Index

Suicide Ethics

Want to stop suicide? Deal with Reality.

The New York Times today ran an article about a suicide website. Most of the article was devoted to two things: the pain of the survivors of those that died, and the opinions of the mental health professionals of the suicide prevention community. All of these people, of course, decried the site and its results. The site has helped and encouraged many suicides. As one who has suffered depression most of my life, I have several times contemplated suicide. While I never went so far as to attempt it, I still think of death as a good thing, an end to a miserable existence. Because of this, I have to question the ethics of those that want to claim that suicidal thoughts are all “mental illness,” especially when we live in a society that glorifies cruelty and inhumanity.

A place where people who call themselves“ right to life“ can claim that refusing to give an abortion to a nine-year-old rape victim is “pro-life” is a truly sick society. The truly sick part of the suicide website isn’t the information on how-to or the stories of those who already died. The bloodthirsty freaks who encourage and push the suicidal to complete the act are the part that is toxic and reprehensible. While humanity has a history of yelling at the person standing on the ledge to jump, that is far sicker than the person wanting to escape their misery. A bloodthirsty mob is just that, and forming mobs is one of humanity’s sickest tendencies. That is the part of the site that is problematic.

Those that actually want to prevent suicide need to spend their time and energy on the things that drive people to suicide. Calling out right-wing insanity for the mental health condition it is would be a good start, and dealing with that sickness would absorb the entire energies of a real and dedicated mental health community for decades. Treating the illness underlying the inhumanity of the worst of the right would do far more to prevent suicide than taking a website or two down. “Suicide Prevention” as a goal, and trying to intervene at the last second while ignoring the underlying cause of the problem is a complete waste of effort. While it gives those who do it a feeling of having done something, the real issue goes on unscathed.

Suicide, like cancer, is not a problem but a symptom. Both are the visible part of a far more significant issue, and neither can be cured by treating the symptoms. A society that keeps women from having life-saving abortions has created far more suicides than any hotline or other window dressing will ever prevent. A society that forces unwanted children to be born not only is a fertile hotbed for suicide, but it deserves to suffer the losses it has created.

If anybody really cared about suicide and wanted to do something intelligent about it, they would study the suicide site and learn from it, then move on to working on the underlying problems. Freaking out about a website is nothing but self-serving political theater, something the U. S. has suffered enough of. The idiotic non-response of the orange cult to COVID was precisely the same thing and has killed hundreds of thousands directly. A few hundred suicides are just collateral damage.