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Suicide is a symptom of acute mental illness. Framing it in terms of personal responsibility is often cruelly ignorant because it ignores much about the actual

by olefoo 13y ago

Suicide is a symptom of acute mental illness. Framing it in terms of personal responsibility is often cruelly ignorant because it ignores much about the actual experiences of the person involved. Would you blame a diabetic who loses his foot because he was unaware that he'd contracted an infection? Would you give a lecture on personal responsibility to the mother of a child whose first asthma attack ever was fatal? If someone dies of an infection contracted because someone else threw them in a septic tank; is it their fault for swimming in sewage? In Aaron's case, we don't know exactly what was going through his head when he killed himself; but we do know he was being put under extreme pressure by prosecutors who were less interested in justice than in punishing him for imagined slights, especially the PACER affair.

sanoli 13y ago
Thank you for pointing this out. People shouldn't be 'blamed' for taking their lives. However, I always feel this uneasiness around people when, like you said, the fact that suicide is a symptom of mental illness is brought up. It's as if people associate having mental illness with being some sort of 'good person club' outcast, or having some character flaw.
- MarkTee 13y ago
  Technically, mental illness is a character flaw ("a limitation, imperfection, problem, phobia, or deficiency present in a character who may be otherwise very functional"[0]). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_flaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_flaw
  - sanoli 13y ago
    No, it's not. it's an illness. Your quote is about 'character flaw' as a literary critique concept. I was going to say in my post (the grandparent) that it could be argued, though not technically. Technically, it's not a character flaw.
    - MarkTee 13y ago
      Fair enough; I wasn't aware that there was a difference. I've always thought that a person's "character" is "the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing"[0], but it looks like the most common usage only refers to concern moral/ethical characteristics. To be clear, I'm not singling out people with mental illnesses; as a person with a physical illness, I would have considered it to be one of my "character flaws". [0]: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/character http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/character
MarkTee 13y ago
> Would you blame a diabetic who loses his foot because he was unaware that he'd contracted an infection? Would you give a lecture on personal responsibility to the mother of a child whose first asthma attack ever was fatal? If someone dies of an infection contracted because someone else threw them in a septic tank; is it their fault for swimming in sewage? No, I wouldn't, and that's exactly why I think that more time, money, and effort should be spent on improving America's (mental) health care system, and why effort should be made to break down the social stigma of mental illness. We should look at cases like this as an example of what can happen when people don't have access to an adequate support network. I edited my post because after rereading it I realized that it could be taken in ways that I hadn't intended it to. What I meant to emphasize was that suicide is predominantly motivated by the individual; that's who we should be focusing on helping. Fixing the judicial system is great, but I don't believe the judicial system was the principal factor behind Aaron's death; it was only a contributing circumstance. The comment that I replied to was framing the situation as just another example of the big, bad, authoritarian government flexing its muscle. Saying that Swartz was "murdered by the state" only obscures what, in my eyes, is the real tragedy here: that a man dealing with incredible stress, pressure, and mental/emotional strain felt as if suicide was his only option.

by olefoo 13y ago

sanoli 13y ago

Thank you for pointing this out. People shouldn't be 'blamed' for taking their lives. However, I always feel this uneasiness around people when, like you said, the fact that suicide is a symptom of mental illness is brought up. It's as if people associate having mental illness with being some sort of 'good person club' outcast, or having some character flaw.

MarkTee 13y ago
Technically, mental illness is a character flaw ("a limitation, imperfection, problem, phobia, or deficiency present in a character who may be otherwise very functional"[0]). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_flaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_flaw
- sanoli 13y ago
  No, it's not. it's an illness. Your quote is about 'character flaw' as a literary critique concept. I was going to say in my post (the grandparent) that it could be argued, though not technically. Technically, it's not a character flaw.
  - MarkTee 13y ago
    Fair enough; I wasn't aware that there was a difference. I've always thought that a person's "character" is "the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing"[0], but it looks like the most common usage only refers to concern moral/ethical characteristics. To be clear, I'm not singling out people with mental illnesses; as a person with a physical illness, I would have considered it to be one of my "character flaws". [0]: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/character http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/character

MarkTee 13y ago

> Would you blame a diabetic who loses his foot because he was unaware that he'd contracted an infection? Would you give a lecture on personal responsibility to the mother of a child whose first asthma attack ever was fatal? If someone dies of an infection contracted because someone else threw them in a septic tank; is it their fault for swimming in sewage? No, I wouldn't, and that's exactly why I think that more time, money, and effort should be spent on improving America's (mental) health care system, and why effort should be made to break down the social stigma of mental illness. We should look at cases like this as an example of what can happen when people don't have access to an adequate support network. I edited my post because after rereading it I realized that it could be taken in ways that I hadn't intended it to. What I meant to emphasize was that suicide is predominantly motivated by the individual; that's who we should be focusing on helping. Fixing the judicial system is great, but I don't believe the judicial system was the principal factor behind Aaron's death; it was only a contributing circumstance. The comment that I replied to was framing the situation as just another example of the big, bad, authoritarian government flexing its muscle. Saying that Swartz was "murdered by the state" only obscures what, in my eyes, is the real tragedy here: that a man dealing with incredible stress, pressure, and mental/emotional strain felt as if suicide was his only option.