A vulnerability to suicidal provocation doesn't predetermine your fate any more than a vulnerability to sodium predetermines your death by heart disease.
Unfortunately, our ignorance of mental illness allows us to chalk deaths from suicide up to "personal choice", when a more complete understanding would allow people who suffer from depression to work with doctors to craft mitigations to the stimuli and circumstances that create suicidal impulses.
Instead, we're like "well, you can spend the week in an in-patient facility, or here are some pills and go try to figure it out on your own."
Exactly. I was just pointing out that even in these early days there are some choices and people can get treatment, and said treatment does work in some cases.
Just saying "it wasn't his fault, he had nothing to do with it" is probably not the best message to send, even if it's actually true when the victim is actually pulling the trigger or jumping off the bridge.
Complementing it with something like "I wish he had had the opportunity to get better" is probably more humane.
Unfortunately, our ignorance of mental illness allows us to chalk deaths from suicide up to "personal choice", when a more complete understanding would allow people who suffer from depression to work with doctors to craft mitigations to the stimuli and circumstances that create suicidal impulses.
Instead, we're like "well, you can spend the week in an in-patient facility, or here are some pills and go try to figure it out on your own."