Johann Hari is a guest - that's what convinced me to read the book.
(edited for clarity) Some say that depression is a chemical imbalance, but this is not a mainstream view any longer (I think, although it's often mentioned in comments on the Internet), although treatment is still very much based on chemicals like SSRI drugs, which have very little proven effect, require constant upping of dosages to gain the small effect they provide, and also having several undesirable side-effects.
We observe a similar phenomenon with diseases like type 2 diabetes. People of south Asian origin have significantly higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, even after controlling for diet and lifestyle factors. We have identified a cluster of genes that don't directly cause diabetes, but seem to increase the risk of developing the disease. You aren't doomed to develop diabetes if you have these genes, but you do need to be more careful about your diet and lifestyle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#2011_scandals
His book Lost Connections has been strongly criticised for misrepresenting the mainstream scientific position, cherry-picking data and making unreferenced and unsupported claims.
https://anotherangrywoman.com/2018/01/22/thinking-critically...
That said, I found his book "Chasing the Scream: the first and last days of the war on drugs" [1] an informative resource that in some places touches on this thread's topic.
> we aren’t dealing with any of the underlying social problems that probably play a much larger part.
I assume your concern for evidence applies to your pet theory as well, are you able to share any?
Consider, too, that that probably doesn't even include those that develop tolerance effects afterward; with that, the numbers likely climb much closer to 50%-50% or worse.
The article is full of references to evidence outlining her position. Do you have any critique of her arguments you can share?
Not all mental illness is chemical, but a lot very much is.
Antidepressant drugs do work, but we don't really know why. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors appear to work. So do monoamine oxidase inhibitors. So do selective norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitors. We used to think that tianeptine was a serotonin reuptake enhancer, but we now think it's a mu-opioid agonist; either way, it seems to work as an antidepressant. Opipramol is a stone cold whodunnit of a drug.
Nobody really knows what causes depression. We know that there are certain risk factors, we know that there are useful treatments, but we don't really have a clue what's going on inside the brain.
The chemical imbalance hypothesis isn't particularly accurate or particularly helpful. Psychiatrists see some patients who are severely depressed for no apparent reason, but most see far more patients who just have lives that would make anyone miserable. Depression is emphatically not randomly distributed - prevalence rates are vastly higher in certain groups, for reasons that can only plausibly be psychosocial. The chemical imbalance hypothesis lets society abrogate responsibility for the fact that a lot of people are justifiably downtrodden, despondent and hopeless.
We need to recognise depression as a complex, multifaceted disorder with neurological, cognitive and social components. Antidepressant drugs have life-changing effects for some patients, but psychotherapy and lifestyle interventions are also enormously valuable. Some patients achieve complete remission within weeks of starting antidepressant drug treatment; others have tried four or five drugs with no noticeable benefit. If you're suffering from depression, you'd be foolish not to try drug treatments, but you'd be equally foolish to only try drugs.
1. We know that the symptoms of many different varieties of mental illness have been helped by the administration of SSRIs and other drugs that alter brain chemistry.
2. But what we most assuredly do not know is that mental illness patients have detectably different brain chemistry from baseline.
We assume from (1) that (2) follows, but we have no actual evidence of (2). Herein lies the problem. We cannot make a scientific statement on (2) predicated only on (1).
In this specific sense, OP is correct. And the downvotes are unfair. And more research is needed.
It's easy to justify being depressed when you have a crappy life. (even though your depression probably doesn't have some cause like that)
"I am depressed because I am living in a bad apartment in a bad part of town, working a bad job. If I get a better job and can afford a better apartment, I'll be happy."
Assuming you have some hope for that happening, that can keep you going. At the very least, you have something you think is a cause and things are easier to deal with when we at least think we know why they're happening.
"I have everything I could ever want, and I'm still depressed." Pretty easy to let that spiral you into thinking you're never going to get better and that there isn't any hope.
Not only that, but it becomes very easy to tell yourself that you don't deserve success. It's easy to look at your life and say "I haven't really worked that much harder, lived that much more virtuously. I don't deserve this, this should be someone else..."
From the man himself.
But what hit me the most was her age - she was just 20 :(
Every person is different and we may never understand what bothers them, even if they appear successful and happy on the outside.
It is also a mistake to think that being a celebrity is necessarily awesome. The loss of privacy and the barrier celebrity presents to having genuine interactions can literally be a killer.
Still an incredible charismatic and passionate person, fantastic writer too.
Cheers Anthony
BY Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.I suspect it is the latter, but I don't have the heart to google it.
Every Robin Williams, Chris Cornell, Anthony Bourdain no doubt causes a bit of a ripple of none famous suicides and thus this news is doubly sad.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/suicide-rates-are...
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/...
The second is that we were both functional heroin addicts for some part of our professional lives.
His tell-all book "Kitchen Confidential" hit home to me like a 20-oz T-bone and a good bottle of red. His unafraid discussions of his addictions were a breath of fresh air in the otherwise stultified environment of talking-about-work.
There is little doubt in my mind that his struggles with addiction are related to the suicide, at some perhaps never to be known level.
He entertained the shit outta me, so he will be missed...cheers to you Anthony we hardly knew you.
This. Sucks.
Everyone needs to know it’s ok to not be ok.
If someone is struggling in the deep sea, dive in to help only if you have experience swimming in the deep sea. This stuff is not simple and can have lifelong negative effects on both parties if done wrong.
I have called a suicide hotline. They determined that I was a danger to myself. The police came to my house and took me to a crisis center where I was held against my will for seventy-two hours where other unsupervised, unmedicated residents of a facility for observation before being released.
If I am ever suicidal again I'll just skip the suicide hotline. They were no help, and those seventy-two hours were the worst of my life.
There is reasonably strong evidence to suggest that social connectedness has a substantial protective effect on suicide risk. Just asking "Hey, how are you?" and making time to listen can make a meaningful difference to someone in distress.
https://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/Suicide_Strategic...
For creative people with an audience, there's this expectation from the audience that every thing you release to the world will be as good or better than what you did before, and that you will produce this brilliance on a reasonably consistent schedule. Any slip in quality (say, from experimenting with something new) or any delay in delivery, and the toxic parts of your audience will hurl their bile. You're labeled a burnout, or you're losing your edge. The people who didn't like your work in the first place openly relish your stumble.
Some creatives like to pretend that these critiques don't sting, and maybe some fortunate souls truly are immune. But it's human nature to build our self-image based on feedback from others, and a good self image can be essential for survival.
I feel like some creatives such as Bourdain try to meet the demands of the public, and keep upping their game and pushing, but that can't go on forever. Exhaustion, harsh self-criticism, and a sense of responsibility to one's audience combine into a caustic soup, and it shrivels the soul. One is expected to be increasingly brilliant even as one's energy diminishes to the effects of burnout. Quitting will just invite more cries of "failure!" It's unsustainable, and sometimes the part that breaks is the willingness to continue to bear it.
To any creative people suffering from this cycle, I think the best remedy is to make a "temporary" lateral move if you can. Move out of the spotlight and lend your skill to up-and-comers for a while. It's hard to get mad at that. And there's an odd comfort in knowing that you never have to go back, but the option is there when/if you're ready.
I've had friends take the same way out so this is bringing up some awful memories. The demons within are a powerful force no matter how good things seem to be going.
It's so sad that he could not find another solution to defeat his demons.
Take care of yourselves my fellow techies. The brightest of us sometimes are consumed by the blackest abyss. Condolences to all who were impacted by his life.
There is a sad dark thread going through all of them.. dark humor, his comments on life, interactions with other people etc. She time He made it interesting and very real. The world is not all roses and I think that's what he tried to show.
Like many celebrities, he may have come to terms with the fact that fame and fortune don't make someone happy.
No Reservations was great TV - travelling to exotic destinations, hanging out with chefs and sampling all kinds of street food good and bad. He made the cooking/travel genre fun.
He had a life envied by many and this goes to show that you never know what is going on in someone else's head. Today are more interconnected than ever, but the skin-deep interactions we have through our phones & the digital highlight reels we project can mask both mental health issues and a lack of true meaningful relationships.
The article mentions that he committed suicide while shooting Parts Unknown in France. This will affect many lives, not the least of which are all of the people working on the show. I hope CNN takes care of them financially.
A relevant but tangential point - Slate Star Codex just published an analysis that after controlling for guns, the US has one of the lowest suicide rates of the developed world[0]. That's not to say that mental health isn't the main issue, but rather that there are also practical policy steps that should be taken to limit the number of preventable suicides.
[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of-missing-us...
Possibly inappropriate - but why do people immediately link suicide and mental illness? Why do we stand in judgement declaring it wrong to decide ones own fate? Am I not the master of my own existence and do I not have the right to make a decision on it without a bunch of hand wringing from other people refusing to countenance the possibility that I am still of sound mind?
Living is a choice, just as death is. (apologies if this is distasteful, I'm mostly interested to hear responses)
FWIW, I say this as someone who has had severe depression and been suicidal.
Sure you have the right to decide your own fate, but you should consider that you affect other people. In taking your own life you’re also fucking up the life of everyone who cares about you, forcing them into a state of grief and possibly causing them to blame themselves for what was ultimately a selfish act on your part.
I have people in my life who have been struggling with mental illness for many years. If any of them decide that they no longer have the will to fight, I would not think less of them (or call them selfish) if they decide to end their own life. If I did, I would be selfish.
Selfish is inherently a negative word, though. Maybe self focused or self motivated is still accurate and less negative.
Depression is like a broken bone it's a physical problem with a person's body beyond their control they need help to fix it.
People who have open-heart surgery have a 40% chance of developing depression it's not that all their life they were dealing with depression this is a sudden change. That's terrifying to see depression develop so quickly like a virus suddenly changing a person almost overnight.
If a person impulsively and mortally harms themselves because they couldn't control their actions due to chemical imbalance in their brain (depression) that would certainly be upsetting.
Knowing a person's actions were out of their control and they could have been helped or healed that's quite sad. We need to help people not accept it or mock it since it is just as much a medical problem as a broken bone, and it can be treated.
There are cases of depression that result from health issues, but these definitely aren't the majority. This is just a hypothesis society has put forth to avoid taking a long hard look at itself.
I think you could get into an exception if there's mutually held debt or something similar that actually does affect a person long term.
Frankly, unless he had a hidden medical issue (like Robin Williams), I also believe Bourdain probably could have restructured his life in some way to make life better and worth living again. I'm pretty sure most mental health pros would agree that most suicides arise suddenly, emotionally, and irrationally, and can be productively prevented if the impending signs are identified early and addressed with help. Personally, I believe that suicide is never the best and only option anyone has -- barring an irreversible medical/physical condition.
I think the reason we see more tolerance for suicide today is we expect less from people in general. Forty years ago, society presumed that each of us had a continuing duty to other people -- family, friends, community, and country. This duty clearly proscribed certain behaviors which would hurt others or would fail to live up to other social duties, like voluntary military service in time of war, or working VERY HARD to overcome difficulties in marriage when children were still present in the home, and would suffer from the breakup. (I've been there. It's not a delight.)
I'm very saddened by Bourdain's passing, and I'd rather not judge him. But I regret even more his loss to his daughter and his friends. The act of suicide is a terrible legacy.
My only secondhand anecdote of Anthony Bourdain - and it’s hardly even that - is from the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu community. Apparently he would train at Ralph Gracie’s on Howard when in SF. No commentary aside from this is often a deliberate attempt by an individual at bettering one’s self.
I don't blame anyone who chooses suicide. Who am I to tell them to "man up" and deal with the torment? But I think we should do everything in our power to make staying a viable option.
I understand that from the perspective of someone who is suicidal, they might feel that they have nobody who cares about them, or that the people who do “would be better off” without the suicidal person in their life. But that thought alone is misguided and certainly not a justification for engaging in such a selfish act. Regardless of how the suicidal person feels, the people who care about them will be harmed by the suicide.
But the person who is already under emotional distress should continue to endure theirs? Is your position really that you have a right not to be emotionally upset by others? How does this position account for any form of conflict at all?
People who kill themselves are extremely aware of this. Consider that as an indicator of how much distress they are in, not how selfish they are. They're in so much pain that they would inflict grief upon their loved ones to get out of it.
If a person is being physically intensely tortured, and they kill themselves to stop the pain, are they being selfish? They are under so much distress that their only option is to end it all. They would MUCH rather not be tortured and not have to die. Suicide is jumping out of a burning building because you don't want to burn. It's not something you do because you're upset.
My conclusion for my suicide is "bad" is because it causes pain and suffering to the ones around you. I relate suicide to stress that cannot be managed. If you feel like you need to die, then you are completely free to do anything. So why not do that? Remove that stress, till you don't feel like that's the only answer.
I am in favor of a right to die, because I saw my mother struggle with cancer. What she went through seemed truly awful.
However, having a terminal disease is very different than having a temporary lapse in judgment about whether to continue living. Someone raising a child likely does not truly want to be gone from the Earth. We don’t know for sure, but with his known addiction history, this was likely an unintended consequence, the one he cannot take back.
If I recall correctly, a majority of people who have 'failed' suicide (for lack of a better term) have stated that they immediately regretted attempting once it hits the point of no return.
This is just an assumption, but I think the will to live greatly outweighs the desire to take your own life. Of course their are outliers (I'm thinking of Samurai Suicides performed in front of audiences) but I don't know if there's any resources that talk about their mental health.
If anyone as any counter points I'd love to hear them - but for the most part I think suicide stems from mental instability or an otherwise inevitable physical death (terminal illness, old age, etc).
One other reason it may be linked with mental health, is the fact that if mental illness is not a factor - what is driving these decisions? I can't imagine that people come to the logical 'master of my own existence' that you mention.
It's a very interesting subject, when you take the horror an tragedy out of it. Also curious what other species have high suicide rates, or if its a primarily human affliction (don't have time to dig around on this right now).
Suicide is about giving up. There can be a number of reasons for throwing the towel in.
For seemingly normal people, I tend to think it's because they feel like they have failed in a way that is irredeamable. Like the samurai guys, that have disgraced themselves and there is no way to go on without their honor. It is all in their head as expectations they have created.
Aside from clinical cases, I would say that most people throw in the towel because they feel like they failed and it's over. Expectations manage them. If you feel like you have nothing to live for, you can live for anything. Change thos expectations.
I'm not trying to be reductionist, this is obviously a serious issue and it many people struggle with it. But that the hedge fund manager that is "living the dreams" and wants to end his life out of that toxic environment and maybe we won't think about giving up anymore.
For some, depression is an episode or collection of episodes in life. For others, it's a chronic condition. He lived decades (from other accounts) with a chronic condition and succumbed to it.
Sometimes, toxic environments contribute and I don't want to suggest otherwise, but for those with chronic unipolar depression, it is a condition that people die of. It's sad, but so long as we understand that it's illness, we can get over the polemics.
I guess what I'm trying that isn't isolated to depression and mental illness. If you have asthma you use an inhaler, but you should probably not smoke.
If you have clinical depression there are medical ways to address that, but you probably should not put yourself in situations that will make that worse.
This is one of the most accurate depictions of suicide that I've heard:
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
-David Foster Wallace
It's not "all in their head". If they don't meet society's expectations of them, then society will treat them very negatively (probably making them an outcast, if not a prisoner, depending on what happened). People in that position, in that society, take that step because they really don't have any good alternatives: society has forced it on them.
This is somewhat like saying "it's all in their head" when someone facing a life prison sentence commits suicide. Prison is essentially torture, so it's entirely rational to commit suicide if you have precisely two choices, spend the rest of your life in prison or kill yourself.
A person in prison is facing a real prison. The expectations society sets are not prison bars. But it harder to say that society has a fundamental problem with expectations.
So does contraception, yet we don't consider people using it mentally ill.
I only say this to imply that "going against our very nature" isprobably not the main reason we link suicide with mental ilness, not to be disrespectful or anything. My mother killed herself so I am not someone to mock suicidal people.
> If anyone as any counter points I'd love to hear them - but for the most part I think suicide stems from mental instability or an otherwise inevitable physical death (terminal illness, old age, etc).
My mother had been diagnosed as depressed so at least part of society deemed her mentally ill, so the link from that to suicide can be made. However, having dealth with a similar diagnosis myself, and having learned to properly cope with it while staying as far away from psychiatric medication as physically possible I am quite skeptic about mental diagnosis.
On "Lila", Robert Pirsig proposes the completely not medical and just-a-personal-theory idea that, however, resonates a lot with me, that "crazy" is a social thing (you're only crazy if we have 'non-crazy' people to compare yourself against) and that taking such people to anthropologists in the hope of helping them find a culture where they would be a better fit could yield better benefits than psychiatry. Personally, while I did not physically relocate to another place, I severed myself from a big part of society that I found harmful and I have been as good as can be ever since (12+ years now).
Boy, you got that backwards. Abstinence is what "goes against our very nature as living beings". Contraception allows us to engage in sexual activity without the consequences of unwanted pregnancy or STDs.
Where did I mention abstinence?
While not my choice, I consider it just one more approach that falls under the 'contraception' umbrella, not sure how you made the link from my sentence to abstinence honestly.
Now, from a anthropocentric view of this contraception is quite natural as, like you well explain, it let us satisfy biological urges while reducing the risks and potentially undesired side-effects of them.
The point that I tried to make was that being for or against "our nature" does not feel, to me, to be a good measure of mental health.
I don't think contraception and suicide are in any way comparable. Taking a contraceptive enables to continue having sex, which is perfectly natural, without becoming pregnant. Yes, the fact that you won't become pregnant is "unnatural", but it is used so you can continue to experience a natural part of life with less risk. Suicide, on the other hand, does not have a similar risk/reward, response, or permanence. I could take a birth control pill knowing that I would still be able have a child in the future, and without an extreme response mentally or physically. However, if you point a loaded gun at yourself most people will automatically have an intense response that may include anxiety, fight or flight, fear, and self preservation. I understand the point you're trying to make, and I agree to some extent, but I disagree with that example as a counterpoint to protonimitate's comment
This is not really correct. There is in fact an evolutionary advantage in depression leading to suicidal behaviour, and it can be found in animals as well.
The theory is that every member of a species generally consumes from the same pool of resouces. If one member deems himself as a non-contributor, it is better for the species as a whole if that individual perishes. I don't have any references right now but there are recorded instances of animals 'giving up' and refusing to feed and or care for theirselves, leading to death, usually after a series of unsuccesful mating seasons. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
This explanation helped me significantly in being able to overcome certain emotions. It's not an 'illness', and there is nothing wrong with me. It's a natural thing, and I have the ability to resist it, just like I have the ability to resist other natural urges.
I think the impulse to suicide can arise in people of sound mind who are (or who feel) trapped by their circumstances and see no way out.
Job loss in late middle age combined with financial load (mortgage, kids in college, increasing medical costs) added to declining health and energy with which to meet life's challenges and maybe add in loss of spouse through divorce or illness - I can see how events could leave someone of sound mind feeling locked into a chronic path of decreasing rewards and agency, coupled with increasing stress and loss.
It's not clear to me that suicide is an irrational choice in such circumstances. It's certainly not the only choice, and it's terribly painful for those left behind, but I think it can be rationally chosen by someone who is not otherwise mentally ill.. No idea what proportion of suicides might be in that category.
That might be true but another poster already debunked that apparently.
Regardless of the other living beings, you are too quick to dismiss the human side of things, specifically our complex minds and our irrationality regardless of mental fitness.
Does the primitive survival instinct kicks in when suiciding? Surely.
Can it be outweighed by every single bad instant that a person has lived and what they see coming down their way? I don't see why not, and probably more so if your mind isn't thinking rationally.
But I'd argue that none of us are completely rational and so at times even 'healthy' minds can do the unthinkable.
I believe our biggest gift - powerful brain, self awareness and other capabilities that contribute to making us unique; is also our biggest curse :
"What's my purpose?"
"Is there any meaning?"
"Why do all my relationships fail?"
"Do people really like me?"
And so on ...
-- My uneducated perspective.
I am afraid you don't understand chronic depression. At all.
Because suicide is almost always preceded by years of mental health problems.
The widespread societal taboo against suicide supposes that no rational person free of undue pressures would consent to ending their own life, therefore anyone who commits suicide must have been pushed to do so by serious factors that impaired their ability to properly consent.
This line of thinking effectively re-defines 'mental illness' to be that unknown variable that pushes outwardly functional people towards a choice that surprised the observer.
Not really, humans live in societies. Your existence is not purely yours. Maybe it applies to Gaint Pandas that spend all of their lives in solitude.
2. Sure, there may be times where a person may rationally chose to die. That doesn’t negate the fragility and value of life for its sake. Two things can be true. Some people may have a rational reason to wish to end their lives, and some people who would end their lives would do much greater harm to themselves and loved ones than good.
3. It is my firm belief that we may use #1 to evaluate the worth and even ethicality of choices and actions. Those actions which solely promulgate life or enhance its existence are ethical. Those actions or choices which violate the former are unethical. Actions or choices which solely diminish the life or lives of others or outright end lives are unethical - unless that termination of life ends suffering larger than the benefits of life. That’s a very fine line.
This have been explored philosophically in the school of existentialism, see Camus and his work.
EDIT: i guess a valid reason is significant physical pain and suffering that has no hope of being cured.
Not to sound insensitive, but it's more comparable to putting down your old suffering pet in my mind.
I’m not an expert on it, but there is a certain impulsiveness to it that suggests to me that it’s not just another choice. Terminally ill people often or maybe frequently get things in order and prepare things, almost going out of their way with limited time to take care of things for their loved ones. These things frequently take their loved ones by surprise and there aren’t exhaustive preparations.
This will be more inappropriate, but AB had a marriage dissolve because he had to travel 250+ days a year and be away from a wife and young child. As a husband and parent of two, I find that staggering, we aren’t talking about someone without financial resources that does whatever job they can to support their family, he probably didn’t need to work. To me, it’s not even a thought, I’d do a different job or somehow rearchitect my life to keep my family near. IMO, there was clearly some priority issues or something going on. If he had this supreme rationalism and simply chose to end things, where was that when he fathered a child that he didn’t spend time with? Or was this a new found clearity he discovered? Im not try to sound accusatory but I think there might be a lot of other differences in his life if this was a healthy and rational choice.
RIP Anthony and I hope his family and loved ones find peace and comfort.
That being said, I agree with your point. One should be the master of their own existence from a certain viewpoint, but we aren't. Humans are social creatures and define our lives in terms of those relationships. Even if you are a solitary hermit, you define your life in relation to the people that aren't around. I'm not trying to be clever there.
I can see where suicide can be considered the most rational response given the right social or societal context. See any number of ritual suicide practices in human cultures.
Again, even the physician assisted suicide that we debate so often make sense in the context of maintaining some notion of dignity in one's familial or social group. When you add human suffering to that situation it becomes a moral imperative, I think. That's just me though.
There is a very strong relationship between suicide and mental illness. If someone decides to end their own life, it is overwhelmingly likely that they are suffering from some form of mental illness.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12701661
>Why do we stand in judgement declaring it wrong to decide ones own fate?
Most people who survive a suicide attempt do not ultimately end their own life. Most people who have suicidal thoughts eventually stop having those thoughts. If you think that you'd be better off dead, I don't think that you're in any way morally wrong, I just think that you're probably factually wrong. You might think that you want to die, but if you go on living, it is overwhelmingly likely that you'll change your mind. To use an old cliche, suicide is a permanent response to a temporary problem.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0004867060117274...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016503271...
You're not wrong, but do note that the first paper you cited was from 2003. The CDC results published recently [1] indicate a strong rise in suicide since 1999. And more than half of the people didn't have a known mental health condition. It looks like things are changing.
Given that the vast majority of Americans have a diagnosable mental illness at some point during their lives, if anything that is evidence against there being a strong relationship between mental illness and suicide. E.g. supposedly more than 50% of college students have a diagnosable mental illness during those four years alone.
Even if we saw the statistical effect you predicted (eg. diagnosed mental health issues correlated with a lower rate of suicide), you should consider that the stigma of getting a diagnosis of mental illness, is likely to cause some people who may even know they have a problem, to intentionally avoid getting diagnosed.
Also, these: "I can't seek help because if I do have a mental health issue then my insurance is going to skyrocket / I don't have any health insurance / my insurance doesn't cover mental health."
Well it's an apple-to-apples comparison with the CDC stat about people with undiagnosed mental illness. Basically instead of waiting for people to go in and see a psychiatrist, you just screen every single person in a certain sample for every possible mental illness. This is how mental health assessments at a population level are normally done, e.g.:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disor...
I'm extrapolating a lot from a small comment, so forgive me if I've misinterpreted your comment, but I have an issue with your reasoning; I don't know what it tells us that 50% of people suffer from mental illness at any given point in their life, or how that can be suggestive of any evidence against a relationship between mental illness and suicide.
The numbers may seem telling on the face, but the rate of mental illness in cases of suicide is not based on "diagnosable," it is based on actually diagnosed cases (and jumping ahead, the NIH report linked in the parent comment certainly came to a very different conclusion than you seem to have inferred.)
There's a reason I would think that they sample populations in this way, as in terms of "diagnosable;" most centrally in order to get a more accurate count of the actual incidence, and because the rate of incidence is actually known to be higher than the rate of actual diagnosis.
This kind of sampling helps us to better know the actual rate of mental illness, and taken with the known rate of diagnosed mental illness it may allow us to learn the rate of undiagnosed cases.
What I'm saying is, we can't know anything more than that from these simple averages taken together. The NIH report tracked individuals with known case history, and that's exactly how you can know more.
It is also known that many people who are suffering as such will not seek help. Those are exactly the individuals that "The CDC's data [which] relies on reports from coroners, medical examiners and law enforcement agencies" simply can't take into account. The rate of undiagnosed mental illness is nonzero and significant (a quick search shows recent reports suggesting that it is also near 50%). If there was a perfect 1:1 correlation (say, every suicide co-incident to a case of mental disorder, diagnosed or not), you would absolutely expect that CDC post-mortem number to be lower; less than NIH number by the rate of undiagnosed mental illness.
You can compare these statistics in aggregate, and "rates of undiagnosed mental illness" are also knowable in aggregate through population sampling methods like these, but those people with undiagnosed mental illnesses, who then committed suicide, cannot be directly counted. Cases of "co-morbid mental disorder" among those individuals, as the NIH report calls it, are not so readily quantified. (I think the CDC report does not even attempt to quantify them. This is the idea of a psychiatric autopsy.)
So I think that you can't say more without knowing more about those individuals suffering from undiagnosed mental illnesses (yeah, that's the thing you unfortunately can't know.)
As those undiagnosed illnesses are ostensibly people who did not seek help, those are exactly the ones who the CDC stat won't be able to measure.
You can know something about the relative uncertainty of those measurements though – if you could say that 50% of individuals with severe psychiatric disorders are untreated, then you can have an expected value for the difference between these numbers. This also may seem suggestive, but it is also not sufficient evidence to directly draw any conclusions from.
Actually diagnosed mental illnesses can, however, be correlated with incidences of suicide, which the NIH study linked in the parent commenter's reference does. That report indicated that there was shown a strong correlation.
Disregarding all of the reports and statistics though, as a layman, if forms of treatment used are remotely successful, I would hope that suicide rates among patients with a diagnosis should be lower than the rate of suicide in undiagnosed cases. And if so, that is also going to be a driver for the type of error I'm trying to express that I thought you were not fully considering.
Suicide is a symptom of some types of mental illness. But perfectly sane people can still kill themselves. If one wants to prevent suicide one has to accept that fact. We cannot prevent suicides if we look only to people with some sort of observable mental illness. Normal everyday people, some in the prime of life, can and do occasionally decide to kill themselves.
Aside from extremist views (ie never/always appropriate) our society does generally accept suicide in some circumstances. We give medals to people who knowingly die in order to save others. Our movies are full of characters deliberately killing themselves for the benefit of others. On rare occasions we openly criticize those who do not kill themselves where we expect them so to do (Gary Powers). It is part of our culture. We can debate whether suicide is an appropriate action in various hypothetical circumstances, but that's a rambling debate with no end.
Imho suicide is a private issue. In most circumstances our society should work to prevent it from happening, but I'm not going willing to describe every suicide as the result of criminality or mental illness.
A great many of those normal everyday people are suffering from mental health problems. The data suggests that as many as 60% of people with a serious mental health condition are not receiving treatment. A multitude of barriers prevent people from seeking appropriate diagnosis and treatment, from stigma to insurance coverage to the shortage of psychiatrists.
I have no problem with voluntary euthanasia. I have a big problem with the fact that thousands of people are needlessly dying due to treatable mental health conditions.
And is not an accurate description of depression.
If you think depressed people are just sad/unhappy - please read more on this debilitating disorder.
The majority of those with access to TV who've also seen some American media have likely felt they're missing out on the riches and opportunities that can be had that they're not fortunate to.
Is the definition of mental illness and depression and their treatments and factors the same across cultures?
To me it seems (opinion) that the only constant is... if you feel sad: there's a pill for that.
People in bad situations work hard to get themselves out. It's human pride, it's our nature. People don't just kill themselves. Are those who do "weaker beings" or have bigger struggles than those who haven't?
There's another factor at play here, in my opinion, and it's the medication.
Your statements just help perpetuate those types of responses.
Depression is not hopelessness. It is not sadness. It is not unhappiness.
Depression is a chemical state in the brain which leads to lower general emotion levels. Depression is when you feel nothing. Depressed people may self-harm to "feel something".
Depression isn't just an error of thought. It's not a lack of understanding about how great your life really is. It's a hardware error causing the software to malfunction.
I do recall one man who did not survive, who seemed at peace during the video of his fall -- he was one who I think perhaps did not regret the act, but was the extreme outlier in that regard. If you are 85 and dying of painful cancer, I can also see it being an act that makes sense, made to decide one's own fate. But MOST people seem to grow out of their suicidal phases, and realize it was the wrong choice, driven by bad thought patterns. In the same way that people try to help addicts or people with eating disorders try to obtain better thought patterns, suicidal ideation seems to me to be largely a broken thought pattern we should help people overcome, not an individual decision one should respect.
That fails to explain those who attempt suicide more than once.
EDIT: I found an informal estimate from this article (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-tre...) by psychiatrist Scott Alexander:
"It is somewhat harder to find good studies on what percent attempt suicide again. By eyeballing some other statistics and trying to fit them together, I believe it is greater than 25% but less than 50%. One textbook whose studies I have not been able to verify says that 30% of untreated and 15% of treated suicide attempters try again."
It seems, at first thought, unreasonable that people trying to kill themselves by jumping off a bridge would be more likely to regret the decision than people who shoot themselves in the head. I wonder if this is mostly a selective choosing of the survivors of jumping off the bridge to fit a narrative.
This reminds me a bit of that movie "Strange Days" (where people relived others' experiences), or of course "The Matrix".
So, are severely mentally ill people truly capable of living normal lives? Are they capable of making clear, level-headed decisions? I highly doubt that they were truly masters of their own existence if they decided they'd rather stop existing than suffer more illness.
Few living things who are physically healthy and with no history of suicide ideation just decide to die just because. Generally there's some underlying cause, whether it be a longterm plan to do so or some sudden stressor.
No, in many ways and cases you aren't. As comments below note, one of those ways is through mental health issues. While I do agree that people should ultimately have the right to choose, it's simply incorrect to think that it's a simple matter of rational choice. There's very good reason to believe that, in most cases of people seeking suicide, they are not of sound mind.
This idea that you are the perfect and complete "master of my own existence" is one of the most pernicious and persistent fallacies people hold.
But consider this analogy. If "suicide" was a just a judgement, and not a temporary insanity, then people who came close to suicide wouldn't ALL glad that it did not happen.
You would have a significant portion of people who look back and say... I really wish I had taken my life back in 95', that was a really hard year. But that is so extremely rare, its easy to lump the majority of suicidal thoughts into the temporary delusions category.
In some cases people have been contemplating suicide for decades before they do it, which is a common sign of depression. But that is significantly different than wishing that they had done it in the past.
(Much the same holds for murder vs. other crime rates, though both may be influenced by trauma medicine advances. David Simon talks of this in The Audacity of Despair, on YouTube.)
For much this reason, suicide is seem as a definitive marker of individual, and social, dysfunction. It is the title and subject of Emil Durkheim's foundational work on sociology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_(book)
And yes, I think it is a perfectly valid choice for someone to check out if that's what they want to do. Mental health or whatever aside, if you don't want to live anymore, for WHATEVER reason, I don't see why anybody else has the right to try to stop you.
Also it's pedantic in a really ignorant and dumb way, and not nearly as clever as you think it is.
There are examples of people taking their own life due to physical maladies which I can COMPLETELY understand, and choosing to end your own life kevorkian-style is understandable to most people: Robin Williams had dementia. His mind had basically completely gone before the end, his wife spoke of the rages and lack of understanding of what was happening around him.
But many people choose to end their own life when they are young, healthy, and in a pit of despair that they feel they will never escape. Depression is a mental illness which symptoms of hopelessness and suicidal thoughts. So there you go. That is why. Depression is a mental illness.
We as a society have deemed having no value of life, including your own, is aberrant behavior. I would argue that "deciding to commit suicide" for no other reason than you are tired of being alive, or want to "decide your own fate" is completely psychotic.
Also, saying "It's your choice" and doesn't affect anyone else is just insanely wrong. As I've grown older and lost people around more at a higher rate, it is ASTOUNDING the hole left behind when you lose a loved one.
I always try to remember - more than half [1] of gun related deaths in the US are people taking their own gun and pointing it at their head then pulling the trigger. Who cares what side of the gun debate you are on.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
However, I don't see any reporting on how Bourdain died, only that he was found in a hotel room. So unless it comes to light that guns were involved (unlikely, because gunshots would have been heard), I don't think this sad event begs for a discussion of guns as opposed to many other topics around the issue of suicide.
Or you know, there might be a third variable there... Something about declining rural areas possibly.
There's also a lot of theory to back up the idea that guns increase suicide rates.
First, if people have to take time to prep for suicide, they have time to think and sometimes change their minds. With a gun, the time between thought and action is so small, they don't have this chance.
Second, guns have a much higher success rate than most other methods. This is why women attempt suicide at higher rates, but succeed far less often -- they usually don't use guns.
There are studies that look at a stable population, and they find that the same person is much more likely to succeed at suicide after they become a gun owner.
In 1998, the UK reduced the maximum pack sizes of paracetamol (acetaminophen) tablets. We saw no reduction in the number of people who attempted suicide by paracetamol overdose, but a 43% reduction in deaths by that means.
https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f403
There is some evidence to suggest that gun control is effective in reducing deaths due to suicide.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26396147 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29078268 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29852823
Due to the method, we know when she obtained it, and the circumstances around that. She got it when there were suicides in her local community, and in retrospect she had probably been thinking about it at the time. She definitely had some mental health issues at the time centered around overwork. She kept it for years, and finally used it when she had a minor setback at work.
(+ not a gun)
Focus on why users want to delete their account and not on how easy it is to do so!
So I guess we will just have to deal with school shootings and suicides because certain americans have to stand by political ideals while the nation burns down around them, empiricism be damned.
I was merely surprised that the proportion was so large and (that as a UK observer of this debate,) surprised I had not seen it before.
Keeping to the topic, I enjoyed Bourdains books and shows and am sorry to see him go. I hope the discussion here and elsewhere will focus on helping others in similar straits and not get diverted by comments ... such as mine.
He did have mental issues for much of his life, but in the end it was likely his physical condition and not his mental issues that led him to suicide.
It's not clear if he had this condition in 2009 - he might have, but we don't know.
... suicide is all too common in our world, and some professions (especially doctors) are affected more than others.
All of the money and fame in the world cannot protect you from the depths of your mind.
I hope that anyone struggling with this affliction can know its ok to step away from everything they're doing, get a breath of fresh air, and know that it's ok for everything to go wrong in life.
Your life is always still valuable and fixable.
Doctors don't have higher rates of death by suicide.
I think female doctors do have a higher rate of death by suicide than women in general.
I assumed that the trend applied to males too but now I am quite curious as to why it does not apply.
Regional statistics would be helpful too- some have thought that Finns and Russians carry a genetic marker for suicidal tendencies.
Most women use pills, men use guns.
Her cause of death was brutal, and she was going through immense pressure during her last research project. A self-influcted gunshot to the mouth sounds like a horrible way to go.
The ratio is just as lopsided with countries with strict gun control (e.g. Britain).
Alternative hypothesis: death is the goal for many men, while women often use suicide attempts as a cry for help.
> A 2014 federal Centers for Disease Control online survey of 10,000 practicing veterinarians published last year found that more than one in six American veterinarians has considered suicide.
The study: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6405a6.htm
Fame and the life it brings seems desirable, but there's ample evidence that would indicate otherwise.
If you think about it, it's no wonder so many famous people are depressed, dysfunctional, or disgusting - their self worth and ability to self-evaluate are completely distorted. And the pressure of maintaining that fame, that score that many believe determines how important you are to society, is crushing.
If you're not happy, not content, not satisfied with yourself when you're a "nobody", becoming a "somebody" won't change that. Whatever issues you brought to the table before you got fame and power won't be improved once fame and/or power is acquired. The Good Book says something along those lines a few thousand years ago:
"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. - Luke 16:10
Water that is wet is also dry, and water that is dry is also wet!
Having needs is one way to fill the existential emptiness.
and those challenges are usually poorly understood
It's like wearing a heavy cloak around, after having done so for most of your life, day after day, year after year. If you're a proper adult, age-wise, all of the effort in the world doesn't guarantee that cloak will fall off one day. The idea that it's fixable doesn't play itself out in real life. I would posit that this is why riches and fame only temporarily relieve the weight of it.
Additionally, if your thoughts are affected by a medical condition, I would suggest calling a nurse hotline through a health insurance company or university. They can often confirm or deny if you should seek emergency care ASAP.
I saw someone who was very clearly depressed streaming the other day. They weren't responding to chat. Crying. Fetal position on the floor for 7+ hours. Very depressing social media posts, etc.
But I did not know this person. I did encourage them to call, however it was a difficult message to compose. You don't want to make them feel like they're a burden or weak ("call if you need someone") and some people may need encouragement to actually pick up the phone.
So in a situation with a stranger online, who may not see or respond to your message, what would you say?
What a lot of people don't understand is that a friend who might be considering suicide doesn't need to be "fixed", or to be given a bunch of quick solutions, or worse to be told "just get over it". What they need is someone who is willing to listen without passing judgement. And if necessary, to provide that friend guidance in getting to a safe place where those with experience can provide care.
For disclosure, I am not a trained counselor. I've had various, very short, training sessions for several close friends and relatives so that I would know what to do, and more importantly what not to do or what not to say.
There's some terrible correlations beginning to surface, in my mind, with the psychiatric drugs taken by Robin Williams, Kate Spade, Chester Bennington, and Tim Bergling for example that seem to be the final push-over-the-edge for these folks - whose lives are full of options and [appear] far from hopeless. Surely we can't judge how things really are, but can they truly be SO desperate? I've seen people in terrible shape- unable to work, loss of body part(s), loss of wealth, loss of friends, loss of family, etc. and still carry on.
It seems, to me, mental illness is created as a result of these Big Pharma medicines. I don't believe sadness or unhappiness day to day are unhealthy, most people deal with not being 100% successful in life. There's always another day to work at it and try again to win.
When things become inexplicable is when there's some strange substance playing with the mind - in my opinion. School shootings being in this category as well.
I'd love to see a study investigate the prescription medications used in all of these "high profile suicide" cases, results protected by First Amendment.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about vaccines?
Happy to explore this with you further. What exactly is the mental illness? How is it being identified, how is it being measured?
I'm against vaccines, as you presumed, as I've personally seen resulting correlations to increased occurrence of Autism, and [lesser] conditions of peanut allergies and gluten intolerance. There may be elements in vaccines become unintentional casualty to the body being trained to reject what we are intending for it so classify as foreign, to fight. There's observable overall increases in these conditions from those who've been vaccinated. We haven't been able to isolate for these yet. I believe we haven't investigated enough. Or perhaps they're not related... but it's my hypothesis.
We don't have ENOUGH information to draw conclusions for MANY things, these observations are merely mine and are thus my opinions.
I recommend everyone does their own research and make their own decisions.
It seems like Trump is incapable of saying anything with heartfelt sincerity.
However, it is important to remember that traveling around the world in planes is not a very ecological activity. So traveling as a way of living is better left to a few people.
He could make a successful show anywhere, from a very modest restaurant like Waffle House to a very fancy one.
Quoting another chef: "He brought the world into our homes and inspired so many people to explore cultures and cities through their food."
I am just saying, that long distance transportation technology doesn't scale in terms of carbon footprint right now, and that we should be mindful of that when traveling.
I ask because Anthony's wife is one of Harvey Weinstein's accusers.
This news is not relevant to the content discussed hacker news and doesn't belong here. This is not Reddit.