I once talked an individual I was very close to out of committing suicide. He had experienced a number of rather terrible situations, with severe psychological and physical issues, that were causing him a great deal of pain. He was utterly hopeless, and firmly reiterated to me several times that there was no way to fix his life.
After getting him to calm down a little bit, I had him talk to me about what his problems were. I asked him why he thought it wouldn't ever get better. We talked for a while, and I realized that there was a solution that had just honestly never occurred to him. It would take several painful months before his life started improving, but there was a third alternative that would almost certainly improve his life drastically. He decided not to kill himself, seeing that this other choice, although it would be painful and difficult, was significantly better than suicide.
Now, in this case, he had mentally searched for a third alternative for months, ever since he first started contemplating suicide, and I genuinely think he would have accepted one if he had found it. He was just not able to find the way out. Chris argued in his post that it is possible for someone to rationally determine that death is the best option. I do agree that it's at least possible. My probability estimate for any one person being able to do that, though, is extremely low. Pain and sorrow dull and slow your mind. I know, I've got a history of depression, etc, and your ability to think drops dramatically when you are suffering from those emotions. If you are hurting enough that you are considering suicide, then you should consider that the pain is probably bad enough that you are not thinking as clearly as someone who was detached from the problem would be. So talk to someone. Find as many truly intelligent people as you can and get them to try to find a way out of your dilemma. Hell, if you don't know anyone, get in touch with me, and I'd be happy to see if I can spot anything you're missing.
Suicide is an irreversible step (unless you get yourself frozen, which I generally endorse). You don't want to do that if you're missing something obvious. Is it possible that you will decide to kill yourself for all the right reasons, and that there genuinely is no better option? Possible, but fairly unlikely. Recognize that you are very emotionally involved at the moment, which probably isn't doing wonders for your level of rationality. I recommend you get someone to check your work.
Just to point out that I agree with this (now quite old) comment.
Took me four years to understand why I was depressed and couldn’t see a way out of it ; and now I can, and I’m no longer depressed! Focusing on the virtue of empiricism is definitely good for that, especially as that’s the main thing a depressed and suicidal person won’t do. But perhaps it’s something you can only do well after having done some work on the virtue of finding a good therapist to start dealing with the depression, though :-) At least that’s how it worked for me.
I was saddened to learn of the recent death by suicide of Chris Capel, known here as pdf23ds. I didn't know him personally, but I was an occasional reader of his blog. In retrospect, I regret not having ever gotten into contact with him. Obviously, I don't know that I could have prevented his death, but, as one with mental-health issues myself, at least I could have made a friend, and been one to him. Now I feel a sense of disappointment that I'll never get that chance.
Having said that, I must say that I take his arguments here very seriously. I do not consider it to be automatic that every suicide is the "wrong" decision. We can all imagine circumstances under which we would prefer to die than live; and given this, we should also be able to imagine that these kinds of circumstances may vary for different people. And if one is already accepting of euthanasia for incurable physical suffering, it should not be that much of a leap to accept it for incurable psychological suffering as well.
Of course, as Chris acknowledges, this doesn't imply that everyone who is contemplating suicide is actually being rational. People may for instance be severely mistaken about their prospects for improvement, especially while in the midst of acute crisis.(Conceivably, that could even have been his own situation.) Nonetheless, I think many of the usual arguments that people use to show that suicide is "wrong" are bad arguments. For example, consider what is probably the most common argument: that committing suicide will inflict pain upon friends and family. It frankly strikes me as absurd (and grotesquely unempathetic) to suppose that someone for whom life is so painful that they would rather die somehow has an obligation to continue enduring it just in order to spare other people the emotion of grief (which they are inevitably going to have to confront at some point anyway, at least until we conquer all death).
Ironically, society's demonization of suicide and suicidal people has negative consequences even from the standpoint of preventing suicide itself, as Chris points out:
It seems to me very possible that our society's fervor to prevent suicide may result in denying severely depressed people the compassion they need. This could theoretically be worth it if it prevented enough suicides that turned out to be worth preventing, but cases like Chris's raise doubt about this, in my mind. (From both angles: if Chris's decision was the right one for him, then the system is saving people it shouldn't be saving; if on the other hand it was the wrong decision, then we clearly see how the system failed him.)
Although I'm inclined to be sympathetic to Chris's view -- perhaps because I haven't always been maximally enthusiastic about my own existence myself -- there are some arguments that do worry me. Such as: if you think of future versions of yourself as separate agents, then suicide is a form of homicide. However, usually suicide is carried out on the belief that the future selves would approve of their nonexistence; and all of our decisions have consequences (often irreversible) for our future selves, so this is a general ethical problem that transcends the specific issue of suicide.
This post is a place to rationally discuss the ethics and rationality of suicide, as well as our attitudes (on an individual level, and as reflected in our institutions) toward suicidal people and, more generally, those suffering from psychological conditions such as depression.
I'm sad that Chris won't be able to participate.