Suicide Is Not an Act of Cowardice

There is a dangerous fallacy — a biological falsehood, a feebleness of empathy, an ethical failing — in the view that people who die by suicide after living with mental illness have somehow failed at life. It is one thing to feel deeply the tragedy of that loss, to rue the help not available to them in their time of struggle; it is quite another to... See more

Knew I’d never see my twenty-fifth birthday. Am early for once. The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors. A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, “Suicide is selfishness.” Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and c

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I often take care of people after suicide attempts. When they explain why they tried to die, a large proportion say they could no longer see “the point” in life. “There’s no meaning for me, no reason to live.” Most clinicians push against this idea to dissuade people from it. 1/