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...

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

FWIW, I say this as someone who has had severe depression and been suicidal.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

(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)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Durkheim

https://youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw

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.

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.

Because suicide is almost always preceded by years of mental health problems.

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.

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.

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.