This is honestly disgusting and exactly the problem. You don’t know why they couldn’t get help. There are many possible reasons and instead they should be continued to be encouraged to find proper mental health counseling, not feed into a mental health crisis talking about suicide.
And it’s not your place to decide what is suffering or not for them. That is exactly the problem. The fact that you checked on this persons profile and decided based on that he’s continuing to suffer is exactly the issue. You are not a trained mental health provider I’m sure. Encouraging someone in that place to commit suicide is exactly the problem. You are not a soothsayer who can see into this persons future. What if in 10 years that person has a child and finds true joy and meaning, glad that they went through what they did in the previous years. There are many such cases.
It’s also not your job to somehow “ease suffering” for a person on the internet you don’t know, with some kind of self satisfaction and sense of control over another’s life that you took away an individual’s suffering by helping them kill themselves.
Instead the person needs to decide for themselves, by themselves, AND they need to be in a healthy mental state to make that decision. Depression is not a healthy mental state, it’s a period of delusion.
Your comment only proves exactly why sites such as this need massive regulation, and anyone who knows someone who contemplates suicide and came out the other side living a fulfilling life with joy and happiness would understand exactly why.
And I could agree that a site talking about assisted suicide is a net positive, but the burden is on that site to ensure it is not encouraging people in mental health crisis to suicide. In an open, mostly unmoderated forum that is a very high bar indeed, and it's even higher when the company hosting such a site has a profit motive. Trained mental health providers should be available and reviewing discussions in those situations, and such regulation requiring that is in my opinion not a hinderance on free speech.
And for anyone reading these comments and suffering with depression, if you’re unable to find good mental health care, first and the very least read the following book, and know that there are people who can help you find the light on the other side:
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVgQ_tgWMyU&t [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
If inner critic gives you real trouble, the best way, by far, is to start working on such problems with a licensed mental health specialist.
Second best way is to catch up on modern research in psychology and psychotherapy. (I'm generalising below with most important knowledge I have on the topic based on my replies to other comments.)
In modern therapy it is considered that at least some of the inner critic issues are responses to past traumatic events and emotional trauma. It tries to help you avoid doing something that hurt you in the past, like a legacy broken failsafe mechanism.
Possible root causes might include:
- Complex PTSD [0][1] - Childhood emotional neglect [2] - Traumatic stress [3] - Style of your upbringing and some other issues from the past, including learned responses to life stresses [4] This knowledge is in part a modern (last decade) evolution of older Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ideas[5] from the 1980s. OP article describes typical CBT strategy. CBT, while being helpful to manage critic-related problems, rarely addresses any of the underlying root causes.
If you don't want to dig deep into root causes, I want to explicitly highlight [4] as it does a great way of summarising core CBT and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) ideas, and helps to address the critic issue directly via many actionable strategies.
0 - http://www.pete-walker.com/shrinkingInnerCritic.htm and similar research on CPTSD
1 - Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker https://www.amazon.com/Complex-PTSD-Surviving-RECOVERING-CHI...
2 - Running on Empty by Jonice Webb & Christine Musello https://www.amazon.com/Running-Empty-Overcome-Childhood-Emot...
3 - Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...
4 - Self-Esteem by Matthew McKay https://www.amazon.com/Self-Esteem-Cognitive-Techniques-Asse...
5 - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
It describes how depression is often caused by cognitive distortions that somehow cause us to believe that our lives aren't worth living. As a simple example, a depressed person might call a friend, but the friend doesn't return the call immediately, and so the depression patient concludes that the friend doesn't actually care. This is a pure hallucination caused by depression; there are 1000s of reasons why the friend might not have responded immediately. Furthermore, even in the unlikely event that the negative conclusion was true, and the friend doesn't care about the patient, that doesn't mean very much. Maybe the friend is actually pretentious, or is trying to climb the social ladder, or is a political zealot who can't tolerate people with different opinions - all reasons why the patient is better off looking for new friends anyway.
https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Great-Revolutionary-Treatment...
The first one helped me understand how the mind influences the emotions, haven't read the second.
There is also a handy CBT app called Quirk that I'd also recommend checking out https://www.quirk.fyi/
I have given people many copies of it over the years, with no bad results and a few good to very good ones.
I'd recommend seeing a therapist and developing a treatment plan together. It's a practical way to identify what you are worrying about, why and how to overcome it. Then, I'd encourage you to learn more about personalities and your personality type. There are a bunch of 'personality type' systems out there, but the Enneagram is one of the least specific in its 'typing' and most useful in its insights.
- The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge (https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Enneagram-Paths-Greater-Self...) - Feeling Good (https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...)
Feeling Good is by David Burns, a Stanford professor who developed Cognitive Behavior Therapy. CBT is a way to identify and manage your thoughts. It sounds like you are a 'fortune telling' type of person and you try to read your crystal ball and then act on those assumptions rather than what you know. Burns goes into how to identify those types of thoughts, how to refute them and how to mitigate their effects.
This sounds all wrong to me, and obviously will be very stressful for you. You need to find a good hospital / doctor and get yourself diagnosed right. And only then can you consider the right treatment for what ails you (I know this must be obvious to you, but I want to emphasise it).
Depending on what you suffer from, life long medications might not even be required (though will be helpful during therapy). For example, depression and OCD can be successfully treated with therapy.
While I am averse to recommending self-help without knowing what you suffer from, I highly recommend that you read "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by Dr. David Burns ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380810336/ref=dbs_a_def_r... ). The author is a real doctor and a trained Psychiatrist and explains how cognitive therapy can be effectively used to treat depressions and anxiety. And he also explains how anti-depressants works technically (you can skip that chapter if you find it too technical). It is well written and everything is explained in an easy to understand manner.
Doing no harm is a high bar, and that bar requires commitment that online communities and the companies that run them almost certainly cant provide without a lot of effort. The disregard for the possibility that those communities may have caused harm (even if you believe they helped you) is alarming.
> This search for "joy and happiness" is absurd
This is the problem when people with this viewpoint get together in forums, it can create a vicious feedback cycle that are not healthy for anyone.
I'm sorry you are suffering or have suffered. But searching and finding joy and happiness is not absurd. We only have one life to live, and it definitely doesn't need to be suffering. Every one of us has the power to change that (believing you cant is a thought trap, a type of delusion.)
> Nothing bad would happen to that person should they not be interrupted
This speaks volumes. You are saying that the death of a person is nothing bad. A life.. a loved one. A child going through a momentary suffering. That death is BAD. Not understanding that is delusional thinking.
> It doesn't delete these 10 years of suffering which you apparently see no problem subjecting people to
I'm not subjecting them to anything, nor are you by not talking or telling a person how to commit suicide. That persons suffering is not your or my responsibility. But the moment you do talk to that person about how they could commit suicide, then you have taken on a responsibility. And it is an immense one, not to be taken lightly.
Finally I'll say this, all your comments indicate to me someone who is suffering from depression. If you truly believe that not to be the case, I challenge you to read the following book cover to cover, do all the exercises, and once you have finished, look back on your words and ideas and see if you may have been stuck in some delusional thinking:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0380731762?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_u...
And finally, if you ever actually consider suicide, I urge you to question your thinking and consider the possibility you could make a choice that in another mindset you would regret. Imagine getting high on shrooms or LSD and jumping off a roof. Depression is like that... when you come to, you realize you were just on a bad trip.
And as my favorite Starship captain says... "Never give up. Never surrender!"