Discussion Article - "My Son Took His Own Life"

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

I'm not sure what to make of this article and frankly it left me irritated as the author blamed the suicide on a disease in the end? The blame should be going to any number of other things and other people that failed this person. Maybe I'm reading into this article wrong trying to make sense of it. What do you all think?

My Son Took His Own Life. Here's Why You Should Stop Saying 'Committed Suicide.'

"I can’t bring my son back. But as a bereaved parent, I can ask one thing of the rest of the world."

m.huffpost.com

 

[Life_and_Death]

i personally am quite happy with the article and find it very encouraging. also they werent necessarily blaming it on a disease but more so calling depression a disease. which, depending on the case, is it really wrong? "A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not due to any immediate external injury."

 

[inthemoonblue]

I wish more people looked at ctb this way. Blaming the disease process (depression) is a lot better than blaming the individual, imo. It's difficult though because depending on the case, there are definitely a lot of other places you could also place the blame... especially if someone attempted to get help but didn't receive the support they needed.

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

Skimmed the article, no idea what the point of it was. The family is sad? Ok, got it. Some annoying semantics thrown in for good measure "don't say committed suicide, say died by suicide".

 

[Life_and_Death]

Skimmed the article, no idea what the point of it was. The family is sad? Ok, got it. Some annoying semantics thrown in for good measure "don't say committed suicide, say died by suicide"

what makes this article different from the rest is they didnt blame someone or somethings fault that it wasnt. this article shows respect for the depressed which sadly is a good thing to see when it should be a normal thing

 

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

I wish more people looked at ctb this way. Blaming the disease process (depression) is a lot better than blaming the individual, imo. It's difficult though because depending on the case, there are definitely a lot of other places you could also place the blame... especially if someone attempted to get help but didn't receive the support they needed.

I see depression as a symptom rather than the cause and I feel like these articles intentionally leave out what caused the depression to begin with. If anything it seems to me like this article creates more stigma around mental problems as it's not explaining the circumstances that created them, what can actually be done about it, and why this person was failed by society or the mental health system. A person doesn't just kill themselves because of a mental disease, they kill themselves because of other people and terrible circumstances.

I guess I shouldn't go into these articles expecting anything as they have a tendency to be about the ones left behind who don't really understand and not the suicidal.

 

[Tiredofhurting]

I'm not sure what to make of this article and frankly it left me irritated as the author blamed the suicide on a disease in the end? The blame should be going to any number of other things and other people that failed this person. Maybe I'm reading into this article wrong trying to make sense of it. What do you all think?

My Son Took His Own Life. Here's Why You Should Stop Saying 'Committed Suicide.'

"I can’t bring my son back. But as a bereaved parent, I can ask one thing of the rest of the world."

m.huffpost.com

To me it is pandering at least to me. In the article she said a blended family. It sounds like she had more kids then the boys dad and he got shoved to the side lines. I guarantee that is what happened. First he lost his mom and dad together and then he had to deal with a new family dynamic. From personal experience you either conform to the new family dynamic or you get left behind. I guarantee she treated that small boy as a problem to her "new" family. She sounds guilty in the article. At least to me.

 

[it's_all_a_game]

Actually a rather enlightened article. She doesn't call her son selfish & seems to actually respect his decision to an extent. It's still mostly about her and her family and how they dealt with grief and not about the deceased's struggles, but it's not condemning, which is a big step forward.

 

[Life_and_Death]

A person doesn't just kill themselves because of a mental disease, they kill themselves because of other people and terrible circumstances.

it depends, in my case, i believe it to be this way. whether all the other bad stuff happened to me or not, all signs point to me being born with mental disorders. i probably would be where i am now anyway.

 

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

it depends, in my case, i believe it to be this way. whether all the other bad stuff happened to me or not, all signs point to me being born with mental disorders. i probably would be where i am now anyway.

I wasn't trying to say that people can't be driven to suicide by something they are born with; something like Autism will affect every aspect of your life and how people approach you. My point was that the environmental causes of things like depression are often ignored entirely and the finger for suicide is often pointed at a imbalance of the brain rather than what caused that "imbalance."

I don't want people saying I killed myself because of depression or post traumatic stress, I'd want them saying that I died because certain individuals abused me and I wasn't provided tangible forms of relief. I agree with the author that the person who ended their life shouldn't be blamed but I disagree with her approach of using a "illness" as a scapegoat to absolve others of responsibility.

Society, our governments, people on a personal level, and the mental health field should all be held accountable and questioned but they almost never are. Blaming a disease is just a shitty approach to me and then having that worthless hotline number slammed at the bottom of the article to top it off was triggering to say the least.

 

[Life_and_Death]

I wasn't trying to say that people can't be driven to suicide by something they are born with; something like Autism will affect every aspect of your life and how people approach you. My point was that the environmental causes of things like depression are often ignored entirely and the finger for suicide is often pointed at a imbalance of the brain rather than what caused that "imbalance."

I don't want people saying I killed myself because of depression or post traumatic stress, I'd want them saying that I died because certain individuals abused me and I wasn't provided tangible forms of relief. I agree with the author that the person who ended their life shouldn't be blamed but I disagree with her approach of using a illness as a scapegoat to absolve others of responsibility.

maybe i should have specified that i meant certain disorders, like my personality disorder. what i was trying to say was that not all of those kinds of mental problems fall under that category.

i quickly drew this up and yes its horrible but i hope it helps explain what i mean. some disorders you are just born with. others have the capability to develop because of others, and some are both. i have a personality disorder and psychosis (caused by mental disorders) these are things that can develop from abuse like you are talking about, however not always as i really do believe i was born with these things and whether i was abused or not, i would have to put up with them and probably still kill myself because of them.

to explain a little better, it seems to me that what youre saying is theres ones youre born with and ones that are developed and i am saying its not quite that simple and comes with a grey area.

 

[Meretlein]

Blaming suicide solely on an illness or "false self" is for the comfort of the living. This line of thought is part of "medical imperialism" with the medical profession increasingly behaving like a moral enterprise in defining what is desirable, bad, and good.

The current zeitgeist of portraying death by suicide as no different than death by a physical illness is useful for 3 main reasons-

It helps reduce feelings of resentment from bereaved loved ones. I often see suicide equated to a heart attack, after all you wouldn't resent someone for having a heart attack since no one chooses to have one.

It helps justifying locking suicidal people up by taking away their agency and voice.

It supports the misapprehension that existence despite it's harms and costs is always worth it and anyone who wants to opt out is pathologically out of touch with reality. In short it attempts to validate our evolutionary drive to survive with science and medicine. The only way to escape being seen as out of touch with reality is to beg and grovel at the feet the medical establishment as only they can decide if you are able to control your body, person, and conscious experience.

 

[gtrfvr]

I'd want them saying that I died because certain individuals abused me and I wasn't provided tangible forms of relief

Why would they say that? They cant bring us back. And they're not willing to give everyone everything any of us believes would make us want to live.
Our deaths won't change much. Life is for the living so they'll always focus on the needs and wants of the living as they can't do anything for the dead.

 

[Fragile]

I was ready to read this article and end up with a foul mood. Most mothers that go through this tend to become extremely vindictive and self centered, as we've seen before with certain people.

But what I found was an amazingly written and concise article where a mother has a very grounded and great take on the semantics around this topic. Not only that, but she showed true compassion and acceptance on this and the circumstances around it.

I honestly applaud this article, to take the stance that suicide is not a crime or the ultimate taboo is something that many people should accept.

Also, I don't think that she was blaming an illnesses, rather, she was listing examples of the various circumstances and ailments that tend to push someone to suicide without getting to specifics.

 

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

Why would they say that? They cant bring us back. And they're not willing to give everyone everything any of us believes would make us want to live.
Our deaths won't change much. Life is for the living so they'll always focus on the needs and wants of the living as they can't do anything for the dead.

There are still other people who are alive, are suicidal, and need practical forms of help. If people really wanted to prevent suicide they'd start questioning the current paradigm of suicide "prevention" to elicit change. The modern approach is to sweep the hard questions under the rug and throw about trite words involving awareness and a meaningless phone number which is probably what annoyed me in the first place.

 

[signifying nothing]

The way I see it is that a person does not commit suicide, but they commit to suicide.

 

[demuic]

I do dislike blaming it on a "disease" because that implies that someone is out of touch with reality and if they were not "sick" they would happily continue living when many people have valid and rational reasons for wanting to die which have lead to depression and not just depression which appeared out of nowhere. Blaming it on a sickness is ignoring those causes instead of dealing with them.

While it's good she didn't blame him, I find that to be the bare minimum, so I'm not satisfied with this article.