Is suicide selfish?

This story is brought to you by Ascend Mental Health Center, which diagnoses and treats adults and children who are suffering from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, suicidal behaviors, self-harm, ADHD, autism, substance abuse and many other mental health concerns.

“It fixes their problem and leaves everyone else in pain forever.”

“If they really wanted to be dead, they would have done it by now.”

“Don’t stay alive for other people. That’s a terrible reason. Stay alive for you.”

I’ve heard all these phrases, many times, and they all ring hollow. For 14 years now, I’ve been meeting suicidal people and trying to help them choose to stay alive.

“One day more,” I say. “Do the next right thing” and, “No, I can’t promise it will get better — I just know it’s possible, and I hope it will. I hope you stay alive for that chance.”

Even as a seasoned psychiatrist, I can’t prevent suicides. But I can listen, and I can try.

Is suicide selfish? I get how you might think so. It is doing something that ends a problem for one person and causes problems for others – so the reasoning makes sense. It’s just wrong.

It’s similar to thinking that suicide attempts are a “cry for attention.”

Most every suicidal person I know doesn’t want attention. They hate attention. They don’t want to be noticed. They already feel like they are the problem. Everyone’s life is worse because they exist. They believe their parents, spouse, coworkers, friends and more would all be better off if they themselves were gone. Then all those people could stop worrying, stop “wasting time” and move on with their lives. They think if they were dead, everyone else could finally be happy.

My suicidal patients are certain that their own life will never improve, and that they are personally a burden on others, a hindrance to happiness. Suicide, in their mind, is the least selfish thing they could do. Dying helps others (they believe), so their death would really be selfless. In their mind it becomes their duty to die, so that others may truly live.

That’s how distorted their thinking gets. I’ve watched it time and time again. Every loved one who says “I want you to live, please live” makes them feel worse because it just proves to them how much pain and worry they are causing others.

I’m not suggesting we stop telling our depressed loved ones we want them to live — I’m just pointing out how their minds can distort any positive statement into a negative one. So don’t worry so much about what you say, because you can’t control how they interpret it.

We don’t always know how to help. We don’t always know what to say. We can’t control someone else’s actions or force them to live. But we can listen. We can work to understand them. We can stop assuming we know why they feel suicidal and instead ask them. Often we can’t change anything in their life. We can’t take away the traumatic event or the depression or give them their job back or erase the legal charges or whatever may be stressing them at the moment.

But we can listen, we can offer empathy and we can stop assuming that their desire to be gone has anything to do with selfishness.