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So to say somebody who committed suicide are selfish is almost like saying being sick is selfish.
The bottom line is that nobody knows who is considering suicide sometimes. Everyone has left low, down or depressed at one point in their life, so how can anybody judge them for wanting to end their lives?
One of my grief counselor has used the term "terminal mental illness" to describe suicidal desperation. So when suicide is discussed, maybe people should be careful with the word "selfishness" because blaming and judging the suicide victim, only adds more pain and suffering to the people they left behind.
Do you believe people who committed suicide are selfish?
People who expect an individual to live through an incurable mental illness or even severe physical deformities that ruin that individual's quality of life are selfish. Perhaps such people (even family) were partly to blame by not being there when that person needed them or in the case of parents, neglecting them as children.
There is nothing selfish about suicide compared to many of the bad things people do that are truly selfish such as adultery, stealing, bullying. Some people commit suicide because they don't want to become a burden
Until we can find a way of curing mental illness or truly helping those in need, suicide is a fact of life and should be legalized so that sixth people can die in a a painless and dignified manner rather than use a risky method which has a high probability of failure or leaving a gruesome mess for someone to discover.
It's all about quality of life. Some mental illnesses can be treated to the point where an individual can at least experience a reasonable quality of life. For others, it never goes away and such people cannot experience prolonged joy or any kind of stability. Some end up homeless, destitute, in trouble with the law or just completely alone and ostracized. This is a very uncaring world. I don't blame many people for wanting to check out on their own terms rather than face 70+ years of agony and turmoil.
People have to think deeper. What is selfishness? Is selfishness not demanded by day-to-day survival? I'd argue that it's entirely non-arguable/non-negotiable that selfishness IS in fact demanded by survival. (to some degree, as our existence is dependent on both consumption of "lower" life forms and competition vis a vis our own species)
Therefore, suicide is either not selfish or not any more selfish than survival is. One could theoretically argue for suicide as selfless...in fact, it has been argued that way, in the form of martyrdom (politics makes strange bedfellows...hence me siding with the religious here, kinda)
"Suicide is a desperate act by someone who is in intense pain and wants their pain to stop. That is a HUMAN response to extreme pain, not a selfish one. And over 90 percent of the people who die by suicide have a mental illness at the time of their death, so they are not thinking clearly.
Saying that a person who had severe clinical depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or a similar illness was engaging in an act of selfishness when they died by suicide – even though their thought process, mood, and judgment were greatly affected by their mental illness – is not only inaccurate, but downright cruel, to both the suicide angel and the suicide survivors.
And those who use the word “selfish†are merely helping perpetuate the STIGMA associated with suicide.
A suicidal action that manifests from intense, excruciating, unbearable pain associated with a serious mental illness has nothing to do with selfishness. Period."
I don't believe a suicide is selfish, they are hurting.
But it is very valuable to hear what other people say because it tells me what kind of person they are.
If your family member said that about another family member they are not a person to be around. You'll get no support when bad things happen just blame.
There are people who blame sick people too for doing something that made them sick. Lowbrow mentality.
Same type of people blame the victim in whatever happened (rape, typhoon, car accident) because they are trying to distance themselves from bad things happening to THEM (these are the selfish people-the blamers). What they should be doing is sympathizing and trying to understand what caused it and doing something positive to prevent it happening again (if it's within their power).
There are people who blame sick people too for doing something that made them sick. Lowbrow mentality.
Same type of people blame the victim in whatever happened (rape, typhoon, car accident) because they are trying to distance themselves from bad things happening to THEM (these are the selfish people-the blamers). What they should be doing is sympathizing and trying to understand what caused it and doing something positive to prevent it happening again (if it's within their power).
I don't believe in suicide at all. I also don't think people who commit suicide are selfish. How survivors feel is not the dead person's responsibility.
To imagardener's point, sometimes people are to blame for what happens to them. Our decisions have consequences. A drunk person gets in a car ans has an accident directly related to their impairment. How is that not their fault?
I don't think they are selfish. I think they were people who were in extreme pain.
Yes. I used to have the view that there was selfishness involved. A long time ago, the younger brother of a friend killed himself. He was apparently a kid with problems who had threatened suicide since he was a young teen and finally did it when he was around 20. But it seemed SO selfish to me at the time. His mother was in a nursing home dying of cancer, and his elderly father came home from the nursing home to find a note that said, "Dad, I'm in the car" and so he went out to the garage to find the body of his youngest kid dead from inhaling fumes. It seemed like such a cruel thing to do to that old man, and I was irrationally angry at this stupid selfish kid I didn't even know.
But last year, I read an article by a woman who had attempted suicide. She'd had a daughter of pre-school age who was diagnosed with a terrible cancer and then died after a couple of years of treatments. The woman also had a husband and two little sons, but the daughter's death sent her into such a tailspin that she couldn't get through her grief and ultimately tried to kill herself. She ended up hospitalized for quite a while. Her husband was angry at her apparent abandonment of him and their living children but at the time she wrote the article, she had been receiving treatment and they were working toward repairing their marriage and re-establishing a relationship with her sons.
In the article, she said, "NOW I can understand how people could possibly view my suicide attempt as selfish, but at the time of my suicide attempt, I was not even capable of having thoughts about how my death would affect my husband and kids. The only thing that was in my head was 'how do I end this pain?' And killing myself was the only answer."
People who are driven to kill themselves are just not thinking of how their death affects others. As this woman said, they are not CAPABLE of thinking that way.
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