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Suicide

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Suicide

#61

Post by kmfrk »

raganwald wrote: post #2

My thanks to @knowtheory for pointing out that suicidal people often feel alone/apart/disconnected from other people. I struggle with this, myself.

This point is also relevant with New Year's Eve coming up.

Invite a couple of extra people to your New Year's Eve party whom you might not have thought of inviting, and you might do more good than you think.

It's also worth mentioning that being alone is perfectly fine, but when people become lonely, it's something that needs to be addressed. It's all a state of mind, after all.

Re: Suicide

#62

Post by cpeterso »

maeon3 wrote: post #27

Ive associated suicide as correlated with too much logic. It takes a litle bit of delusion deep in the core of your being to assign value, meaning and purpose to the process of moving molecules from a high energy state to lower energy states. Which is all we are doing. Convincing a logical person that delusion is needed is a tough sell. Ive had the experience of trying to talk some normality into a suicidal person. I…

I found that Albert Camus' philosophy of Absurdism provided less depressing insights on Man's "existential crisis" that other existential philosophies:

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

According to Camus, one's freedom – and the opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the recognition of absurdity. In acknowledging the absurdity of seeking any inherent meaning, but continuing this search regardless, one can be happy, gradually developing his or her own meaning from the search alone.

Re: Suicide

#63

Post by csomar »

seiji wrote: post #40
raganwald wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. What do you suggest?

I've never been entirely sure. A while ago I made http://suicidescale.com/ but the wording still feels awkward to me. You have to strike a balance between explaining and understanding without sounding condescending. Explaining the temporary condition can help so people know they aren't alone (knowing you are one of millions who have had the same exact thought processes is a wake up call). Mentioning the processes can…

I just checked your website. I'm in the step 5. And, yes, I now feel this post is very dangerous because I never thought of suicide. Worse. I have recently dropped of colleague and don't have any friends right now. (didn't talk with a human for something like 15-20 days). Any quick remedies? I'm feeling more anxious.

Re: Suicide

#64

Post by chc »

This is a good thing to post. It's uncomfortable to talk about, but it needs to be done, so thank you, raganwald.

That said, if I can offer just a small critique: I always found the sentiment of "Just talk to someone" to be insufficient, because even if other people might understand, sometimes you don't feel like they should have to understand. If I'm too weak to handle my circumstances myself, you'll reason, it would just make me an even worse person if I dumped that burden on somebody else. I think it's important to convey to depressed people that somebody wants to help, because that isn't necessarily obvious when even you don't like you.

(Again, I don't mean to bash on raganwald's post by any means. It's just a perspective that I think it's easy to forget when you're not in that mindset.)

Re: Suicide

#65

Post by khafra »

maeon3 wrote: post #27

Ive associated suicide as correlated with too much logic. It takes a litle bit of delusion deep in the core of your being to assign value, meaning and purpose to the process of moving molecules from a high energy state to lower energy states. Which is all we are doing. Convincing a logical person that delusion is needed is a tough sell. Ive had the experience of trying to talk some normality into a suicidal person. I…

If you're saying logical thinking causes depression, you have the causation backward: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions...

For the record, logical, analytic, probabilistically correct thinking is only a way of reaching goals. The goals themselves cannot be established by means of logic, only deconflicted/clarified/etc. To think otherwise is illogical.

Re: Suicide

#66

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

I've been previously diagnosed with clinical depression (although I think I've managed to recover from it now, touch wood) and, stuff like this is so insanely difficult to process, let alone understand.

A depressed person faces not only the pressures of their own mind distorting their own reality, of their own feelings seemingly working against them and altering their behaviour; they face the pressure of friends and family who don't or can't understand what on earth it is they're suffering.

The more people can understand this and take it seriously, the (marginally) less difficult it will be for depressed people to seek help and not feel ashamed of suffering a 'mental illness'. And I know as far as my own experiences go, I wouldn't wish depression on my worst enemy.

Re: Suicide

#68

Post by xenophanes »

If you call the numbers given, is there any possibility they will call the police or otherwise interfere with you without your consent? Or is it a purely voluntary interaction in which they really just talk and listen?

Re: Suicide

#70

Post by raganwald »

chc wrote: post #64

This is a good thing to post. It's uncomfortable to talk about, but it needs to be done, so thank you, raganwald. That said, if I can offer just a small critique: I always found the sentiment of "Just talk to someone" to be insufficient, because even if other people might understand, sometimes you don't feel like they should have to understand. If I'm too weak to handle my circumstances myself, you'll reason, it woul…

Thank you! I am not a professional and there’s no particular reason that what I write is going to be helpful, and as others have pointed out, such appeals might sometimes be harmful.

In the end, my moral dilemna feels like the “Politician’s Fallacy:”

- Something must be done.

- This is something.

- Therefore we must do it.

But doing the wrong thing is often worse than doing nothing at all.

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