On Depression, Suicide, and Not Knowing

“Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jail keeper.”
When someone in the public eye takes their own life, speculation about depression and suicide tends to pop up everywhere. People post about everything from important statistics, to personal opinions about the strength of the celebrity’s character, to guidelines for responsible journalism on suicide. But the prevailing topic is often an ongoing debate about whether or not suicide is inherently selfish.
The majority of articles attempt to convey that suicide is not selfish — that people are driven to suicide out of desperation, that those in the throws of deep suicidal depression feel that they are doing their loved ones a favor by leaving, that depression is akin to heart disease and that we should not blame a depressed person for attempting suicide any more than we would blame a cardiac patient for having a heart attack. These articles are then followed by hundreds of comments arguing that suicide is indeed selfish, which are then replied to by those arguing that it is not selfish, and on and on and on.
Why is it so important to put one label on an act made for so many reasons, by so many types of people, in so many different situations?
Perhaps the desperate attempt to classify suicide one way or another is our desire to make sense of something that feels senseless, and to defend against the fear of the unknown. Maybe we feel that we must label or contain the death of others in order to give our own lives a momentary sense of meaning. Or perhaps this debate is our own way of grappling with the struggle within the depressed person: the battle between feeling worthless and needed, between staying and going, between hopelessness and optimism, between being the suffering prisoner and the cruel jail keeper.
Perhaps part of what is missing from the conversation is the overarching truth that depression and suicide and the feelings they evoke are extraordinarily complex and complicated. This is true for those afflicted and for the friends, family, and loved ones of those afflicted. But this is also true for those with less personal experience with depression.
When someone in the public eye commits suicide, it is natural to think, both consciously and unconsciously, about how we would feel if someone we love took their own life. In this moment, there are many emotions that may surface, including abandonment, guilt, fear, anger, jealousy, and relief.
Someone putting themself out of pain reminds us that we still have our own pain. It reminds us that our loved ones are not permanent, that we will all die someday, that we do not have as much control in this crazy world as we wish we had. It reminds us that some experiences are truly unbearable, that we all have profound limitations, and that we are not always powerful enough to save a sufferer from their pain.
By contending that suicide is solely self-serving, do we disregard or minimize the suffering of the person who committed the act? If we decide that suicide is not selfish, do we strip a person of their agency and invalidate the pain and suffering of those left behind?
My feeling is that the importance in insisting that depression is not selfish lies in the fact that mental illness is grossly neglected, misunderstood, and stigmatized by society and the media. By calling it selfish, we place blame within the person and imply that they could have made a different decision, which helps us to feel more in control. But the truth of that statement, that something different could or could not have been done in that moment, is a personal truth that lies individually within each of us, and is a truth that will change from moment to moment.
According to famous psychologist Carl Jung, depression means literally “being forced downwards.” We make our decisions based on the reality we perceive, and as Andrew Solomon put it in this amazing Ted Talk about depression, “You don’t think in depression that you’ve put on a gray veil and are seeing the world through the haze of a bad mood. You think that the veil has been taken away, the veil of happiness, and that now you’re seeing truly.”
At times, it can certainly feel as though we’re all just colluding against the anguish of truth. But I would hypothesize that those who insist that suicide is always selfish are those who don’t fully understand it, either in others or in themselves. And those who insist that suicide is never selfish might be having trouble connecting with the part of them that feels scared and alone.
So instead of attempting to put a vastly complex disorder into a neat and tidy box, I suggest that we sit for just a moment with the discomfort of not knowing, of not having the answers, of not being in control. And instead of insisting that we can understand or classify the internal world of an external other, I propose that we use the experience of others to help us understand our own experiences, feelings, and truths.
What would change if instead of speculating about others, we spoke about our own struggles, difficulties, feelings, decisions, and mental illness? What if instead of calling people selfish or judgmental, we summoned the courage to ask for help during our own difficult times, and to provide help when others are in need?
We should continue to educate ourselves, to have open minds, to think and philosophize, to wonder. But let us always come back to our own experience, because that is the only one we will ever come close to understanding.
What are your thoughts about depression, suicide, and not knowing? The conversation continues in the comments below. For more, follow me on Twitter here.

