> "a straw that broke the camel's back"
I think you're asking people to oscillate between two poles of a continuum.
The indictment of Aaron Swartz was very clearly, and i think uncontroversially, a life altering experience for Swartz. So I think that Taren, the OP and Aaron's GF, are probably correct on the substance. I think that even if you want to say that the prosecution wasn't the only factor, it is something that moved the needle in Swartz's life, and pushed everything not just a little bit closer (e.g. this was not a straw), but a lot closer to a suicidal event.
Did it occur to you that the facts with which you are acquainted are not the relevant ones?
Indeed, if you're talking about laying the blame for Aaron's suicide on the feet of Carmen Ortiz, isn't it patently ridiculous to consider the intimate facts of his situation relevant? Are we now to charge prosecutors with being sensitive to the details of the personal lives of the people which they prosecute?
I will muster every ounce of decorum I can manage in responding to some random person's rebuttal to a post written by someone who actually knew and lived with Aaron (seriously, what are you thinking?!), and simply retort:
"That program crashed because it halted. It was the proximate cause of its own crash so to speak. Are there other factors without which it wouldn't have crashed? Indeed, there are an infinite number of them. An infinite number of things could have happened to change the course of the program execution. Indeed, ultimately you can trace the blame all the way back to the program's previous versions (the bug is quite heritable)."
Your comment is not enlightening. It is not insightful. It falls flat on its face if you bother to do even two minutes' Googling to find that while somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 Americans suffer from depression (http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/ http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/), "only" 38,000 die of suicide each year (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm).
Saying, "that person committed suicide because they were depressed" is ... I have no polite things to say about it. Saying that to the loved one of someone who just committed suicide is really, fucking, wrong. "Tracing the blame back to his parents" -- i.e., blaming his parents -- is simply, horribly, awfully, inhumane.
If Taren is saying that she doesn't think Aaron would've committed suicide at this time if it weren't for the way that the case was progressing, we have no damn business telling her otherwise, and your completely vacuous comment certainly shouldn't be at the top of the thread about it.
Is it possible maybe that your background as an attorney is coloring your judgement of this case? That you find it uncomfortable that someone else in the legal profession is being faulted for the way that they handled a case that resulted in someone else's completely preventable death?
Yes. But. (and this post doesn't intend to argue Aaron was depressed, just thinks about the premise that he might have been)
As someone who suffers a lot with depression, it is quite possible to be depressed and for no one close to you to notice. We can be damn good at hiding it, especially with practice, especially with people we know well.
Some time ago I was living with my partner and she had no clue I had been depressed for months. Then we went out with a couple we hadn't seen for a little while, and afterwards the girl took my partner aside and asked if I was OK.
Taren obviously knows him best, and I agree that if she says Aaron wouldn't have committed suicide if it weren't for the case then clearly that is true. However, I think she is dismissing the impact of depression, or at least dismissing the possibility, to readily. You could turn around and suggest that if he hadn't been in depression (if indeed he was) then the case may have not driven him to suicide.
Depression is a horrible, and terrible thing. Those close to depressed individuals certainly have a lot of insight, but it is still nearly impossible to communicate what it is like even to them.
EDIT: I'm cautious to add this, because it is "one guy on the internet", but reading Taren's post again some of the things she describes strike me as telltale signs of secreted depression. Disappearing on a whim for a hike, for example, is a favourite of mine.
EDIT2: It is also worth noting she describes one common set of symptoms of depression (low activity, disinterest, etc.). However, I for one don't often get them (for example) but I do become deeply involved in subjects for periods of time before moving on. Similar to how she describes. This is a very very common symptom of depression and if you see a friend become obsessed with a string of new things take a second to think about how they might be.
I would have loved to have seen this comment of yours at the top of the thread instead; I agree with everything in it. Further, I'll also step forward as someone who also deals regularly with crippling depression; being more open about it is what I've resolved to do after Aaron's suicide, and the suicide in November of one of my clients. (I've written only a very little about it before, http://www.robsheldon.com/blog/depression-programming/ http://www.robsheldon.com/blog/depression-programming/)
You're absolutely right that we can be sneaky. A huge part of that is the stigma associated with depression. I'm certain that if all of my clients knew about it, I'd lose some of them for the simple fact that they'd consider me unreliable in the long term.
So, when Taren mentioned that she'd been "reading up" on depression, and concluded that that wasn't what Aaron was suffering from, I did cringe a little. I came to the comments here expecting to find some discussion of depression; what I didn't expect was the top comment completely dismissing Aaron's suicide as being only about depression.
Depression is probably different for different people, like most things. Mine simply makes me more susceptible to struggling when life gets hard. I'm rarely depressed when the sun is shining and there's money in the bank account and my car is working and my business is good and my friends and family are happy. When too many of those things are off, I feel it intensely and my default biochemical response is to crawl into a hole and want to disappear. I have to fight my way back out of that, every time.
So I find Aaron's case very easy to empathize with. If I were in his situation -- inasmuch as I understand his situation at this point -- I'm honestly not sure what I would do. I can tell you that I'd feel overpowered, hopeless, and defeated. I can also tell you that I would want to punch anyone in the face who said that if I chose to commit suicide as a result of the situation, it would be primarily because of my depression.
Do you know how psychiatrists or clinical psychologists diagnose depression? Have you read the DSM? Do you know how they come up with the criteria for psychiatric disorders in DSM? Do you know the controversies behind DSM? Do you know few decades ago homosexuality was regarded as a mental disorder? Do you know that there are researchers who want to introduce a new "psychiatric disorder" (i.e., hypersexual disorder) in the next edition of DSM for people who have sex more than 7 times a week ?
Here is the criteria for major depression:
Diagnostic criteria:
Depressed mood and/or loss of interest or pleasure in life activities for at least 2 weeks and at least five of the following symptoms that cause clinically significant impairment in social, work, or other important areas of functioning almost every day
1.
Depressed mood most of the day.
2.
Diminished interest or pleasure in all or most activities.
3.
Significant unintentional weight loss or gain.
4.
Insomnia or sleeping too much.
5.
Agitation or psychomotor retardation noticed by others.
6.
Fatigue or loss of energy.
7.
Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt.
8.
Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness.
9.
Recurrent thoughts of death (APA, 2000, p. 356).
I am sure everyone has met some of its criteria at some point in their life. Without a real diagnosis, you really can't say if the person has a major depression. Even with a diagnosis, how do you know the doctor is making the right diagnosis with SUCH VAGUE criteria?
Edit: I am very aware of what DanBC has pointed out about the other criteria:
i) at least 2 weeks
ii) and at least five of the following symptoms
iii) clinically significant impairment in social, work, or other important areas of functioning almost every day.
BUT THEN, the question becomes "Why 2 week?" "Why at least five of the symptoms?" Who came up with the numbers? Let me tell you, the DSM committee have a lot of disagreement about those. Those numbers are not some magic numbers that once you pass that threshold, you suddenly become clinical depressed.
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I can't agree you more on this! People talk about depression as if it is the only cause of suicide. People talk about the cause of depression as if depression is only caused by mental weakness. Aaron has already left us. Can we just show more understanding, compassion, empathy and sympathy to what has happened to him?
> Your comment is not enlightening. It is not insightful. It falls flat on its face if you bother to do even two minutes' Googling to find that while somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 Americans suffer from depression (http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/ http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/), "only" 38,000 die of suicide each year (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm).
And some similarly tiny portion of people who are prosecuted commit suicide. What's your point?
> Saying, "that person committed suicide because they were depressed" is ... I have no polite things to say about it. Saying that to the loved one of someone who just committed suicide is really, fucking, wrong. "Tracing the blame back to his parents" -- i.e., blaming his parents -- is simply, horribly, awfully, inhumane.
I'm pointing out that if you confuse causation with blameworthiness, you can trace blame back to depression and genetics. I'm not saying that you should make the mistake of confusing causation with blameworthiness! That's precisely the mistake in the article that I'm arguing against.
> If Taren is saying that she doesn't think Aaron would've committed suicide at this time if it weren't for the way that the case was progressing, we have no damn business telling her otherwise, and your completely vacuous comment certainly shouldn't be at the top of the thread about it.
That's not all she's doing. She's implying that Carmen Ortiz bears some moral culpability for the suicide, because she's in the causal chain.
> Is it possible maybe that your background as an attorney is coloring your judgement of this case?
I can just as easily accuse people who knew Aaron of leaving aside their objectivity because of their emotional investment, but I don't because I don't want to walk down that road.
This'll be my last reply; I've gotta step away from this because it's getting me angry, and it's not likely that you and I will find anything to agree about.
> And some similarly tiny portion of people who are prosecuted commit suicide. What's your point?
I never made the point that prosecution leads to suicide. You, however, tried to make the point that depression leads to suicide, and that's factually wrong.
> She's implying that Carmen Ortiz bears some moral culpability for the suicide.
And I happen to agree with her. If Ortiz knew nothing at all of Aaron, and if she expressed genuine regret at the outcome and investigated her office's actions in the matter, I might maybe be able to accept that she had acted out of ignorance (if she was involved at all). But, we know that Aaron's lawyer notified Heymann at least of Aaron's possibility as a suicide risk, and the response from Heymann was, "Fine, we'll lock him up." That was wrong, and the moral culpability does lead right back to Ortiz for defending her office's actions in this case.
> And if she doesn't want to hear opposing opinions on the subject she shouldn't post her thoughts on the internet for public consumption.
What a pile of ox manure. I would love to see you leave comments like this on threads about sexism: "Well, if she didn't want doctored pornographic photos of her online, she never should have posted her face on the internet for public consumption!"
Someone writing their opinion on a subject never gives anyone else a pass to be an asshole.
> I can just as easily accuse people who knew Aaron of leaving aside their objectivity because of their emotional investment, but I don't because I don't want to walk down that road.
If you had said that, it would have been more valuable as a comment than the one you wrote instead.
I certainly wouldn't presume to tell someone close to the situation what the cause was, but that doesn't mean I uncritically accept their view. Having a history of depression and having made a couple of suicide attempts in the (now-distant) past, here are some things that come to mind while reading her argument that Aaronsw didn't exhibit the typical clinical markers of depression:
a) having a list of symptoms doesn't fully equip someone to make clinical decisions about their presence or absence, especially when one is trying to wrap one's head around them in the wake of a tragic event. Psychiatry is nowhere near being an exact science, but a list of symptoms doesn't put one the same plane as a psychiatrist who is familiar with the terms of art, statistical methods and so forth that go into the development of evaluation scales. Psychiatry may grope its way through the dark, but it does attempt to do so in a systematic fashion.
b) one might argue that the 'the Aaron she knew' didn't exhibit the typical symptoms of exhaustion either.
c) depression isn't some amorphous thing that follows one around like a personal raincloud independent of circumstances, but is rather a factor that weights a person's thought processes to varying degrees depending on time and context. Phrases such as 'pessimistic arrogance' loom large to me, as does this example:
Sam gave Aaron a quick overview of Australian politics; Aaron expressed astonishment at how easy it would be to “take over Australia”, but concluded that a country of only 20 million probably wouldn’t be worth it.
Self-esteem, needless to say, was definitely not Aaron’s problem.
Sometimes, statements tell you more about the person making them than the ostensible subject. This doesn't mean that the person is lying or concealing their feelings, but that those feelings are unconsciously attached to external subjects in order to give them an outlet. Arrogance is not a good proxy for self-esteem at all in my own case; quite the reverse.
d) What people tell you and what they do don't always match; sometimes they may conceal the truth about their feelings of activities for reasons ranging from embarrassment, to pessimism about the ability of others to understand, to not wishing to be a burden. When one is depressed, even other people's expressions of love and support can be exhausting to deal with and it may be preferable to avert them by cultivating an air of positivity. This isn't a case of dishonesty so much as trying to think oneself healthy again.
e) profound capacity for pleasure in everyday life...finely honed aesthetic sense Again, I don't find this incompatible with the presence of depression. The stars shine particularly brightly at night, so to speak.
There are a lot of factors that lead into a person's choice to commit suicide, and they're not IMHO amenable to simple binary decompositions. Just as the number of people with depression vastly exceeds the number of people who commit suicide, so does the number of people who are confronted with alarming legal burdens, both civil and criminal.
Please consider the points above as an attempt at supplementation rather than disputation.
Any system - especially a justice system - unable to take into account peoples' circumstances is not only wasteful, but dangerous. Neutrality does not transcend doing the right thing. Justice isn't a product that is packaged and sold, it is a service, rendered on a case-by-case basis. It is done that way so that the context can be understood sufficiently well in each case. In this case it either wasn't, or they simply didn't care, or were negligent. This is wrong and it needs to be fixed.
What is your agenda? It seems as if you think the system is fine, and cannot and should not improve. Why?
I don't have an agenda, and I don't think the system is fine. I do, however, think a lot of people are being grandiose in condemning Carmen Ortiz. I'm an engineer at heart, and we're a conservative breed, preoccupied with tradeoffs and immune to idealistic tropes. I don't think you can get what you want: a justice system that is compassionate and sensitive to the "good guys" and harsh with the "bad guys" and also considers every case meticulously on a case by case basis while also not costing a fortune to run.
It does cost a fortune to run. Considering every case meticulously on a case by case basis is exactly what they should be doing. That is not an idealistic expectation, it is a realistic one.
To have an effect, condemnation has to be of sufficient magnitude, such that the problem is acknowledged and recognized. It has to be necessarily grandiose in its nature. Given that you agree that the system is not fine, and can improve, where does your contention lie? How can you deny a problem from being recognized if you wish to solve it?
"Mr Prosecutor, yes I killed that guy. But in my defense, my wife was shouting at me earlier in the day and it made me upset. I had been fired from my job the day before, and didn't have a new job lined up yet. So I got angry at the grocery store over raising the price of milk, and killed the cashier. Please consider this and drop some of the charges."
"Ohhh your wife was shouting at you? I hear ya, buddy. I'll drop most of the charges and you won't have to go to jail for murder..."
I mean, come on. We can't take people's personal circumstances that are unrelated to the crime into account. No matter if you are rich or poor, married or single, working or unemployed, kids or no kids, you should get equal treatment under the law. I can't believe people are arguing that "possibly suicidal" people should have charges reduced. If that was true, everyone charged with a crime would claim to be suicidal...
The logical conclusion of what you're suggesting is a system where only outcomes are looked at and assessed, little about the person leading up to outcome is understood, and nothing is learned, because it's somehow unacceptable to understand individual circumstances. But surely you see that it's in our own collective interests to learn why things are the way they are, instead of just indiscriminately slapping parking tickets on everything that looks bad and hoping our problems will go away?
> She's implying that Carmen Ortiz bears some moral culpability for the suicide,
Suicide accounts for almost a 3rd of all deaths in US local jails. Things are much better in state prisons - "only" 6% of deaths are from suicide. (Behind AIDS at 9% and illness at 80%). (These are old, but accurate, figures. (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/shsplj.pdf http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/shsplj.pdf) )
Aaron meets some of the risk factors for suicide. Male, history of mental illness (and suicidal ideation), significant life event, potential institutionalisation, and being bullied.
Ms Ortiz owed a duty of care to Aaron, if only to ensure he survived long enough to face trial. When they were told that he was suicidal, and had a history of depression, they should have at least obtained medical reports. They did not. They continued to aggressively pursue this young man (for an alleged crime that neither of the victims wanted to be prosecuted) and threatened to remove him from any support that he had by locking him up.
For almost a third of local jail deaths to be from suicide (and almost half of those occurring in the first week of admission) is pretty shocking.
> The fact that Remeron worked for me has absolutely nothing to do with belief or placebo affect.
With all respect, you cannot make this claim. The only way this claim could become scientific would be with a double-blind scientific study. Such a study would compare the drug with ... a placebo.
And, as I have pointed out, the studies that have been conducted do not support the claim that antidepressants work for the majority of people -- indeed, studies demonstrate the opposite conclusion, that they do not work.
> On the other hand, you have no grounds to assert that I was cured by the placebo effect.
Yes, which means it's a good thing that I never said that anywhere. And why would I? The claim makes no sense -- no one is ever "cured" by the placebo effect.
> I don't need scientific evidence to know that this is how Paxil effected me ...
Wow. The drug companies must love clients like you.
> I, personally, have plenty of information to make an accurate and rational conclusion here.
You are ignoring the readily available scientific findings, so no, your conclusion is neither accurate nor rational.
This is an excellent capsule summary of modern psychological research -- no electron micrographs, no useful in vitro results, no objective evidence. No known causes for diagnosed conditions, and subjective diagnostic criteria. Instead, a nearly complete reliance on the self-reporting of clients, who insist that the drugs do or do not work, or the therapy works or doesn't work.
No matter how sincerely psychologists and psychiatrists want to help people, this charade will continue until real science begins to be done, and for that, we'll probably have to completely switch away from psychology to neuroscience. As it happens, Thomas R. Insel, the sitting director of the NIMH, agrees with this view:
Link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circ...
Quote: "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient's illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely "mental," and psychological therapies followed suit. Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses."