7 ms·

Ecomom's Founder and CEO Jody Sherman Passes Away

42 points by xijuan 14y ago

neotek 14y ago
If you're feeling this way please just TELL somebody. If you're ready to kill yourself, what more do you have to lose by just letting someone know?
- param 14y ago
  I have seen close friends and relatives work their way through depression (varying levels), so unfortunate as it is, here is the answer (I KNOW the following sounds crazy - even to me - but this is what is considered rational and obvious by suicidal folks) Telling someone makes it likely that they will try to stop you. If you have decided to take your life, the worst thing you want (in some cases) is for someone try and prevent it from happening. Also, depression never leaves you alone, so there will be multiple points in your life where you will think about taking your own life, and you will yourself doubt whether you will go through with it up to the point of pulling the trigger, so you don't want to tell someone and "waste their time" if you are not sure you are going to do it. Its pretty crazy how these things work, and the best way out for me in helping such people has been to physically take them to a professional, every time, every session, until someone certifies them as no longer depressed. Nothing else has worked for me and I know I am not qualified or capable in talking someone out of a suicide attempt.
  - lusr 14y ago
    There are other reasons too. Having been there myself, the big one I've seen in myself and with friends in similar situations is that the depressed individual feels worthless and "unfixable" at their core because of their: - past behaviour (e.g. they did something considered seriously socially unacceptable and feel they can't tell anybody lest they be ostracised forever, or people already know about it and they are ostracised leading to feelings of no hope of escape); or - past experiences (e.g. they have a string of failed relationships they feel responsible for and believe they'll never be happy and every day seeing happy couples on Facebook or in the shopping mall is like a stab in the heart). At the root of it is hopelessness, which also covers: - future expectations (e.g. they're trapped in a very bad situation, e.g. money, relationship, crime, etc., and can see no way of escape) In these desperate situations, they feel too guilty, hopeless, ashamed and/or disgusted to discuss their circumstances with anybody, and besides, in their minds, it wouldn't accomplish anything because they "know" they're broken ("I can't live with myself after what I did", "Alice was the only person who could love somebody like me", etc.) or screwed ("I can't go to prison", "If anybody ever finds out I'll never get a decent job/lover ever again", "Nobody can replace Alice, I screwed up forever", etc.) and there's no way out. Perhaps the saddest thing about suicidal depression is that many (note: I'm not claiming all, or even a majority, OR in the case of Aaron OR Jody, simply 'many'!) of these scenarios seem to stem from a dysfunctional belief system and a lack of introspective coping skills that I imagine could easily be taught, in the form of life skills based on cognitive behavioural therapy, to school teenage children. Many parents lack these skills (through no fault of their own), and pass dysfunctional beliefs and thought processes onto their children (entirely unconsciously). It's fascinating to me that such a serious problem - the #2 non-biological cause of death, behind road traffic accidents - receives so little real attention [1]. People get upset about wars, murders, have extensive fire safety requirements, covers for their pools, hide their poison and medicines from children, panic over their children being abducted or falling pregnant etc., yet suicidal depression? I don't believe I knew a thing about it until I had to learn quickly - to help myself. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate
    - robg 14y ago
      And the most recent study suggest suicide has now passed car accidents. http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/09/20/suicide-now-kills-more-americans-than-car-crashes-study http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/09/2...
      - mikecane 14y ago
        On Twitter, I would follow a 911 tweeter. I could not believe how many people were killing themselves by jumping from heights in NYC. And they never made the MSM news at all.
  - xijuan 14y ago
    I don't think he necessarily means that the person should tell someone his/her suicidal thoughts. I think he means that the person should tell someone about his/her troubles and worries so that others may provide help and support for that the depressed person. I think no one really really wants to die. People choose to end their lives because they feel there is no other way to ease their pain, emotional or physical. But if others tell them that there is a way to get better, they will choose to live.
    - JabavuAdams 14y ago
      The problem is that if you don't tell someone else you're actually suicidal, you tend to get a lot of well meaning feel-good advice. We naturally give people the benefit of the doubt. Bystander effect, etc.
  - andyjohnson0 14y ago
    "Telling someone makes it likely that they will try to stop you." I think this is a likely reason, along with feeling of low self worth (feeling irredeemably "unfixable" as lusr described it [1]), or not having any fiends or family that they can tell. The best thing is to talk to someone. Ideally a mental health professional, or failing that a friend or relation. But if a suicidal person feels that this would diminish their control over their life then I would urge them to phone a crisis line (list here: [2]). They keep their anonymity and control while giving themselves the chance of a way out of the immediate crisis, hopefully enabling them to get to the point where they can confide in someone and get help. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138789 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
    - philwelch 14y ago
      This is unlikely to be a convincing argument to a genuinely suicidal person. A crisis line's purpose is to prevent suicide. If you're suicidal, talking to those people sounds suspiciously like those all-expense-paid free vacations where they try to sell you timeshares. Actually, that's the fundamental problem with this whole discussion. Stopping suicide means stopping people from doing what they want to do, literally with their own life, just because you don't want them to do it. With loved ones perhaps it's understandable, but what standing does some stranger on a crisis line have to try and do that?
      - thatperson 14y ago
        You're a fucking idiot. Those hotlines are the only people who understand and the anonymity is the only way depressed people will probably talk about it Particularly entrepreneurs.
        philwelch 14y ago
        Don't be a dick.
        andyjohnson0 14y ago
  - JabavuAdams 14y ago
    > Also, depression never leaves you alone, so there will be multiple points in your life where you will think about taking your own life, and you will yourself doubt whether you will go through with it up to the point of pulling the trigger, so you don't want to tell someone and "waste their time" if you are not sure you are going to do it. This is not true, though I agree that this is how the afflicted might see it. I've had depression and suicidal thoughts. Now I don't. A combination of ambition, temporary setbacks, and treatable medical problems / drug interactions were at fault. Now I don't feel suicidal. I sometimes feel sad, but never depressed. If anything -- the few bouts of depression I had were something like a crucible. I've looked into the abyss, broken down, and now I know that I can put myself back together again. It's actually kind of liberating and focusing. There is hope!
- philwelch 14y ago
  Among other things, the freedom to kill yourself.
  - JabavuAdams 14y ago
    This is something we're going to have to grapple with as a society. Having been suicidal, I can tell you that to my current mind-state, my suicidal mind-state's rationale was laughably bad. The dangerous thing is that it didn't feel that way at the time. It. Felt. Crystal. Clear. I'm a smart guy. I don't want anyone telling me that my thinking is flawed. I certainly don't like the idea of someone else coercing me into treatment, given the history of abuse. That said, suicide would have been a terrible mistake. Perversely, it would have greatly harmed some of those I was trying to protect.
- Pyrrhuloxia 14y ago
  One thing to keep in mind is that when a person is depressed or manic they are not thinking in what you might consider a "logical" way, or in a way that treats events with proper proportion and perspective. Thoughts can be very disorganized, small defeats can seem like crushing blows, minor slights can seem like significant insults, and you may feel unworthy of help or assume that nobody is willing to provide it.
- strlen 14y ago
  From what I read there are several causes of suicide: * Legitimate reasons, e.g., you're a French resistance fighter captured by Gestapo and if you speak under torture innocent people will be deported to Auschwitz (okay, had to "Godwin" this preemptively); you are elderly and are terminally ill with a very painful illness and want to die with dignity. I think suicide should be legal and legitimate for individuals in truly unescapable circumstances. The exception could be those who commit suicide to escape retribution, but we should ask deeper questions of why individuals prefer death to imprisonment if (historically) death penalty has been a greater deterrent and is today reserved only for the most heinous crimes (in other words, if don't feel an individual has committed a crime heinous enough to warrant death, why is that we find it to inflict punishment considered by many to be worse than death?) The key way to reduce suicide cause by these reasons in a first world society is to fight its causes which are already societal ills even when they do not lead to society (reduce brutality in prisons and offer better rehabilitation programs for convicts, actively work to fight terminal illness, have a better societal safety net, etc...) * You are making a cry for help, you want people to notice you, and to intervene. Generally people in those circumstances attempt suicide in public, write a suicide note, and use means that are known to be reversible (pills that don't act instantly, public attempts, etc...). I think this is where the most common means (e.g., suicide prevention hotlines) work very well. * Bipolar or unipolar depression, negative symptoms of schizophrenia: in this case, no one may even know that you're planning to take your own life, there's seldom a note left, and the method used is usually more certain (e.g., firearm, actually toxic drugs). Gun control is not the solution either -- it may or may not be a valid route to violence prevention (this is an entirely different topic) -- it is nearly impossible to obtain firearms in Belarus (my home country) and very difficult to do so in Japan, but these countries still have a very high suicide rates despite being (respectively) second and first world countries (i.e., there are certainly problems, but there is no mass starvation, civil war, genocide, etc... going on). I don't know Jody, but it's possible that the latter is what indeed happened here. When such a person is suicidal it's already too late: the best way to help them is to remove societal stigma against the mentally ill. If we take the illness paradigm seriously, then they will then be able to get help early on and lead happier lives; an obvious parallel is with epilepsy, we stopped seeing it a curse from Apollo and began to seriously research and understand its physiological causes. Society needs to understand that far more often even the most stigmatized illnesses (schizophrenia, bipolar type I a.k.a. "manic-depressive") are characterized by the negative symptoms (inability to experience pleasure, inability to focus, apathy, etc...). The media is far too focused on the positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, mania, etc...) and portrays the suffers of these illnesses as prone to violence or bizarre acts; even the films that are generally commended for positive portrayal of mental illness do this. Reality is that the negative symptoms are more prevalent and hurt their suffers worse. Society needs to re-focus the image and allow these individuals to get help without fearing a permanent stigma and loss of civil rights. From a harm prevention point of view mentally ill individuals are more likely to be victims of violence than its perpetrators, so while violence committed by mentally ill makes headlines, if we're playing a "greater good for greater number of people" game it's better to err on the side of allowing individuals with positive symptoms to remain unrestrained than to force individuals with negative symptoms into hiding (out of fear that they'll be involuntarily committed). I am very lucky in that my family has no history of mental illness. Yet, research seems to indicate that the intelligence and mental illness are tied together; in today's society intelligence is more important to evolutionary success than ever before (this can be seen through Flynn effect), so mental illness will most likely become more common in the future. It might even become endemic to certain area, e.g., Bay Area where someone who is not a knowledge worker will soon be unable to afford a place to live.
- arn 14y ago
  Depression is very much a bug in the system. But for various reasons people don't see it that way. If someone has a heart attack, we don't say "why didn't the body just increase blood flow to the heart." Yet if someone commits suicide, people ask why they didn't just change their behavior. While some people are against psychiatric or other medications, their goal is to fix or compensate for the bugs in the system.
- LatvjuAvs 14y ago
  Why suicide is bad thing?
  - hermannj314 14y ago
    It depends on how you define bad. On whole, it isn't (based on my personal definition of 'bad'). The power to control your own destiny, to choose the manner and date of your death is a great freedom that should not be deprived to anyone willing to exercise it. Sometimes, the world is a hopeless place and the future holds little for you. But that is for you to decide, not someone commenting on the internet. Sometimes, your life is great, and you want to end on that highnote and not watch it slowly erode. I won't judge a stranger as good or bad based on their life choices, because I am not their judge. I had a grandfather that chose to drive to a park, watch a beautiful sunset, and finish it off with a shotgun. He was not a bad man, he didn't need to be "cured", in fact, he probably had 10 years of life ahead of him, but he chose not to live it. And that is a beautiful choice, just one of the infinite number of choices any of us can make.
  - JabavuAdams 14y ago
    Because it's irreversible, and people contemplating suicide are often being impulsive or illogical, yet feel as though they are being completely logical. Maybe they're chronically sleep-deprived, or having a vitamin deficiency or drug-interaction. The problem is that they will think they are making a decision of their own free will. This is why things that affect your very thinking are so insidious. Think of sleep deprivation or hypoxia. Ever watched a video of someone trying to draw simple shapes while not getting enough oxygen? The crucial point is that they think they are okay. When I was feeling suicidal it seemed like the only logical solution to a set of unsatisfiable constraints. However, none of these were particularly hard constraints. As a relatively privileged person I was ashamed to reach out for help, because I felt I was letting everybody down. Don't be ashamed. It can do weird things like convincing you that it's better to kill yourself than inconvenience your self and others by e.g. quitting a job, or failing some courses. To make a coding analogy -- sometimes your client / management etc. tells you they want X and Y and Z. The set of solutions to X and Y and Z is empty. However, if the constraints were relaxed, X and Y is solvable. Y and Z is also solvable. Maybe they didn't really want X anyway. This closing down of options seems to be a common pattern, however it's often false. Very few people are actively being tortured to the point where death is the only logical escape. Typically, there's more of a spiral inward where more and more options disappear until only one seems to be left. Typically there are so many steps along this path that removing a few constraints or realizing that they're not really there can make all the difference.
- JabavuAdams 14y ago
  Shame is a powerful thing. To someone who's considering suicide, death can actually be more appealing than telling anyone about how they've lost another job, failed another course, etc. etc.
treelovinhippie 14y ago
I hate to get analytical here, but is anyone tracking the suicides of founders? Is it higher than average or are we just seeing more news bubble-up after Swartz?
- NyxWulf 14y ago
  When I was in high school one of the students committed suicide. There was a lot of discussion and outreach at the school at the time. One of the things they talked about was that once one student commits suicide it greatly increases the chances that others will follow. My mother is also a social worker at the VA Hospital, and she's had some of her patients opt out so to speak. It does appear to have a very strong pull on other people who are suicidal to choose that path. So if anyone reading this is having those thoughts, please, please talk to someone professionally. Call the suicide hotline in your area. There are very real things that can be done to help you through this.
  - duaneb 14y ago
    > One of the things they talked about was that once one student commits suicide it greatly increases the chances that others will follow. I've observed this myself. The effects of suicide are insidious but brutal: if you think nobody will be affected you're deluding yourself.
- Pyrrhuloxia 14y ago
  I don't have a lot of data on this, but I recall reading that one significant factor involved in increased incidence of suicide is when there is a great discrepancy between personal expectations and actual achievements. Along with this it was mentioned that there is a higher rate of suicide in wealthier societies than poor ones, and among graduates from prestigious universities than average ones. As a result I suppose it would not be an unreasonable hypothesis that entrepreneurs (who might have very lofty goals) might be more likely to commit suicide if they are either unsuccessful at sustaining a business or are successful, but never achieve the level of success that they had expected of themselves.
- robg 14y ago
xijuan 14y ago
Rest in peace, Jody.
djt 14y ago
requiescat in pace
- RobertHoudin 14y ago
  I'm curious. Was there a reason to write that in Latin, other than to be pretentious?
  - alanctgardner2 14y ago
    Getting on the pretension train: the latin is "may he rest in peace", which I like better and find less pushy than "rest in peace". It's not imperative, it's imploring $deity or the universe to ease their passing. Rest in peace is a backronym of RIP anyways.
  - djt 14y ago
    It is the original phrase. It just so happens that Rest in Peace is a approximate translation that caught on because its english and understood.
alberthartman 14y ago
The risks of the high wire act, the vertical mountain wall climbing is that you can fall. We need to think up workable nets and ropes for people pushing the edges.
- onemorepassword 14y ago
  Two thoughts come to mind. (And that's all they are, just thoughts, possibly contradictory ones at that.) One, we're all climbing the vertical mountain wall. It's called life. This even applies to those who seem to have it easy. Suicide is not limited to high flyers. Two, pushing the edges and suicidal thoughts often have the same roots. And I'm not just talking bipolar.
PeterisP 14y ago
Before suicide was announced, it was my gut feeling (not knowing him at all) based on the earlier msuster's post about him that mentioned a recent tattoo 'I'm awesome' on his hand. When reading that, it struck me as a very disturbing signal indicating problems and suicide risk. I mean, IMHO you make such a tattoo if you're (a) young, stupid and drunk, in which case you might do anything whatsoever or (b) you have a serious internal hurt or a selfesteem issue - and a temporary, fluctuating one, since you felt awesome when you made it, but you knew that you often feel not awesome and need to be reminded of it. Which is something that really correlates to people with clinical depression episodes or bipolar episodes - that also are a big suicide risk. Maybe I'm oversensitive to such signals since I've been thinking a lot about these diseases, but they should matter.
kriro 14y ago
I have to wonder if the flood of posts about suicide on a site like HN might actually push someone over the edge. There were quite a few Aaron Swartz related threads and "let's save his legacy" etc. type posts. I'm picturing someone that is depressed, followed those weeks on HN and is thinking to themselves "well if I kill myself people will remember" Maybe I'm just a cynic though.
- omonra 14y ago
  I thought of the same thing. There is actually a term 'suicide epidemic' and it's happened in the past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_epidemic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_epidemic The basic idea being that public coverage of a suicide may prompt others who are considering it to follow.
mikecane 14y ago
Anyone out there reading this who might want to do the same thing: Don't. It's not hopeless.
- pekk 14y ago
  What I hear is that you would rather people just suffered in silence rather than drawing attention and inconveniencing you with their suicides. We shouldn't treat people like shit and refuse to help them with their suffering, then complain bitterly when they commit suicide. When this happens, it is our failure as a society.
  - throwit1979 14y ago
    Yes, the anti-suicide brigade is out in full force today. It's their decision. There are myriad reasons someone may want to end his/her life. It's not the role of someone not in the headspace of the suicider to comment on what they're going through. It's astounding that so many people want to restrict the freedom of others to be released from suffering.
    - mikecane 14y ago
      >>>to be released from suffering The suffering is too often imaginary, do you understand that?
      - thatperson 14y ago
        our concept of reality is imaginary. just look at the differences in what is culturally acceptable versus not in cultures across the world. reality is imaginary. do You understand that?

42 points by xijuan 14y ago

If you're feeling this way please just TELL somebody. If you're ready to kill yourself, what more do you have to lose by just letting someone know?

param 14y ago
I have seen close friends and relatives work their way through depression (varying levels), so unfortunate as it is, here is the answer (I KNOW the following sounds crazy - even to me - but this is what is considered rational and obvious by suicidal folks) Telling someone makes it likely that they will try to stop you. If you have decided to take your life, the worst thing you want (in some cases) is for someone try and prevent it from happening. Also, depression never leaves you alone, so there will be multiple points in your life where you will think about taking your own life, and you will yourself doubt whether you will go through with it up to the point of pulling the trigger, so you don't want to tell someone and "waste their time" if you are not sure you are going to do it. Its pretty crazy how these things work, and the best way out for me in helping such people has been to physically take them to a professional, every time, every session, until someone certifies them as no longer depressed. Nothing else has worked for me and I know I am not qualified or capable in talking someone out of a suicide attempt.
- lusr 14y ago
  There are other reasons too. Having been there myself, the big one I've seen in myself and with friends in similar situations is that the depressed individual feels worthless and "unfixable" at their core because of their: - past behaviour (e.g. they did something considered seriously socially unacceptable and feel they can't tell anybody lest they be ostracised forever, or people already know about it and they are ostracised leading to feelings of no hope of escape); or - past experiences (e.g. they have a string of failed relationships they feel responsible for and believe they'll never be happy and every day seeing happy couples on Facebook or in the shopping mall is like a stab in the heart). At the root of it is hopelessness, which also covers: - future expectations (e.g. they're trapped in a very bad situation, e.g. money, relationship, crime, etc., and can see no way of escape) In these desperate situations, they feel too guilty, hopeless, ashamed and/or disgusted to discuss their circumstances with anybody, and besides, in their minds, it wouldn't accomplish anything because they "know" they're broken ("I can't live with myself after what I did", "Alice was the only person who could love somebody like me", etc.) or screwed ("I can't go to prison", "If anybody ever finds out I'll never get a decent job/lover ever again", "Nobody can replace Alice, I screwed up forever", etc.) and there's no way out. Perhaps the saddest thing about suicidal depression is that many (note: I'm not claiming all, or even a majority, OR in the case of Aaron OR Jody, simply 'many'!) of these scenarios seem to stem from a dysfunctional belief system and a lack of introspective coping skills that I imagine could easily be taught, in the form of life skills based on cognitive behavioural therapy, to school teenage children. Many parents lack these skills (through no fault of their own), and pass dysfunctional beliefs and thought processes onto their children (entirely unconsciously). It's fascinating to me that such a serious problem - the #2 non-biological cause of death, behind road traffic accidents - receives so little real attention [1]. People get upset about wars, murders, have extensive fire safety requirements, covers for their pools, hide their poison and medicines from children, panic over their children being abducted or falling pregnant etc., yet suicidal depression? I don't believe I knew a thing about it until I had to learn quickly - to help myself. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate
  - robg 14y ago
    And the most recent study suggest suicide has now passed car accidents. http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/09/20/suicide-now-kills-more-americans-than-car-crashes-study http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/09/2...
    - mikecane 14y ago
      On Twitter, I would follow a 911 tweeter. I could not believe how many people were killing themselves by jumping from heights in NYC. And they never made the MSM news at all.
- xijuan 14y ago
  I don't think he necessarily means that the person should tell someone his/her suicidal thoughts. I think he means that the person should tell someone about his/her troubles and worries so that others may provide help and support for that the depressed person. I think no one really really wants to die. People choose to end their lives because they feel there is no other way to ease their pain, emotional or physical. But if others tell them that there is a way to get better, they will choose to live.
  - JabavuAdams 14y ago
    The problem is that if you don't tell someone else you're actually suicidal, you tend to get a lot of well meaning feel-good advice. We naturally give people the benefit of the doubt. Bystander effect, etc.
- andyjohnson0 14y ago
  "Telling someone makes it likely that they will try to stop you." I think this is a likely reason, along with feeling of low self worth (feeling irredeemably "unfixable" as lusr described it [1]), or not having any fiends or family that they can tell. The best thing is to talk to someone. Ideally a mental health professional, or failing that a friend or relation. But if a suicidal person feels that this would diminish their control over their life then I would urge them to phone a crisis line (list here: [2]). They keep their anonymity and control while giving themselves the chance of a way out of the immediate crisis, hopefully enabling them to get to the point where they can confide in someone and get help. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138789 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
  - philwelch 14y ago
    This is unlikely to be a convincing argument to a genuinely suicidal person. A crisis line's purpose is to prevent suicide. If you're suicidal, talking to those people sounds suspiciously like those all-expense-paid free vacations where they try to sell you timeshares. Actually, that's the fundamental problem with this whole discussion. Stopping suicide means stopping people from doing what they want to do, literally with their own life, just because you don't want them to do it. With loved ones perhaps it's understandable, but what standing does some stranger on a crisis line have to try and do that?
    - thatperson 14y ago
      You're a fucking idiot. Those hotlines are the only people who understand and the anonymity is the only way depressed people will probably talk about it Particularly entrepreneurs.
      - philwelch 14y ago
        Don't be a dick.
      - andyjohnson0 14y ago
- JabavuAdams 14y ago
  > Also, depression never leaves you alone, so there will be multiple points in your life where you will think about taking your own life, and you will yourself doubt whether you will go through with it up to the point of pulling the trigger, so you don't want to tell someone and "waste their time" if you are not sure you are going to do it. This is not true, though I agree that this is how the afflicted might see it. I've had depression and suicidal thoughts. Now I don't. A combination of ambition, temporary setbacks, and treatable medical problems / drug interactions were at fault. Now I don't feel suicidal. I sometimes feel sad, but never depressed. If anything -- the few bouts of depression I had were something like a crucible. I've looked into the abyss, broken down, and now I know that I can put myself back together again. It's actually kind of liberating and focusing. There is hope!
philwelch 14y ago
Among other things, the freedom to kill yourself.
- JabavuAdams 14y ago
  This is something we're going to have to grapple with as a society. Having been suicidal, I can tell you that to my current mind-state, my suicidal mind-state's rationale was laughably bad. The dangerous thing is that it didn't feel that way at the time. It. Felt. Crystal. Clear. I'm a smart guy. I don't want anyone telling me that my thinking is flawed. I certainly don't like the idea of someone else coercing me into treatment, given the history of abuse. That said, suicide would have been a terrible mistake. Perversely, it would have greatly harmed some of those I was trying to protect.
Pyrrhuloxia 14y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that when a person is depressed or manic they are not thinking in what you might consider a "logical" way, or in a way that treats events with proper proportion and perspective. Thoughts can be very disorganized, small defeats can seem like crushing blows, minor slights can seem like significant insults, and you may feel unworthy of help or assume that nobody is willing to provide it.
strlen 14y ago
From what I read there are several causes of suicide: * Legitimate reasons, e.g., you're a French resistance fighter captured by Gestapo and if you speak under torture innocent people will be deported to Auschwitz (okay, had to "Godwin" this preemptively); you are elderly and are terminally ill with a very painful illness and want to die with dignity. I think suicide should be legal and legitimate for individuals in truly unescapable circumstances. The exception could be those who commit suicide to escape retribution, but we should ask deeper questions of why individuals prefer death to imprisonment if (historically) death penalty has been a greater deterrent and is today reserved only for the most heinous crimes (in other words, if don't feel an individual has committed a crime heinous enough to warrant death, why is that we find it to inflict punishment considered by many to be worse than death?) The key way to reduce suicide cause by these reasons in a first world society is to fight its causes which are already societal ills even when they do not lead to society (reduce brutality in prisons and offer better rehabilitation programs for convicts, actively work to fight terminal illness, have a better societal safety net, etc...) * You are making a cry for help, you want people to notice you, and to intervene. Generally people in those circumstances attempt suicide in public, write a suicide note, and use means that are known to be reversible (pills that don't act instantly, public attempts, etc...). I think this is where the most common means (e.g., suicide prevention hotlines) work very well. * Bipolar or unipolar depression, negative symptoms of schizophrenia: in this case, no one may even know that you're planning to take your own life, there's seldom a note left, and the method used is usually more certain (e.g., firearm, actually toxic drugs). Gun control is not the solution either -- it may or may not be a valid route to violence prevention (this is an entirely different topic) -- it is nearly impossible to obtain firearms in Belarus (my home country) and very difficult to do so in Japan, but these countries still have a very high suicide rates despite being (respectively) second and first world countries (i.e., there are certainly problems, but there is no mass starvation, civil war, genocide, etc... going on). I don't know Jody, but it's possible that the latter is what indeed happened here. When such a person is suicidal it's already too late: the best way to help them is to remove societal stigma against the mentally ill. If we take the illness paradigm seriously, then they will then be able to get help early on and lead happier lives; an obvious parallel is with epilepsy, we stopped seeing it a curse from Apollo and began to seriously research and understand its physiological causes. Society needs to understand that far more often even the most stigmatized illnesses (schizophrenia, bipolar type I a.k.a. "manic-depressive") are characterized by the negative symptoms (inability to experience pleasure, inability to focus, apathy, etc...). The media is far too focused on the positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, mania, etc...) and portrays the suffers of these illnesses as prone to violence or bizarre acts; even the films that are generally commended for positive portrayal of mental illness do this. Reality is that the negative symptoms are more prevalent and hurt their suffers worse. Society needs to re-focus the image and allow these individuals to get help without fearing a permanent stigma and loss of civil rights. From a harm prevention point of view mentally ill individuals are more likely to be victims of violence than its perpetrators, so while violence committed by mentally ill makes headlines, if we're playing a "greater good for greater number of people" game it's better to err on the side of allowing individuals with positive symptoms to remain unrestrained than to force individuals with negative symptoms into hiding (out of fear that they'll be involuntarily committed). I am very lucky in that my family has no history of mental illness. Yet, research seems to indicate that the intelligence and mental illness are tied together; in today's society intelligence is more important to evolutionary success than ever before (this can be seen through Flynn effect), so mental illness will most likely become more common in the future. It might even become endemic to certain area, e.g., Bay Area where someone who is not a knowledge worker will soon be unable to afford a place to live.
arn 14y ago
Depression is very much a bug in the system. But for various reasons people don't see it that way. If someone has a heart attack, we don't say "why didn't the body just increase blood flow to the heart." Yet if someone commits suicide, people ask why they didn't just change their behavior. While some people are against psychiatric or other medications, their goal is to fix or compensate for the bugs in the system.
LatvjuAvs 14y ago
Why suicide is bad thing?
- hermannj314 14y ago
  It depends on how you define bad. On whole, it isn't (based on my personal definition of 'bad'). The power to control your own destiny, to choose the manner and date of your death is a great freedom that should not be deprived to anyone willing to exercise it. Sometimes, the world is a hopeless place and the future holds little for you. But that is for you to decide, not someone commenting on the internet. Sometimes, your life is great, and you want to end on that highnote and not watch it slowly erode. I won't judge a stranger as good or bad based on their life choices, because I am not their judge. I had a grandfather that chose to drive to a park, watch a beautiful sunset, and finish it off with a shotgun. He was not a bad man, he didn't need to be "cured", in fact, he probably had 10 years of life ahead of him, but he chose not to live it. And that is a beautiful choice, just one of the infinite number of choices any of us can make.
- JabavuAdams 14y ago
  Because it's irreversible, and people contemplating suicide are often being impulsive or illogical, yet feel as though they are being completely logical. Maybe they're chronically sleep-deprived, or having a vitamin deficiency or drug-interaction. The problem is that they will think they are making a decision of their own free will. This is why things that affect your very thinking are so insidious. Think of sleep deprivation or hypoxia. Ever watched a video of someone trying to draw simple shapes while not getting enough oxygen? The crucial point is that they think they are okay. When I was feeling suicidal it seemed like the only logical solution to a set of unsatisfiable constraints. However, none of these were particularly hard constraints. As a relatively privileged person I was ashamed to reach out for help, because I felt I was letting everybody down. Don't be ashamed. It can do weird things like convincing you that it's better to kill yourself than inconvenience your self and others by e.g. quitting a job, or failing some courses. To make a coding analogy -- sometimes your client / management etc. tells you they want X and Y and Z. The set of solutions to X and Y and Z is empty. However, if the constraints were relaxed, X and Y is solvable. Y and Z is also solvable. Maybe they didn't really want X anyway. This closing down of options seems to be a common pattern, however it's often false. Very few people are actively being tortured to the point where death is the only logical escape. Typically, there's more of a spiral inward where more and more options disappear until only one seems to be left. Typically there are so many steps along this path that removing a few constraints or realizing that they're not really there can make all the difference.
JabavuAdams 14y ago
Shame is a powerful thing. To someone who's considering suicide, death can actually be more appealing than telling anyone about how they've lost another job, failed another course, etc. etc.

treelovinhippie 14y ago

I hate to get analytical here, but is anyone tracking the suicides of founders? Is it higher than average or are we just seeing more news bubble-up after Swartz?

NyxWulf 14y ago
When I was in high school one of the students committed suicide. There was a lot of discussion and outreach at the school at the time. One of the things they talked about was that once one student commits suicide it greatly increases the chances that others will follow. My mother is also a social worker at the VA Hospital, and she's had some of her patients opt out so to speak. It does appear to have a very strong pull on other people who are suicidal to choose that path. So if anyone reading this is having those thoughts, please, please talk to someone professionally. Call the suicide hotline in your area. There are very real things that can be done to help you through this.
- duaneb 14y ago
  > One of the things they talked about was that once one student commits suicide it greatly increases the chances that others will follow. I've observed this myself. The effects of suicide are insidious but brutal: if you think nobody will be affected you're deluding yourself.
Pyrrhuloxia 14y ago
I don't have a lot of data on this, but I recall reading that one significant factor involved in increased incidence of suicide is when there is a great discrepancy between personal expectations and actual achievements. Along with this it was mentioned that there is a higher rate of suicide in wealthier societies than poor ones, and among graduates from prestigious universities than average ones. As a result I suppose it would not be an unreasonable hypothesis that entrepreneurs (who might have very lofty goals) might be more likely to commit suicide if they are either unsuccessful at sustaining a business or are successful, but never achieve the level of success that they had expected of themselves.
robg 14y ago

xijuan 14y ago

Rest in peace, Jody.

djt 14y ago

requiescat in pace

RobertHoudin 14y ago
I'm curious. Was there a reason to write that in Latin, other than to be pretentious?
- alanctgardner2 14y ago
  Getting on the pretension train: the latin is "may he rest in peace", which I like better and find less pushy than "rest in peace". It's not imperative, it's imploring $deity or the universe to ease their passing. Rest in peace is a backronym of RIP anyways.
- djt 14y ago
  It is the original phrase. It just so happens that Rest in Peace is a approximate translation that caught on because its english and understood.

alberthartman 14y ago

The risks of the high wire act, the vertical mountain wall climbing is that you can fall. We need to think up workable nets and ropes for people pushing the edges.

onemorepassword 14y ago
Two thoughts come to mind. (And that's all they are, just thoughts, possibly contradictory ones at that.) One, we're all climbing the vertical mountain wall. It's called life. This even applies to those who seem to have it easy. Suicide is not limited to high flyers. Two, pushing the edges and suicidal thoughts often have the same roots. And I'm not just talking bipolar.

PeterisP 14y ago

Before suicide was announced, it was my gut feeling (not knowing him at all) based on the earlier msuster's post about him that mentioned a recent tattoo 'I'm awesome' on his hand. When reading that, it struck me as a very disturbing signal indicating problems and suicide risk. I mean, IMHO you make such a tattoo if you're (a) young, stupid and drunk, in which case you might do anything whatsoever or (b) you have a serious internal hurt or a selfesteem issue - and a temporary, fluctuating one, since you felt awesome when you made it, but you knew that you often feel not awesome and need to be reminded of it. Which is something that really correlates to people with clinical depression episodes or bipolar episodes - that also are a big suicide risk. Maybe I'm oversensitive to such signals since I've been thinking a lot about these diseases, but they should matter.

kriro 14y ago

I have to wonder if the flood of posts about suicide on a site like HN might actually push someone over the edge. There were quite a few Aaron Swartz related threads and "let's save his legacy" etc. type posts. I'm picturing someone that is depressed, followed those weeks on HN and is thinking to themselves "well if I kill myself people will remember" Maybe I'm just a cynic though.

omonra 14y ago
I thought of the same thing. There is actually a term 'suicide epidemic' and it's happened in the past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_epidemic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_epidemic The basic idea being that public coverage of a suicide may prompt others who are considering it to follow.

mikecane 14y ago

Anyone out there reading this who might want to do the same thing: Don't. It's not hopeless.

pekk 14y ago
What I hear is that you would rather people just suffered in silence rather than drawing attention and inconveniencing you with their suicides. We shouldn't treat people like shit and refuse to help them with their suffering, then complain bitterly when they commit suicide. When this happens, it is our failure as a society.
- throwit1979 14y ago
  Yes, the anti-suicide brigade is out in full force today. It's their decision. There are myriad reasons someone may want to end his/her life. It's not the role of someone not in the headspace of the suicider to comment on what they're going through. It's astounding that so many people want to restrict the freedom of others to be released from suffering.
  - mikecane 14y ago
    >>>to be released from suffering The suffering is too often imaginary, do you understand that?
    - thatperson 14y ago
      our concept of reality is imaginary. just look at the differences in what is culturally acceptable versus not in cultures across the world. reality is imaginary. do You understand that?