With the recent death of Robin Williams, the topic of suicide has been an incredibly hot topic, likewise depression. This post will be a lot more serious than my usual rants, and for that I apologize in advance. Also, it is going to be hard for me to type, so please be kind.
The question has been presented a LOT of whether depression is a disease. It is not. It is an illness. Often called Clinical Depression or Major Depressive Disorder, it is still an illness. I am not belittling it be any means. Since around the age of 13 or so I battled with clinical depression. It wasn't until I was 30 that my diagnosis was changed to the correct one, Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder
is considered a disease by the medical community. I have no idea why, one is extreme lows, while the other is extreme lows and extreme highs.
While suicide is not limited to the depressed, the percentage of suicides that are depressed people are astounding. About 60% of suicides are people who have major depressive disorder\clinical depression. I'm not defending suicide, but merely pointing out that depression is a lot more serious than some would think. I could spout off statistics all day, but what I really wanted to tell you is my story.
I have not committed suicide. That much must be obvious, as I am also not a ghost and somehow this blog seems to get updated. I am also not immune to suicidal ideation. That's where you think about and sometimes fixate on how you would kill yourself. It's not healthy, but it's not as unhealthy as carrying out a plan. A common trait among Bipolar patients is suicidal ideation. I've dealt with it for years and years thinking it was normal. Didn't everyone think about how to kill themselves? Apparently not.
Without going into a lot of detail, there was a very low period in my life some time back, and for the first time I decided I should act on one of those plans. I was close to carrying out my plan when Lyndsay foiled it. She was mad, and for that matter, so was I - at her. I was so close to just being done with it and now I wasn't. Was I being selfish? It's a matter of perspective - I thought I wasn't, she thought I was. I saw it as a way to remove myself from the equation of life, and eventually my family would move on and be happier without me causing problems. She saw it as chickening out to confronting problems I didn't want to face. I can see her point, but in actuality, there was no simple problem for me to face. I was in an extremely depressed state and
EVERYTHING was wrong, not just one thing - but indeed everything I could think of, I had somehow managed to make worse, at least in my mind at the time this was the case. I like to think I have a somewhat interesting perspective on suicide, not unique, just interesting.
I have been thinking a lot lately about whether or not suicide is selfish. My realization is that yes, it can be and no, not always. Suicide is usually lumped into one big definition in people's minds. It's not a blanket definition that covers all suicides though - thinking so is being entirely too closed minded. Some reasons for suicide can indeed be the very epitome of selfishness, while other reasons are the very opposite. I won't get into the selfish reasons, they are more than I want to list, and honestly, some are exactly why I have thought about it. The unselfish reasons. Have you ever seen in a movie (hopefully never in person) a mercy killing? I mean when a person is in so much pain from an injury (war movies come to mind) that their friend or someone delivers a final blow to end their suffering? It's still murder, but no one bats an eye, as a matter of fact, they are praised for being so compassionate for that person's plight. What if the wounds were not tangible? What if they were so deep that everyday was so painful to endure that it was unbearable? That person often doesn't want to burden someone else with the troubles of their life, and not talking about it generally makes it worse. So, not having someone to perform the mercy killing for them, they endeavor to do it themselves. Yes, it is an insurmountable pain to those close to the person, but their pain is usually nothing compared to that person's everyday struggle.
To set the record straight, I don't condone suicide, but neither to I condemn it. People with a depression so deep are in a no win situation.
