I hope you realize how skewed a sample that is. 100 people who unsuccessfully attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge will usually say they regretted it because they likely broke both their legs, fractured their feet, a couple ribs, suffered severe bruising of the abdominal area, and maybe a broken arm upon hitting the water/ground under the bridge. Throw in a high likelihood of being knocked unconscious from shock and nearly drowning and you setup anybody for regret.

Plus, when interviewed, they are likely a couple weeks to months after the attempt, as injuries that severe take you out of commission for a while, plus informal interviews are likely restricted to be done with people on suicide watch. The average suicide from depression takes place on the rebound from the depths of the depression, and from that point depression symptoms dissappear within a month or two.

100 out of 100 of these people were likely interviewed after their depression had receded, prompting normal answers in reflection.


People who are suicidal will still attempt suicide in the face of reason because the reasoning being used to justify it is inherently irrational. Reminders that it could be worse or that it will get better do nothing, and for some it further alienates the person because it reaffirms their belief that nobody understands or cares about them.

^^

Depression doesn't always have to be irrational. Just because it is a mental illness doesn't mean it is always irrational. People could've depressed for logical reasons. I think I get your point about helping depressed people though. They can twist anything into a reason to be sad.

100 out of 100 people are expected to remember what they were thinking during a 5-10 second fall at max before breaking half of their body and spending the next couple months on pain medication, and then accurately remember it when prompted months later? Sound a little bit far-fetched? It's far more likely that after their body was shattered from the impact that they had second thoughts, and could be misattributing when they changed their minds by question wording. Asking "did you feel any regret when falling?" can supply a different answer than "did you feel any regret, and when?" because it's assuming half of the question.


Regardless, my point is that it's irrational thoughts, and saying "start thinking rationally" is pointless because highly emotional thinking is oblivious to reason. It's wasting time to try to convince a highly distraught person on reasonable grounds. Support to prevent that state from being reached, and a combination of force and support for if it does reach that state are far more effective than trying to win an emotional person over with facts.


And I differentiate between euthanasia and suicide. One is to avoid physical pain from a soon, and inevitable, death, the other is a result of emotion-wracked justifications made during an unstable point of the mind. I believe one is acceptable and the other is regrettable. I see no purpose to discuss euthanasia in a debate about suicide.

I will give a quote the writer Samuel Johnson to make myself seem more intelligent than I actually am: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

When you know you only have
before you die you are not likely to get distracted and forget about it. People with near death experiences (the kind where they stay concise, not the one where they mistake their brain shutting down for going to heaven or something like that) often experience extremely fast thought and notice everything about that moment before what would be death if they hadn't have survived to tell the tail. We know that through hypnotism the brain can recall shockingly detailed and accurate memories which the patients did not even know they had so it is far from impossible that the brain would start to over focus if it realised that it could turn into a jam like substance on the pavement several stories below it. It is possible (in my extremely unprofessional and unqualified opinion) that the brain might not always maintain this state of awareness in order to avoid damaging itself like a computer can if it overheats. Maybe the body realises that it doesn't matter too much if you become a bit brain damaged and pumps all the adrenaline it has left into any receptor cells close enough before you hit the ground.

Nevertheless I understand that depressed people can seem almost unstable as a result of how irrational they are but I do not think this is true. Although the usual cliches of telling people they have a lot to live for and that they are beautiful over an internet chat room to try to cheer them up is obviously futile, I would argue that (from personal experience) simply offering friendship and also logical and realistic advise can help people. You don't need to say "everything will get better" to depressed people because this will not work, just explain that you want to give any advise or opinion about anything to help them. If you agree with people about how terrible some things are but tell them that other things aren't so bad then this is probably (in my unprofessional and slightly more qualified opinion) going to help a bit more than mindless generic hollow compliments and cliche instagram quotes about life.

I think what I am trying to say is that people who jump off buildings are not so much more illogical then everyone else. If we were more logical we would be computers, the brain is messy, they tried to make a computer like the brain but because of the size the signals leaked and it got inaccurate and slowed it down. The development team then realised this was what happens in the brain, signals leap between synapses causing unprovoked thought. Possibly millions of people still believe that people from different nations are not as valuable as them, racism is proof of the lack of logic in modern society. This doesn't stop anti racism campaigns. We are all illogical and that isn't always bad so if, in a lapse of rational though, someone thinks the only way out is to kill themselves then this doesn't mean they are, in general and on average, unreasonable people. I think most people (and certainly me) have, at several stages of their life, done illogical things. When I say illogical I don't mean absent minded and forgetful, I mean overreacting over something small and destroying something valuable (In my case it is usually something I have made, like a paper flower or a friendship) or doing something with large and undesirable consequences.

Sorry for my disordered writing style and my vendetta against correct punctuation. I hope it wasn't to hard to decipher. Thank you for reading
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When I say personal experience I mean by trying to prevent someone from killing themselves over the internet as I have already mentioned. I think my friend's (I only know him through the internet and by trying to help him but we shared some fun moments while chatting so to me he is a friend) recovery is proof that people can recover from "that point". he did try to kill himself and thankfully failed and is now recovering and the last time I talked to him he said he was getting better.

I don't want to say this to try to prove that I am a good person, I only talked to them because they listened to me and thanked me at a time I was feeling pretty irrelevant so my actions were partially selfish. I only mentioned it because it is relevant to the discussion and to encourage other people to give that kind of support because often it is quite rewarding.

Once again, thank you for reading.

Suicide is in no way brave. Risking your life to save someone else is brave. Dying in the name of something good is brave.

Committing suicide is a coward's way out, you must really be delusional if you think it's brave.

Committing suicide is a big fuck you to everyone around you, cause there's always someone that it's going to have a negative effect on, and if you commit suicide, you're just saying that you don't give a fuck about them.

It isn't brave, but it is in no way easy to do. In fact it's very hard.
Your opinion is fair and in some cases true, but some people aren't suicidal because of those around them, some people are just naturally depressed and or suicidal. And it sucks. Most people end up having second thoughts because of those they love. I am naturally depressed myself and I love those around me. I've taken multiple kinds of antidepressants and I've gone through shitty counseling for a while and in no way is it fun. None of it has worked for me, it sucks and it is a burden.
Suicide is not selfish in my opinion. It may cause grief to those around you, but realistically and most often who's going through more, the person killing themselves or the person losing somebody?

Of course it's hard. I've been close to doing it a few times myself, but I've stopped myself because I know how many people it would affect. I'm also just depressed and shit, doesn't have much to do with the people around me.

If you kill yourself, all of your shit stops there (or heaven/hell if that's what you believe, but nonetheless, it stops for you). But your family and friends and other acquaintances live years upon years thinking that they could've stopped you from doing so (plus, it may also cause them to get depressions and so on), thinking it had something to do with them, and it's pretty fucking selfish to put all that shit on other people, just because you couldn't put up with your own shit.

Selfish or not, for me its really stupid not to give yourself a second chance.

I would say that although there will usually be very large negative consequences on other people in the case of suicide I would argue that it isn't selfish in the sense that you use the word. If people are going through a hard enough time that they don't want to live any more then they are probably more forgivable for there actions (in my opinion if you have too many problems some things can be partially accounted for by the problems rather than being totally the person's fault). I also think that we do not need to think about other how our actions will effect other people to such an extent. We all have the capacity to make lots of people very happy throughout our life to a massive extent but most of us don't. Most of us could go and make someone else happy with a bit of effort and bravery. The fact that we please ourselves with our actions should (according to your comment as far as I can tell fallu) be seen as selfish by definition since we our thinking about ourselves. I would say that by killing yourself the difference is similar and since most of the suicidal people who go on to actually kill themselves are not in a position to think so logically and rationally about the consequences because their mind is full of other emotions.

My point is that almost everyone is selfish because the person we get the most satisfaction from pleasing is usually ourselves. Therefore trying to say that suicide is immoral because people care about that person is (in my current half formed opinion) slightly harsh. I know that in some cases suicide is a sorry selfish and immoral thing but is a lot of cases it isn't because the people are behond the point of caring about what other people feel because (as a result of depression) they believe nobody cares about how they feel.

To call it cowardly is in my opinion slightly insensitive to some people's mental states during suicide. As mentioned in previous replies there are different types of suicide.

I hope I haven't offended anyone or said anything too stupid but please tell me if I have.

Thank you for reading.
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One other point Ferras (sorry if earlier I spelt your name wrong :/)
I hope you can overcome this argument because it would be funny and awesome:
Some philosopher bloke who's name I have forgotten (probably Greek or something) once asked those around him what bravery was and people said: "risking your life to save others." And this smug philosopher guy says "no, that is an example of bravery, but what is bravery?" And another person answered in the same way and the philosopher basically acts really proud of himself and probably concluded that bravery did not exist or some other philosophical bullsht.

So Ferras... What is bravery?

P.s. If anyone can tell me some more stuff about aforementioned philosopher I would love to know so I could pretend to be clever.