R.I.P. Robin Williams

HEARTLESS wrote: On a related note, a book called "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife" by Dr. Eben Alexander may help provide skeptics a reason to believe.

ScienceChic wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: Suicide is the choice made when the person simply can't live with whatever is causing them pain be it physical or emotional. What they fail to realize is that the manner in which they choose to end their pain creates a lifetime of pain for others. That is why suffering brings grace to your life. It means that you have chosen others over self, that you choose to suffer rather than cause suffering.

I grieve for those who loved Robin Williams, those who were left behind to wonder in pain why he is no longer here, and I pray that our Creator will have mercy on his soul; but I will not mourn the loss of Robin Williams. He abandoned his obligations, he failed to keep the faith with those who opened their hearts to him and welcomed him into their lives. He put his own suffering ahead of the suffering of his wife and children and that is simply a choice a husband and a father has lost when he chose to be a husband and a father.

I strongly disagree with your statements above PrintSmith. Suicide is not the result of a "cowardly" or "selfish" choice.

"But the trouble is, in trying to reason about the suicidal mind from a non-suicidal place – that’s basically where most of these myths come from.”

-Psychologist Thomas Joiner, “ Myths About Suicide ”

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

― David Foster Wallace

Speaking from personal experience, I suffered for years from depression and would fantasize multiple times daily about suicide. And the most desired goal from that act wasn't to end my own pain, but to inflict it in those who loved me because I was so, so, so incredibly angry at them and the world that I wanted to punish them and I knew that would be the most effective manner in which to do so; rest assured that I knew full well that it would cause a lifetime of pain and that was motivating me, not preventing me. You might call it selfishness, I call it deep, unabiding fury and hopelessness that I felt I had little recourse otherwise. What I really needed was help addressing the cause of that anger and pain, and it took me until my late 20s and entire 30s to finally reach out for that help on my own after deciding that living a miserable life was no life at all. And it's still back there, in the deep recesses of me - it will always be a part of who I am. Now, it is the source of my compassion, patience, understanding, and open-mindedness. I feel lucky because part of my genetic make-up/innate personality is an unwavering optimism, an unshakeable understanding, whether reality-based or not, that life will always get better. Not everyone feels that as a Truth and had I not, I'm not so sure that I'd be here today. And unless you've also experienced that level of despair, pain, anguish, and at times hopelessness - all those complex emotions and the various experiences that led to them manifesting, you can't possibly understand.


Robin Williams's death: a reminder that suicide and depression are not selfish
News of Robin Williams’s death due to apparent suicide, said to be a result of suffering severe depression, is terribly sad. But to say taking your own life because of such an illness is a ‘selfish’ act does nothing but insult the deceased, potentially cause more harm and reveal a staggering ignorance of mental health problems
Dean Burnett
Tuesday 12 August 2014

However, despite the tremendous amount of love and admiration for Williams being expressed pretty much everywhere right now, there are still those who can’t seem to resist the opportunity to criticise, as they do these days whenever a celebrated or successful person commits suicide. You may have come across this yourself; people who refer to the suicide as “selfish”. People will utter/post phrases such as “to do that to your family is just selfish”, or “to commit suicide when you’ve got so much going for you is pure selfishness”, or variations thereof.

If you are such a person who has expressed these views or similar for whatever reason, here’s why you’re wrong, or at the very least misinformed, and could be doing more harm in the long run.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; dismissing the concerns of a genuine depression sufferer on the grounds that you’ve been miserable and got over it is like dismissing the issues faced by someone who’s had to have their arm amputated because you once had a paper cut and it didn’t bother you. Depression is a genuine debilitating condition, and being in “a bit of a funk” isn’t. The fact that mental illness doesn’t receive the same sympathy/acknowledgement as physical illness is often referenced, and it’s a valid point.

We don't call those diagnosed with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc cowardly or selfish, nor should those suffering mental illnesses be described as such.