Reply #142: The American Association of Suicidology

[Coyote_Bandit]

reports that "about 2/3 of people who complete suicide are depressed at the time of their deaths."

http://www.suicidology.org/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=232&name=DLFE-246.pdf

That means, of course, that one third of the people who complete suicide are NOT depressed at the time of their death.

Depression is a predisposing and modifiable risk factor for suicide. There are other permanent and non-modifiable risk factors (e.g., among others demographics, parental history of violence, substance abuse, divorce or psychiatric disorder). Suicides can be the result of impulsive reckless actions, rage, substance abuse, or revenge seeking among other things. The choice to die by one's own actions can even be heroic (falling on a grenade to save one's colleagues for example).

As a survivor who is directly impacted by a suicide I have the right to honestly experience my feelings - even if that means that I am frickin pissed off at the victim. That act has drastically impacted my life - and that of others - in many different ways. Most of them profoundly negative. Some of those effects will continue for years. I know and love the surviving parents who are elderly and in declining health. I have little trouble imagining that their remaining time will be shortened and shrouded in guilt and grief. My own experience with childhood grief due to the accidental death of a sibling tells me that the surviving children will bear the scars of their father's suicide throughout their lifetime. Those who commit suicide do not live in a vacume. They victimize their survivors. It should come as no surprise that sometimes those survivors are frickin pissed off about it.