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Comment by maxklein | Hacker News Reader

I've been pushing this idea: "A half-way house for suicidal people" Basically, if you're intending to commit suicide, you simply register for the project, and you get an all-expenses paid trip to Iraq, Afghanistan or Congo or some other really dangerous place. Spend two to three months helping people out, then feel free to commit suicide after that.

No counseling, no attempt to talk you out of it, just a chance to be somewhere that will put you within a new world.

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Oh wow that sounds great. Need a first customer? Can you now explain to me how that helps me deal with the guilt of my friends dying there?

Thanks.

Down vote all you want, but it goes to show how we treat people with mental illness. Hey, someone has it worse than you, so suck it up.

Well let's disprove this path mathematically. YC would like that. I will prove by contradiction.

1. maxklein's assertion is that someone has it worse than you so you shouldn't kill yourself.

2. That means the person with the worst life in the world CAN kill himself.

3. Following that, the new worst life person can kill himself.

4. Then a new person. This can continue until one person is left on the earth. Does he kill himself?

There are different ways life can be bad. Living in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Congo is perhaps one way.

No, that is not at all what he said. Actually, nobody said that.

The assertion is that when you consider suicide, you have your reasons and those reasons are a product of your environment. A chance to see yourself in a completely new environment, for instance in a desperate area of the world where human help - any help - is needed can give you a whole new experience and give you the nudge you need to re-evaluate yourself.

There is no kill-yourself-if math here. It's about giving people time off from their (perceived) issues to think.

I disagree completely with what you said. It trivializes the personal pain that depressed people feel.

But let's explore your reasoning further:

Can you please explain to me how sending Bill Zeller to a war-torn country would have helped him deal with the sexual abuse that he experienced?

Well, it could hardly have ended much worse than it did right now, could it?

I think that, for people beyond a certain threshold on the path to suicide, putting them in a situation where basic needs are not as readily fulfilled, and where death is prevalent and imminent... is a GOOD option.

Suicide rates are the highest in the happiest countries. One hypothesis is that sad people constantly surrounded by happy people are driven to remove themselves from society. Bill might have fit well in that kind of new environment. Presumably, he was anhedonic, so giving up the comforts of the West would not have been such a shock.

The point would not be to encourage comparisons with others' circumstances, and realize "how good he has it". Such comparisons are worthless anyway, as someone with worse circumstances might be at peace, while someone much better off might be in the same kind of turmoil.

Rather, going to such a place would allow for picking up coping strategies while removing certain pressures. People in America have an unaccepting attitude towards tragedy, and this may have made Bill Zeller feel like an outcast. We're all constantly force-fed an image of health, wealth, and well-being. It's hard to forget that this was not the set point for most human beings in history. Life can be gruesome in ways that are hard to imagine, and we are insulated from that.

There are countries where it's OK to have negative circumstances, and it's OK to be sidelined by them. If I had my arm amputated tomorrow, my social life would be significantly disrupted. If lived in a place like India, my missing limb would make much less of a difference.

And 3 months is not a long time to wait, if you've been miserable for 27 years. According to the original suggestion, no one would be trying to talk you out of it. He would still be free to kill himself, preserving his right to die in a manner of his choosing.

Judging by the way he kept making references to the things he would never be able to have (normal loving relationship with children & wife, etc.), I think you may have a point.

I don't post comments disagreeing with people but I'll make an exception here. This is possibly the most shortsighted idea I've ever heard. Suicidal people need a venue to discuss their issues without stress or judgement, not to be relocated to a warzone. Suicide is a real problem and as someone who has been through the darkness of those thoughts let me say this idea is completely wrong and should be relegated to trolling or satire.

There are many venues for suicidal people to discuss their issues, and people are still committing suicide everyday. This is not to replace anything existing, it's just to reduce the number and address those who are currently not being helped by the systems you talk of.

Nice idea but don't you think others would abuse the system?

That's why it's to Iraq. Not many westerners will go to Iraq unless they are suicidal.

Yea this is basically the system suicide bombers are in. Only there, the point is to make the suicide useful for political goals, here it is to make miserable life useful for said goals.

good.

But I will say open this registration for everyone (in turns maybe)! Let everyone understand where they are and where the "world" is!

That's actually a great idea, because I think suicide has a "good of the collective" component to it. If you get rejected by your peers too much, ostracized and made to feel like a burden, your mind comes to the counter intuitive conclusion that the best way to ensure survival of your tribe is to die. Transplanting to an environment where your knowledge, ability and assets make you the most valuable and looked-up to person in the community might reverse feelings of rejection, ostracism and burden. This guy sounds like he has been rejected and ostracized for everything he did.

How ostracism causes depression in the laboratory. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-pain-of...

Ostracism (parents, girlfriend, job) causes depression, advanced depression causes suicide.

"Most valuable person in a community"? Xenophobia is pretty strong, especially in places with few resources or under oppression. Not many such places would welcome a meddling know-it-all outsider.

That's interesting. One of my friends has a theory of a "social discard program" that she's been blogging a lot about recently. It's basically just noodling along the same lines:

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/proposed-demotedis...

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/demotepromote-or-d...

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/good-nutrition-to-...

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-theory-about-w...

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/dont-trigger-disca...

Sorry for posting so many links, but taken as a whole it's a very provocative train of thought.

So giving suicidal people lots of opportunities to harm themselves? Something doesn't add up there.

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