Saved by Jonathan Simcoe
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
Maria Popova • Sylvia Plath on Living with the Darkness and Making Art from the Barely Bearable Lightness of Being
Yufa added
There’s this really consistent pathway. Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re... See more
Melanie Warner • Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention?
Jerod Morris added
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
... See moreDavid Mitchell • Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Jonathan Simcoe added
It’s important to remember that suffering is relative. Nothing determines what real suffering is except your mind; there is no other test. Sometimes you might feel as if you don’t have a right to call your suffering “suffering”, because you’re not a former child soldier, and you aren’t in extreme poverty. That’s not how it works. Relatively privile... See more
Sasha Chapin • How I Wish Trauma Had Been Explained to Me
Roy Baumeister, a professor at Florida State University, found that people who committed suicide often weren’t in the worst circumstances, but they had fallen short of the expectations they had of themselves.
Eric Barker • Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
And gun control would be the quickest path to reducing American suicides. Whereas only about ten percent of those who attempt an overdose with pills succeed, according to Schwartz, some ninety per cent of those who attempt with a firearm are successful in ending their own lives. Suicide is often impulsive, and, if the means do not spring to hand, t
... See morenewyorker.com • Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, and Preventable Tragedies
Jonathan Simcoe added