Suicide is the most selfish thing one can do, that's my opinion.
People have this bizarre idea that mental illness somehow doesn't "count". That you have to fight it, and that if you lose, it's your own fault.
You are, right here, blaming the victim of the disease. Your brother died from a mental illness. It killed him, just as surely as cancer or a heart attack might have killed him. You'd never, ever, ever say that someone who's killed by a heart attack is "selfish", so don't do it for mental illnesses either.
You have some control. Far less than the "suicide is selfish" idiocy assumes.
Great, maybe that's the case. However, there's no more evidence for that than the assertion that suicide is a choice.
That fits with my experience. I have to be very careful with peanut oil, for example. It does terrible things to me.
So, in short, it is possible that depression and other mental illness has biological roots. There are also social factors and other factors, but in some sense mental illness may well be a medical illness.
Would you mind giving me the name of your practice so I can make sure that nobody I care about ever, ever goes there?
The problem isn't just the illness clouding the need for them but also that there are sometimes more significant side-effects as well.
Perhaps we should should recognise an ill person cannot be held to the same standard expected of a well person, but can still be considered to have some degree of agency in their actions.
It's especially problematic because mental illness is a fault in your thoughts, and not in, say, your arms or legs. But you don't have thoughts in the way you have arms and legs - you actually are your thoughts.
That makes no sense. There are plenty of physical diseases where that doesn't apply, and many where the only cure requires lots of work on your own part.
1. In point of fact, much scientific evidence shows that depression is a physical illness, not a mental illness.
2. The only reason treatments are not available for the physical illness of depression is because of the primitive state of neuroscience.
3. But neuroscience research is moving apace, and is very promising. Read this: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/magazine/02depression.html...
4. A quote from the above-linked article: '"So we turn it on," Mayberg told me later, "and all of a sudden she says to me, 'It's very strange,' she says, 'I know you've been with me in the operating room this whole time. I know you care about me. But it's not that. I don't know what you just did. But I'm looking at you, and it's like I just feel suddenly more connected to you.' '
"Mayberg, stunned, signaled with her hand to the others, out of Deanna's view, to turn the stimulator off."
'"And they turn it off," Mayberg said, "and she goes: 'God, it's just so odd. You just went away again. I guess it wasn't really anything.'"'
5. Psychiatrists and psychologists, of course, insist that depression is a mental illness and is treatable with therapy and drugs. But there is no reliable scientific evidence for this view.
6. President Obama recently announced a major "brain initiative", meant to speed up the pace of neuroscience research. More here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/02/fact-s...
7. Notice that the initiative is not called the "mind initiative". The reason? Psychology had its chance and failed. It's time for a new approach.
> It's especially problematic because mental illness is a fault in your thoughts, and not in, say, your arms or legs.
That's what psychiatrists and psychologists would like you to think, but it's false. Some day this way of describing mental illness will be judged to have been criminally false.
A false dichotomy there.
"Psychiatrists and psychologists, of course, insist that depression is a mental illness and is treatable with therapy and drugs. But there is no reliable scientific evidence for this view."
Stated without actual evidence, naturally. On a scale of One to Clear, how much do you love L Ron Hubbard?
> A false dichotomy there.
Dichotomy, yes. False, no. The evidence is copious. I posted evidence, you posted opinion. Which part of the evidentiary links that I provided caused you the greatest amount of emotional upset?
Which part of "drugs and therapy do not work, but neuroscientific treatments do work" didn't you understand?
> "Psychiatrists and psychologists, of course, insist that depression is a mental illness and is treatable with therapy and drugs. But there is no reliable scientific evidence for this view."
> Stated without actual evidence, naturally.
I said there is no evidence for the belief that psychiatrists and psychologists can treat depression. Your reply? Where's my evidence that there's no evidence? You are clearly unaware of (a) the impossibility of proving a negative, (b) of the role played by the null hypothesis in scientific thinking, and (c) who has the burden of evidence to provide positive evidence for a claim.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Quote: "Russell's teapot, sometimes called the celestial teapot or cosmic teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others ..."
In other words, you are a scientific ignoramus.
Psychiatrists claim to be able to treat depression, the claim is formally unfalsifiable, there is no evidence for this claim and copious counterevidence, and the burden of evidence belongs to psychiatrists and psychologists.
Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the burden belongs to those making the claim:
Title: "Treating depression with the evidence-based psychotherapies: a critique of the evidence"
Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0447.2007....
Quote: "... the specificity of CBT and IPT treatments for depression has yet to be demonstrated."
Title: "Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration"
Link: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...
Quote: "Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance."
Title "The Emperor's New Drugs: An Analysis of Antidepressant Medication Data Submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration"
Link: http://alphachoices.com/repository/assets/pdf/EmperorsNewDru... (PDF)
Quote: "If drug and placebo effects are additive, the pharmacological effects of antidepressants are clinically negligible. If they are not additive, alternative experimental designs are needed for the evaluation of antidepressants."
The scientific consensus? Depression drugs and therapy don't work.
At the same time, at some level it really comes down to a personal choice to either keep fighting against it, or just give up. The nature of despair and depression can make it less appealing choose to keep fighting, but it's still a choice.
But that doesn't change the fact that people should be supportive and compassionate toward people struggling in these ways. It's never ever ever good or healthy or productive to condemn someone who's made some kind of mistake, because mistakes are usually the result of an internal struggle of some kind. Condemning or blaming someone only makes it harder for them to win the fight against whatever they're battling internally, and ultimately we just want everyone to win these internal fights.
it accomplishes nothing
It accomplishes nothing for you. For the person committing suicide, it frees them from significant pain of some sort. That might be psychological pain due to a disturbed mental state, but it's still pain.
Guilt is a hard one and you have to learn to deal with it and move on, but blaming the victim isn't going to help there.
Some additional reading material that might help inspire some compassion, also both good and entertaining reads in their own right:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-...
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/12/20/101220f...
In many (most? all?) people depression has a physical manifestation. It hurts. It aches. It's not a "hole in your heart," it's like having the flu. All the time. It's not like a toothache. It is a toothache. This distinction has to be made because it's important: the pain is real - even if it is just created by brain chemistry.
I'm surprised I see no mention of the poem "Richard Cory" whenever this topic arises
When he took his own life, I had an initial period of unanswerable questions and great sorrow, followed by deep resentment. He had so many people he could have reached out to and so many people reaching out to him, and he just decided to take an easier way out. It was selfish to leave his family hanging like that with so many questions, and the worst part is how difficult it was for them to move on.
I hope you are just angry that he committed suicide, and don't actually mean that. If you do mean that, you shouldn't be surprised that he killed himself. Suicidal people tend to look frantically for any reason they can find to not carry through with it. This kind of cold, judgmental attitude shown by a loved one at the wrong time can be the final straw.