People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
&gt; Question: Can suicide be addressed as if it were a disease?<p>&gt; &quot;Answer&quot;: Suicide is not a mental disorder like depression or addiction. In a high percentage—70% to 90%—of cases, there is an underlying mental disorder but there are 10% to 20%, who are people who may reach a point where they make an existential calculation, see that their life no longer makes sense, that they do not have a life project, and they feel isolated and experience a certain tiredness of living.<p>I fundamentally DISAGREE with this interpretation (and what&#x27;s more, I think it is a very dangerous one).<p>At the risk of invoking the definitional fallacy, this conflates suicide with something that it is not.<p>Rationality and &quot;existential calculations&quot; are not only irrelevant as causes in this context, but indeed manifestations of the &#x27;condition&#x27;; human beings (and animals more generally) are pre-programmed to do certain things, that serve biological&#x2F;genetic purposes in the grand scheme of things, but are completely irrational actions from a &quot;logical&quot; point of view. &quot;Normal&quot; humans primarily put dead organic matter in their mouths, not out of a logical desire to obtain nutrition, but because they &#x27;hunger&#x27;. &quot;Normal&quot; humans, identify other humans to rub genitals with not because of a logical desire to practice fluid exchange or a conscious yet indifferent decision to rehearse procreational maneuvers optimizing for genetic diversification, but because they have &#x27;sexual urges&#x27;. &quot;Normal&quot; humans don&#x27;t rationally choose to sleep because they have a logical desire to replenish their bodies from toxins and train their neurons and memories, but because they feel &#x27;sleepy&#x27;. And similarly, &quot;Normal&quot; humans do not simply choose to live or not live in the day because they feel their existence (or that of their offspring) has a specific, measurable, logical consequence that positively affects the planet (or whatever purpose the planet is here for in the first place); they go on with their lives precisely <i>despite</i> the hopelessness of it all, because they experience a deep biological imperative and hunger for &quot;survival at all costs, for themselves and&#x2F;or their offspring&quot;.<p>When anxiety or similar disease affects your ability to feel sleepy, it may &quot;feel&quot; like you&#x27;re choosing revenge procrastination instead of sleeping, but really, your biological circuits that enable your sleepiness to override other functions are malfunctioning, allowing you the illusion of rationality and conscious choice. When you &quot;decide&quot; not to eat to the point that you are morbidly underweight, it may &quot;feel&quot; like a rational decision, but really, the biological circuits that control your brain&#x27;s ability to allow hunger to override such behaviour is malfunctioning, allowing you the illusion or rationality and conscious choice. You may think you &quot;decide&quot; not to have sexual urges because of societal norms or whatnot, but really, if you are having no sexual urges, the part of your brain that is designed to override your social inhibitions in pursuit of procreation is malfunctioning, allowing you the illusion of rationality and conscious choice. And similarly, you may think that &quot;I just realised life makes no logical sense&quot; and therefore having suicidal thoughts sounds &quot;rational&quot;, but really, the primitive part of your brain that lusts for survival is malfunctioning, leading to a perception of rationality and conscious choice in the matter of whether to live of not.<p>Similarly, the circuits can go wrong in the opposite direction: you might sleep too much, be bulimic, be a sex-addict, and you can make yourself crazy-hypochondriac-bipolar-whatever from an overwhelming desire to &quot;never die&quot; (i.e. a pathologically high survival instinct).<p>Feelings of depression or suffering etc may be important variables, particularly in terms of triggers and treatment, but are orthogonal to the problem. Indeed, there are countless examples of people undergoing extreme sufferring, but where that sufferring seemed to intensify their lust for survival, rather than nullify it. And there are countless examples of people who are living a comfortable life, ostensibly free of suffering, but are incredibly suicidal. We can see the same happen with other human urges. You can be not eating and be very conflicted about it, or be completely &quot;meh&quot; about it. Conversely, you could be stuffing yourself, and be very guilty about it, or be totally indifferent. In fact, a big feature of these conditions of &#x27;diminishing urges&#x27;, is that they feature &quot;splitting&quot;. Once the programmable part (i.e. the &#x27;urge&#x27;) returns, the brain shifts to &quot;it was never rational to think this&quot;. If the urge disappears again, the brain shifts to &quot;it was always rational to think this&quot;. We know this very well from anorexia for instance; whenever the &#x27;physical&#x27; matter is dealt with resulting in a successful restoration of the appetite function, anorexic neurosis often goes away with it. And thus the first pillar of treatment for anorexia is &quot;treat the physical cause first&quot;.<p>Yes, depression and other mental disorders are often accompanied by suicide, and treatment of the former often mitigates the latter, but it would be a mistake to conflate the two as a single disease, somehow manifesting in a spectrum. Rather, suicidality should be seen as a secondary complication of the depression as a primary disease. It is a mistake to consider &quot;yes they were depressed, but because of this suicide was a logical decision&quot;, as it robs a person who may have otherwise not &quot;logically&quot; wanted to commit suicide had they been &#x27;restored to normal function&#x27;, from the opportunity to make that decision <i>in the right context and frame of mind</i> (under the assumption that the &quot;correct&quot; frame of mind is the one that we have been programmed for as humans in the first place -- a deep philosophical statement in itself).<p>Life is not <i>meant</i> to be logical. The very essence of life that leads to its continuation is precisely the fact that there are things we do that ensure our survival (both individually and as a species), that make ZERO F**ING SENSE, and yet we do them anyway, because we&#x27;re programmed to do them at a <i>molecular</i> level. If for whatever reason, life suddenly became logical, you could reliably expect the planet to blow up within a matter of weeks.