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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

Get out of here with that. Maybe there are circumstances, in times of horrible war or famine or terminal illness, where suicide is the necessary step to end suffering. Maybe that's hell; I wouldn't know. I hope not to.

But I know depression. Depression feels like hell, but it's not. It's a treatable disease. Killing yourself to escape depression is like killing yourself to escape pneumonia instead of going to the hospital.

You should not respect that decision. You should help that person to get better.

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what depression has to do with it? this is exactly kind of disrespect i was talking about. To immediately declare the person to be psychologically ill just because of our deepest fear of what may happen if we accept that ending your own life may be a rational well-thought off decision. It is easy to blame the person's imaginary illness instead of accepting responsibility that human society normally creates conditions when such a decision can be a rational well-thought off one.

No.

People like you, who think that mental illness which is every bit as real as a broken arm is "imaginary" just because you can't see anything wrong, are one of the very worst parts of human society. You are part of the reason, probably the main reason, life is so hard for the mentally ill.

I really shouldn't have to explain this to you, as a great deal has been written on the subject in the past several decades. I beg of you, as a sometime depression sufferer, please go read up on this. Your ignorance hurts humanity.

If you are not ignorant, but simply unwilling to educate yourself, then please take your insane ideology back to the Dark Ages where it belongs.

>People like you, who think that mental illness which is every bit as real as a broken arm is "imaginary"

sorry, man, you've just produced non sequtuir as i never said that mental illnesses are "imaginary".

I said that the statement - "if suicide then necessarily mental illness" - is false in my view. Such statement being false doesn't necessarily means that mental illnesses are imaginary nor that some suicides are result of real mental illnesses.

You have started this discussion on the argument that "we create hell on earth for other people" which is about as unfounded as Cushman jumping to the conclusion that it was depression that caused this suicide, before the facts are in.

As it stands, you both have about the same amount of rationality in your argument while Cushman certainly has the numbers on his side - Mental Illness certainly is the leading cause of suicide:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Risk_factors

"Clinical studies have shown that underlying mental disorders are present in 87% to 98% of suicides"

So I think Cushman is right - there is no use for your argument in this discussion and all that stands is a misunderstanding about your choice of words on "imaginary" (which I understood the same way that Cushman did - you clearly didn't choose your words wisely there and were bound to be misunderstood).

> certainly has the numbers on his side

That statistic presents a somewhat circular logic, with drug abuse (mainly alcohol) and mood disorders (depression: uni-/bi-polar) making up the bulk of the 'mental disorders' figure (FTA). Since feelings of worthlessness and suicidal thoughts are used to diagnose depressive disorders in the first place and since drug abuse is acknowledged to often be a form of self-medication for undiagnosed depression, blaming 'mental disorders' clearly begs the question in a large number of cases.

The literature shows that environmental factors play a major role in causing and aggravating these illnesses and behaviours. I believe this is the point that VladRussian was making and it's not so easily dismissed with 'numbers'. Likewise, the very large proportion of suicides which come after a clinical diagnosis (and presumably some kind of treatment) doesn't inspire much faith in the 'just go and get yourself sorted out' line of advice.

I find it disturbing that in a discussion on this topic, someone advocating being kinder to people in general, and perhaps certain people in particular, would be subjected to the kind of insults that Cushman has used.

I would say that both sides of the argument that VladRussian started have a point but equally lack civility: viggity simply linked to a suicide prevention site and VladRussian lashed out how somebody dare to ask for suicidal people to seek help when it's society at fault. Cushman took offense and implied that depression is the culprit here. Cue further misunderstanding about the wording of "imaginary".

I think both sides are projecting their own view a little too hard on this.

Environmental factors surely are a factor in this and I was 'quoting numbers' because VladRussian was a little to quick to dismiss mental illness. Again - since we all don't know the details in this particular case, this is an abstract discussion about suicide. In an abstract discussion, you either make a case and discuss it, or you discuss one that another person has made. VladRussian simply picked a fight and Cushman bought into it.

Also, re: circular logic. I don't think it is circular - Suicidal thoughts may be a symptom of depression, but that's not the same as saying they are a cause of depression. I know you don't say that either, but that's what would make it circular. (Also: saying it's 'somewhat circular' is a cop-out - it either is, or isn't circular.) I further don't think mental disorders really are "blamed" for suicide, they are simply accepted as a very common pathway in medical studies.

To say that a suicide was caused by depression and that we knew the person was depressed because they claimed to be suicidal is circular. I qualified the term because there are other components to that statistic which it would be wrong to discount. (I don't believe anyone in this subthread has done that.)

No, that is simply not logical and nobody is arguing it. Again - a claim to have suicidal thoughts is a factor in diagnosing depression. Acting on those thoughts leads to actual suicide. That does not imply that suicidal thoughts were the reason why somebody became depressed.

Here is what would be a perfectly circular argument:

Somebody commits suicide. Society looks for a reason of that suicide. They figure out that the person was depressed. But why was he depressed? Turns out, he was suicidal.

But that's not what is being argued:

Somebody is depressed. So much depressed, that the person has suicidal thoughts. The person commits suicide. Society correctly assesses that his depression was the main cause in committing suicide. This is apparent, because it was in depression that suicidal thoughts appeared.

> human society normally creates conditions when such a decision can be a rational well-thought off one.

So you are dismissing the idea that Ilya was depressed. Yet, claim that there was terrible suffering and hell going on. Ok, I don't know what was happening in this life, but I will just guess that it is highly unlikely that famine, torture, physical, sexual or moral abuse was taking place, at least the kind were most people would agree that suicide was an obvious rational choice.

There is nothing shameful, imaginary, or about depression. Just like there is nothing shameful or imaginary about getting the flu.

>So you are dismissing the idea that Ilya was depressed.

no, i'm dismissing the idea that suicide necessarily means a mental illness.

I'd say it pretty clearly does. If it were a rational decision with no mental illness involved, the person could realize they can just pull a real world "why_". Just disappear, go somewhere else, be someone else and start over where no one knows you. You're going to lose everyone and everything you know anyway, why do you need to actually kill yourself as well (and doing so isn't risk free)?

If the person is rational then problems can only be one of two kinds: situational (e.g. my life sucks because I owe more money than I stand to earn in 3 lifetimes) and health-related. The rational stance to the first kind would be to do as I suggest above. Obviously, in the second case escaping won't change anything so suicide could be a rational choice.

sounds like until a person thinks the way you prescribe as the "rational" one, the person is deemed mentally ill.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1341504/pdf/bmjc...

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