Selfish or Self-Saving?

Recently, the topic of suicide and mental health has been brought up, with debate raging over whether it is an act of selfishness or the only solution the person sees as available to them.

The rise of voluntary euthanasia indicates that a number of people do see death as the only way out of a life that they do not see as being worth living, but there is strict critera to be met in order to be approved for voluntary euthanasia, and for many people the process may involve international travel.

The person seeking to end their life must be over 16, must have some kind of condition that a medical professional has signed a confirmation is incurable and there will be little to no improvement, and a mental health professional must confirm that they are of sound mind when choosing the option to end their life.

There is some variety depending on the country, of course. On the whole, having to jump through these hoops is a good thing, ensuring that voluntary euthanasia isn't an impulse decision, and that there is genuinely no chance for things to get better.

The main driving forces behind the choice to commit suicide are insurmountable financial issues, social isolation/ostracisation and terminal health diagnoses.

In such situations, it's entirely believable that a person may see death as the only way out.

When I was facing severe bullying, both at school and at home, I went so far as to plan how I would do it, but couldn't think of a way that didn't involve traumatising other people. Spite - forcing the people who kept telling me to kill myself to suffer my continued existence - became an excellent motive for not ending my life, but not everyone has that willpower or ability to believe that there is a better option.

So, I won't call the act of suicide selfish, with the proviso that there are certainly selfish ways to go about it.

Suicide by Cop, Rail suicide and jumping from pedestrian bridges into traffic rely on making an innocent person who had nothing to do with your reasons for choosing death, responsible for it, as well as traumatising anyone who happened to be in the wrong place to witness it.

Increasingly, also, suicide linked to domestic violence have been climbing in numbers, whether murder-suicides committed by abusers, or victims who were failed by the legal system and took their own lives before their abuser could kill them.

But there are also abusers who use their deaths as a weapon, whether by leaving the kind of suicide note that requires months of investigation into whether it was really a suicide and not a murder framed as suicide, or by killing themselves where they know it will have the biggest traumatic impact.

One man broke into the dream home his wife had purchased after leaving him and hung himself in the living room, requiring her to move out for the duration of the inquiry, and ultimeatly sell and start the housing search from scratch. Another hung himself in his daughter's bedroom, just before she came home from primary school, ensuring that she would be the one to find him. I can't imagine how many years of therapy that poor little girl is in for.

Undeniably, these methods are not just selfish, they are deliberately chosen to inflict harm on others.

That is where the claim that suicide is selfish comes from; from the people who don't just want to end their suffering; they want to make other people suffer, too.

But again, Suicide is not always selfish. There was a recent rash of farmer suicides, where the farmer in question said that with their death, their family could sell up without feeling guilty, and got their life insurance to start over.

It wasn't nearly that simple, and they were certainly underestimating the grief and turmoil their families would go through, but for the deceased, it was a noble thing, the only way they could help their family go on.

On the flip side, we're currently facing a shortage of bus and train drivers because no one wants to spend six months training for the job, only to have to quit after being blamed by a grieving family who didn't see the signs. Transport companies don't want to waste the money, and potential drivers don't want to put themselves through years of therapy.

So, is suicide selfish or merely self-serving?

The honest answer is: I don't know, and I suspect it's a question we'll all be wrestling with for some time to come.