Why do people say suicide is selfish?

Hi, friendsfreak0. I hope my dialog with you won’t be taken to be presumptuous or disrespectful. I am struggling with the concept that by committing suicide, the suicidal person hurts her/his friends/family in the worst possible way—an idea I read in your post. While I admit I cannot know anyone’s circumstance deeply, let alone most circumstances, I feel confident that many people commit suicide because they feel profoundly unloved. It seems reasonable that one’s perception of how much one’s community values one may be distorted, but it seems just as reasonable that many humans are abused and abandoned, even if their family and “friends” are still near to them. I’d like to offer that for at least some suicidals, suicide is not the worst pain they could have had a hand in realizing for their friends and family. Cursory observation teaches me that in quite a few cases the inability of the depressed to “snap out of it” and live lives broadly deemed “productive” can be so grave a pain that spouses bitterly divorce their partners, children abandon their parents, friends flee for fear of being “dragged down with [you].” What is a fair comparison of others’ lifelong disappointment and disgust that may accompany one’s chronic, debilitating depression and the pain that suicide brings? That seems to me a purely speculative comparison as one precludes the other. Too, the permanence of suicide and the guilt those left behind may feel furthermore obscure transparent comparisons of relative pain.

Another comment from your post that compelled me to respond was the common sentiment that suicidals are usually wrong in their assessment of the insolubility of their problems. I do recognize this as the leading position of most therapeutic licensing boards here in the USA. Yet I maintain that one cannot know most people’s motivations for suicide, and therefore cannot know whether their problems can be solved. This leads me to believe that, though there are countless others immensely brighter than me, neither can these know that others’ problems can be solved. Perhaps some people’s problems can be solved. Perhaps others find compromises tolerable. But what of those who–and I feel confident they do exist–do not find alternatives and compromises tolerable? That we might does not necessarily imply they should. Such a supposition is a fallacy I find underlying the assumption that “all (or even most) problems are solvable.”

Moreover, there are many problems we recognize are insoluble–like, say, terminal cancer. These problems for which we don’t yet have (may never have) cures do claim peoples’ lives; the problems are incurable. It seems plausible that, similarly, there are problems of an abstract nature that present sufficient motivation to some to discard their lives—problems the potential solutions of which might be acceptable to some but not to others. I argue it is the ultimate expression of self-ownership to be free to decide what abstract yet meaningful problems one finds terminally intractable.

I didn’t mean to bore you to death… Maybe it was just mildly therapeutic for me to get some ideas off my chest. Thanks for providing me that. And I really do wish you the best.