economic crisis suicides

[rm]

I have a morbid fixation with the suicides that are being reported as due to the economic crisis.

I'm not sure why, other than as a measure of how bad it is -- not just in terms of the economy, and not even just in terms of consumer sentiment, but in terms of how our economic structure enforces for so many people the idea of no options, and, in terms of support systems, often provides no options.

Anyway, there was the old lady who was foreclosed on who failed in her suicide attempt; and the guy who got laid off from a tech company and then killed his wife and son at Stanford before shooting himself. There's been a couple of hedge fund guys (at least one of which was related to Madoff's ponzi scheme), and now this which is hands down the most horrifying one I've read about.

And chances are, there are a whole bunch more out there that none of us know about.

This is the measure of what's happening out there to people who, by and large, aren't that different from us. And sometimes it feels like Katrina (the only thing that's ever forced me to stop watching news coverage for even a day because I couldn't take it) happening in slow motion.

Comments

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

Yeah but at the same time not everyone who loses their job kills themselves. The kind of people who do this are different from most people because something's wrong with them mentally. Normal people don't do this sort of thing, they make do and don't shoot their kids. I dunno, maybe I'm ranting as this hits close to home, but still, I feel like people do this stuff at other times for other reasons as well, and it's just the media cashing in at the moment. The situation just isn't THAT dire.

[newsbean.livejournal.com]

True, shooting your kids does indicate mental illness. I'm not willing to say that just suicide does. In a lot of places, things *are* that dire. People who have $200,000 in debt, not including their house or student loans, who live in an area that has been particularly hard hit? Yeah, those people can legitimately feel completely trapped. It's not a case of moving somewhere else and starting over from scratch. They can't. They are facing a lifetime of debt slavery.

Would I kill myself? No, I wouldn't. Did/do plenty of people in slavery kill themselves? Yes. Absolutely. Sometimes things are insurmountable. I'm not sure it's our place to judge.

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

Yes, but as someone who has known quite a few people who have killed or tried to kill themselves I can tell you most of them are either depressed, bipolar, or worse. I'm not saying there aren't (extreme) situations where mentally well people would chose that, but most people in this sort of situation would not, or else we would be seeing quite a bit more of it. Suicide is never a good or fair choice especially to the people around you you end up hurting and leaving behind. Most people can see that and see that they can somehow carry on.

Sometimes thing are horrible and it seems like there's no way out, but it's not a 'if I was in their shoes I would do the same' situation like, say, being hurt in a plane crash is. It takes something in a person to go through with suicide and usually it's a sort of mental illness. I'm not trying to judge them, I'm just being realistic and speaking from experience.