> By the time you are contemplating suicide, it's not even close.
This is classic begging the question. One could easily say someone who claims suicide is never a rational option is the altered one. It must be seriously condescending for those trying to help someone contemplating suicide to offer such plainly specious arguments against it, especially if that person is the contemplative type. It likely does more harm than good.
It seems to me that the problem in many situations is that suicide is a permanent response to a temporary problem. In most of these cases, were the person being rational, they would probably consider the expected remainder of their life to be more good than bad.
There are certainly exceptions. Terminal illness is an obvious one. A chronic disease - whether physical or mental - that has few prospects for effective treatment is another. I'm inclined to think that Aaron's legal troubles were not, by themselves enough to make suicide a rational option, though I don't know enough about the situation to be sure. If, however, he concluded that his legal troubles were part of conclusive evidence that the world is a bad place that isn't going to get better, suicide might look more rational to me.
No, if you want to be logical, it's clear that suicide is rarely the right choice, and that it's the suicidal person whose critical thinking abilities are impaired.
It's simple: Most people who feel suicidal are feeling suicidal because of/in conditions which are shared by hundreds, thousands, millions of other people. All you have to do, as a rational actor, to decide if suicide makes sense, is to look at what those other people are making of the same situation. In the case of being prosecuted for white collar crimes, most people go on to take their lumps (deserved or not), then go back to their families and a perfectly reasonable existence. There is life afterwards, plenty of it. In some cases, like fraud and hacking etc., quite a few folks turn their experience on the wrong side of the law into valuable consulting gigs. Humans have been evolutionarily selected for resilience.
And, on the flip side, if we're talking interminable physical pain or a fatal disease which is incurable & will only lead to worse and worse deterioration and an unbearably slow death, you can use the same approach to see that suicide may make sense in that situation, to avoid an inescapable fate that all those other people in the same situation are definitely and verifiably experiencing.
The thing about suicidal depression is it cuts off your ability to think like this. You cannot even IMAGINE a world where things get better, where there's an "After." You feel utterly alone… often because you cut yourself off from people who love you & would help you. You think your pains are so special and unique, nobody could understand, and you may even get angry when people try to help you because they can't possibly "get it". You think they're against you. You imagine how much your death will hurt the parties trying to persecute you (real or imagined). Maybe you even think "I'll show them!" or that you will make a good martyr. All of which is nonsense, even though it's very persuasive nonsense… when you're in a suicidal depression.
That's why suicidal depression is clearly, logically, and provably the impairment.
This is why, if you're even remotely contemplating suicide, you should ALWAYS, ALWAYS reach out and seek help. Because if you make a permanent decision, you will have been working off false information. As one of my favorite authors says, "DEPRESSION LIES."
In most cases, suicide is literally stupid. And such a damn shame.
This is classic begging the question. One could easily say someone who claims suicide is never a rational option is the altered one. It must be seriously condescending for those trying to help someone contemplating suicide to offer such plainly specious arguments against it, especially if that person is the contemplative type. It likely does more harm than good.