Posted on June 19, 2025.
People often feel hatred and anger toward those who have committed suicide, but is that a completely valid reaction? After all, they killed themselves to make us suffer and cry over them, right? Because why the hell would someone commit suicide? Isn't life the most sacred thing of all? Suicide is for the weak! It's selfish! These are some questions and reactions that cross one's mind following a suicidal event, but is a suicidal person really that evil? It's time we adopted a renovated understanding of suicide.
Suicide is how a person expresses themselves, their wish to no longer suffer and finally terminate the process that they weren't given the choice to start in the first place. No one chooses to be born, but anyone can end this process, though unfairly painfully, by their own will. Most of the time, suicide is done because of long-term pain, often driven by mental health disorders. For a mentally healthy person, mental health disorders might be comparable to feelings of sadness, but sadly, that's not a valid comparison.
If someone commits suicide, it's because they've been through long-term pain, one that you are lucky not to have lived. It's not a selfish act to feel your own suffering that's been distressing you constantly and finally stop it. It's rather a liberation in a way - it's caring about yourself. What is selfish, however, is how you want someone to endure a life of suffering just so you don't feel sad later. If that is also how you are caring about yourself, like what I've asserted about the suicidal person's state, then it's great that you can also recognize your self-care. If both sides are selfish or practicing self-care, then who is to blame? If it's perfectly acceptable for you to be selfish, why isn't it for the suicidal? Should you not seek consistency in your moral values?
Surely, the painful events that lead to suicide are the main issue we should address, not someone's conclusive response to an unconsented life. Not everyone can commit suicide regardless of how much pain they are in, and it's necessary we take care of mental health disorders from this vision. In addition, not all suicide attempts are successful and hence entail a much harder life. It should be this primary purpose that we want to prevent suicide, not the avoidance of the consequential grief of loved ones.
While it's perfectly fine to be sad over someone who has committed suicide, I find it unacceptable to spill your hatred against them or label them as "selfish" or "weak." It downplays the experiences of people struggling with mental health disorders, who only want to seek escape from their suffering, from a condescending perspective and makes it harder for suicidal people to open up about their suicidal ideation. In addition, suicide is never for the weak, as it requires courage to end your life, go against your survival instincts, and risk failure.
Hatred, anger, and misunderstandings toward the suicidal only intensify the overall suffering - if you originally cared about feelings of grief that you experience as a result of suicide, then why make them worse and add to the total pain? How about looking at it from an "at least they are not suffering anymore" way to soothe yourself out of grief? These negative reactions also hinder the spread of kindness, empathy, and compassion. Treating suicidal people and those who have died by suicide with sympathy is a means of resistance against larger systems of control - as all power dynamics and hierarchy seek competition, division, and exploitation at the expense of cooperation, solidarity, and compassion. How is it not imaginable that someone chooses to end their life when they are oppressed under the patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy? Labeling suicide as "selfish" or "for the weak" only marks liberation from these systems as undesirable or futile. Rather, we should approach suicide with empathy and understanding and not reinforce hateful ideas pushed on to us by oppressive systems. It's no wonder that in online discourse, transphobes mention the transgender suicide rate to humiliate transgender people.
The demonization of suicide is linked to the "sacred" promotion of life, complete ignorance of people's suffering, and focusing on people as numbers rather than beings with actually lived experiences. Ever since childhood, women are raised to believe having children, child-rearing, and getting married, obviously patriarchal pressures, are necessary for a happy life - subtly ripping them off their autonomy and maintaining control over them. Suicide, the choice of ending what you never chose to start, obviously debunks this delightful idea of family, and is thus demonized by the patriarchy (reproductive objectification of women and gender roles) and capitalism (the need for more workers and women's unpaid labor). Despite having focused on patriarchal conditioning, it's not only women, who happen to believe that "life is awesome with children" obviously. The idea of bringing someone into a life they cannot consent to experience has been glorified among every population because of oppressive structures, since these structures require interactions of different statuses to take place (the set union of them coincides with everyone), and obviously, more people to reinforce them.
One could theorize that another driving cause behind such demonization is the "Life is awesome and is preferable to death!" thought that likely stems from our survival instincts, but such thought is not equivalent to "Suicide is selfish and for the weak!" or "I hate them because they killed themselves!" Thus, the demonization of suicide is socially constructed, and we can abolish this thinking pattern if we question how we think and work on our responses. (Let's say, it happens to be more biological. Even so, that's not stopping anyone from questioning their natural responses or parents from adopting a more positive socialization - do we just act like other animals all the time, conforming with our instincts?)
In conclusion, the thinking pattern "Suicide is for the weak! It's selfish!" is harmful, demonizing, damaging to mental health care, driven by and reproducing oppressive structures, and it's essential we reform our understanding of suicide for decreased suffering of everyone. It's important to note that I'm not advocating for suicidal acts in this text but rather empathy and compassion.