Have you ever experienced clinical depression? To the extent you planned your own suicide? (Sorry if this is too personal a question, but I've found that when you read an essay/story/opinion that relates to deep depression I can usually tell who has actually experienced these feelings and who is just postulating what they think it is like from what they have seen/heard. I was not able to do this before I became mentally ill. I thought I knew what the experience was like since I had dealt with what I thought to be deep sadness and had even pondered suicide. Clinical depression is so different - I can't even begin to describe it.) Sorry, serious tangent, but my guess is from reading this that you have not experienced clinical depression. This certainly colors your opinions on the issue (and to be honest, I'm also curious to see if I'm right).
I have experienced depression and planned suicide, and to an extent still do (though it's much longer term). I wouldn't call it clinical depression because I've never been diagnosed and am extremely unlikely to go in and be diagnosed, but judging by what I've seen and read on the issue (and going by memory from doing so long ago, I'm not looking it up right now), I don't think what I have has very often reached the depths of clinical depression, but is more of a shallow, longer term one. I vaguely recall the term 'dysthymia' as something I once self-diagnosed myself. But hey, what do I know. In any event, I won't claim to be where you've been. Still, as I said, I don't believe intense mental illness is the _only_ way suicide comes about. It's possibly one of the more tragic, granted, and the argument may well apply much less there.
This is what made me question if you had experienced depression. I'm not sure this is true. Even a long, painful death I think would be preferable to most depressives when they are suicidal. My mother has brought up to me the possibility of me physically harming myself beyond repair during my suicide attempts saying things about harming major organs and being crippled the rest of my life. My response to her was if that happened, I would just try to kill myself again until I was successful or I was most likely such a vegetable that my brain only carried on rudimentary functioning and feelings weren't much of a problem anymore.
Of course, no one who is suicidal wants to experience a long, painful death, but in one of my online support-type groups a girl described how she was in so much emotional and mental pain that she curled up beneath a bush and when she was finally able to go to sleep, she expected never to wake up because she didn't see how someone could be in that much pain and still survive. To many, depression is already a long, painful death full of all sorts of incapacitation, even physical.
Again, I think I must have been unclear in that under my reasoning, (accepting the premises) from your own point of view death (even death of personality to the point where you're a vegetable) is not actually an option, ever. I left a little wiggle room in the argument because I wasn't entirely sure I could prove it, but in my own heart, that's the way I'm feeling it. So, again keeping in mind that the argument may not apply as well to mental illness, to me from a straight logic perspective, it's still a win proposition to avoid it - the choice is between an extreme duration of pain from which there is some possibility of getting better, even if you don't feel it and have to appreciate it intellectually (choosing to stay alive), and between an extreme duration of pain from which there is no real possibility of getting better (attempting a suicide).
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I have experienced depression and planned suicide, and to an extent still do (though it's much longer term). I wouldn't call it clinical depression because I've never been diagnosed and am extremely unlikely to go in and be diagnosed, but judging by what I've seen and read on the issue (and going by memory from doing so long ago, I'm not looking it up right now), I don't think what I have has very often reached the depths of clinical depression, but is more of a shallow, longer term one. I vaguely recall the term 'dysthymia' as something I once self-diagnosed myself. But hey, what do I know. In any event, I won't claim to be where you've been. Still, as I said, I don't believe intense mental illness is the _only_ way suicide comes about. It's possibly one of the more tragic, granted, and the argument may well apply much less there.
This is what made me question if you had experienced depression. I'm not sure this is true. Even a long, painful death I think would be preferable to most depressives when they are suicidal. My mother has brought up to me the possibility of me physically harming myself beyond repair during my suicide attempts saying things about harming major organs and being crippled the rest of my life. My response to her was if that happened, I would just try to kill myself again until I was successful or I was most likely such a vegetable that my brain only carried on rudimentary functioning and feelings weren't much of a problem anymore.
Of course, no one who is suicidal wants to experience a long, painful death, but in one of my online support-type groups a girl described how she was in so much emotional and mental pain that she curled up beneath a bush and when she was finally able to go to sleep, she expected never to wake up because she didn't see how someone could be in that much pain and still survive. To many, depression is already a long, painful death full of all sorts of incapacitation, even physical.
Again, I think I must have been unclear in that under my reasoning, (accepting the premises) from your own point of view death (even death of personality to the point where you're a vegetable) is not actually an option, ever. I left a little wiggle room in the argument because I wasn't entirely sure I could prove it, but in my own heart, that's the way I'm feeling it. So, again keeping in mind that the argument may not apply as well to mental illness, to me from a straight logic perspective, it's still a win proposition to avoid it - the choice is between an extreme duration of pain from which there is some possibility of getting better, even if you don't feel it and have to appreciate it intellectually (choosing to stay alive), and between an extreme duration of pain from which there is no real possibility of getting better (attempting a suicide).