Do you believe that only mentally ill people commit suicide?

[leodeo]

my friend wasn't old by means, she was 28. And PTSD is generally acquired when faced with a life threatening situation - rape, car accidents, war veterans, are the most common reasons. PTSD follows with you almost for life and it becomes a matter of being able to cope with it and change your outlook on the situation. I do not believe she got PTSD from losing her job! I think as someone said earlier, life sucks sometimes and she couldn't take it anymore and ended her life thinking it would be a better option.

I know another lady in her 50s who was sexually abused as a child, and to this day she still has PTSD symptoms such as disassociation, depression, the nightmares, etc...but she also managed to get through college and is a teacher! So like I said earlier, I think people just have different tolerance levels, even my psychologist said that MOST human beings think about ending their lives at one point or another, but basically when it gets to a point where a person believes that there is no better way out and its completely hopeless, they go for suicide. yes, depression can cloud your judgement and make things more hopeless than they seem, but sometimes its questionable. IE: If you were sentenced to life in prison, and before they took you, you somehow had the option to end your life....would you do it? I can say I would.

[Ryantology]

Purposefully ending one's own life is not an indication of sound mental health, excepting terminal situations. It may not necessarily indicate a long-term mental illness, but we have the biological imperative to stay alive, no matter what. Subversions of that are psychologically abnormal.

[Faith No More]

Purposefully ending one's own life is not an indication of sound mental health, excepting terminal situations.

There are other exceptions. As someone mentioned earlier, some cultures feel that people should kill themselves if they have dishonored themselves. Also, people kill themselves all the time to avoid the consequences of their actions, such as committing crimes for which they face lengthy sentences. That's cowardly, but it doesn't mean they weren't of sound mental health.

[CapnAwesome]

my friend wasn't old by means, she was 28. And PTSD is generally acquired when faced with a life threatening situation - rape, car accidents, war veterans, are the most common reasons. PTSD follows with you almost for life and it becomes a matter of being able to cope with it and change your outlook on the situation. I do not believe she got PTSD from losing her job! I think as someone said earlier, life sucks sometimes and she couldn't take it anymore and ended her life thinking it would be a better option.

I know another lady in her 50s who was sexually abused as a child, and to this day she still has PTSD symptoms such as disassociation, depression, the nightmares, etc...but she also managed to get through college and is a teacher! So like I said earlier, I think people just have different tolerance levels, even my psychologist said that MOST human beings think about ending their lives at one point or another, but basically when it gets to a point where a person believes that there is no better way out and its completely hopeless, they go for suicide. yes, depression can cloud your judgement and make things more hopeless than they seem, but sometimes its questionable. IE: If you were sentenced to life in prison, and before they took you, you somehow had the option to end your life....would you do it? I can say I would.

Everything that you described sounds like mental illness.

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Purposefully ending one's own life is not an indication of sound mental health, excepting terminal situations.

There are other exceptions. As someone mentioned earlier, some cultures feel that people should kill themselves if they have dishonored themselves. Also, people kill themselves all the time to avoid the consequences of their actions, such as committing crimes for which they face lengthy sentences. That's cowardly, but it doesn't mean they weren't of sound mental health.

Those are not very common exceptions.

[Faith No More]

Those are not very common exceptions.

Do you have stats to back that up? Because I have a feeling they're more common than you think.

[CapnAwesome]

Those are not very common exceptions.

Do you have stats to back that up? Because I have a feeling they're more common than you think.

Well it's pretty hard to survey people about why they commit suicide, so I doubt that those stats are available, if you find any I'd be very interested. However one of your examples is only relevant to certain cultures and the other only to criminals who have been caught and face punishment. Since both are small parts of the overall population, it's a pretty safe assumption.

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So I did a little research, and while there are not surveys about why people commit suicide (for obvious reasons) they have surveyed people who have attempted suicide. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/happ...pt-suicide

The 6 most common reasons are as follows.

They're depressed. This is without question the most common reason people commit suicide. Severe depression is always accompanied by a pervasive sense of suffering as well as the belief that escape from it is hopeless. The pain of existence often becomes too much for severely depressed people to bear. The state of depression warps their thinking, allowing ideas like "Everyone would all be better off without me" to make rational sense. They shouldn't be blamed for falling prey to such distorted thoughts any more than a heart patient should be blamed for experiencing chest pain: it's simply the nature of their disease. Because depression, as we all know, is almost always treatable, we should all seek to recognize its presence in our close friends and loved ones. Often people suffer with it silently, planning suicide without anyone ever knowing. Despite making both parties uncomfortable, inquiring directly about suicidal thoughts in my experience almost always yields an honest response. If you suspect someone might be depressed, don't allow your tendency to deny the possibility of suicidal ideation prevent you from asking about it.

They're psychotic. Malevolent inner voices often command self-destruction for unintelligible reasons. Psychosis is much harder to mask than depression, and is arguably even more tragic. The worldwide incidence of schizophrenia is 1% and often strikes otherwise healthy, high-performing individuals, whose lives, though manageable with medication, never fulfill their original promise. Schizophrenics are just as likely to talk freely about the voices commanding them to kill themselves as not, and also, in my experience, give honest answers about thoughts of suicide when asked directly. Psychosis, too, is treatable, and usually must be treated for a schizophrenic to be able to function at all. Untreated or poorly treated psychosis almost always requires hospital admission to a locked ward until the voices lose their commanding power.

They're impulsive. Often related to drugs and alcohol, some people become maudlin and impulsively attempt to end their own lives. Once sobered and calmed, these people usually feel emphatically ashamed. The remorse is often genuine, but whether or not they'll ever attempt suicide again is unpredictable. They may try it again the very next time they become drunk or high, or never again in their lifetime. Hospital admission is therefore not usually indicated. Substance abuse and the underlying reasons for it are generally a greater concern in these people and should be addressed as aggressively as possible.

They're crying out for help, and don't know how else to get it. These people don't usually want to die but do want to alert those around them that something is seriously wrong. They often don't believe they will die, frequently choosing methods they don't think can kill them in order to strike out at someone who's hurt them, but they are sometimes tragically misinformed. The prototypical example of this is a young teenage girl suffering genuine angst because of a relationship, either with a friend, boyfriend, or parent, who swallows a bottle of Tylenol, not realizing that in high enough doses Tylenol causes irreversible liver damage. I've watched more than one teenager die a horrible death in an ICU days after such an ingestion when remorse has already cured them of their desire to die and their true goal of alerting those close to them of their distress has been achieved.

They have a philosophical desire to die. The decision to commit suicide for some is based on a reasoned decision, often motivated by the presence of a painful terminal illness from which little to no hope of reprieve exists. These people aren't depressed, psychotic, maudlin, or crying out for help. They're trying to take control of their destiny and alleviate their own suffering, which usually can only be done in death. They often look at their choice to commit suicide as a way to shorten a dying that will happen regardless. In my personal view, if such people are evaluated by a qualified professional who can reliably exclude the other possibilities for why suicide is desired, these people should be allowed to die at their own hands.

They've made a mistake. This is a recent, tragic phenomenon in which typically young people flirt with oxygen deprivation for the high it brings and simply go too far. The only defense against this, it seems to me, is education.

So of those 4 of the 6 involve being mentally ill and one of them are people who don't intend to commit suicide (auto-erotic asphyxiation mistakes.) The other are terminally ill people, which I mentioned as my guess in the first place. So even if you can't say that only mentally ill people commit suicide you can say that the vast majority of people who attempt suicide are mentally ill

[faithinwhat]

I think anyone is perfectly capable of taking their own life, circumstances in a persons life can make someone feel like their is no getting out. Although in saying this many people commit suicide because of monetary problems, which there is always a light at the end of a tunnel with, because Charlie who lives on my street under the lamp is really happy and he has nothing, give him a pint and he's sorted.

I read in the paper that the second most recorded way to kill oneself is by using helium, now call me thick but unless you're blowing yourself up like a balloon I don't see how that's possible, because even then something in your brain would tell you to stop, that's why you cannot drown yourself. Anyway off topic

Mentally ill people are the happiest people I know as I used to work as a support worker, its the mentally sane people that are off their tits

[Jackalope]

I read in the paper that the second most recorded way to kill oneself is by using helium, now call me thick but unless you're blowing yourself up like a balloon I don't see how that's possible, because even then something in your brain would tell you to stop, that's why you cannot drown yourself.

The panic reaction that you undergo when suffocating is caused by an excess of CO2. If you are able to breathe normally but are not getting any oxygen you will black out (and die from anoxia) without experiencing that panic.

[Minimalist]

No. Suicide is a cultural thing.

[Belac Enrobso]

If mentally ill people were the only individuals to take their lives than Ken Ham, and Kent Hovind would have been waxing Gods asshole long ago, together at the same time.