On Suicide: The Morality and Philosophy
“I never see that prettiest thing –
A cherry bough gone white with Spring –
But what I think, “How gay ‘twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree”
Dorothy Parker
We are the only species capable of pondering our own demise, seemingly desperate to stall our mortality. Throughout history, we have become fascinated with the idea of somehow cheating death, with literary works and art depicting such throughout the centuries. It is by no means an ancient fascination, with some recent branches of medicine now proposing immortality as a possibility. Yet some think the opposite, preferring to end their life prematurely, by their own hand.
Suicide raises several contradictory feelings within us, due to it usually being inherently misunderstood by most, and a reluctance to speak about it. It has a conflicted hold over most people, shown by feelings of fear fused with fascination, compounded with guilty revulsion and scorn saturated with pity.
Within religion, suicide is usually portrayed as a sin, but such are the contradictory feelings behind suicide, if the packaging is altered slightly, then it can assume the guise of heroism or fervent passion, such as Samson in the Old Testament.
Beyond the philosophical paradoxes, are the bewildering dynamics of the act itself. Suicide is a worldwide phenomenon. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states, “Approximately one million people commit suicide each year worldwide, that is about one death every 40 seconds or 3,000 per day. For each individual who takes their own life, at least 20 attempts to do so. Suicide has a global mortality rate of 16 per 100,000 people.”
In the UK and Ireland more than 6,000 people, of whom around 1,500 are women and 4,500 men, commit suicide. However, the incidence of suicide varies so immensely across different population groups — among nations and cultures, ages and gender, race and religion — that any supreme theory about its root cause is rendered impractical.
Causes, variances, and morality
Dr Alan Berman is the executive director of the American Association of Suicidology (AAS) and the president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP). His work includes preventing suicidal behaviour, alleviating its effects, and supplying a forum for academics, mental health professionals, crisis workers, volunteers, and suicide survivors. He confirmed just how varied suicide is.
“Generally, internationally, males far outnumber females in terms of those who die by suicide (except in rural China) and females far outnumber males in making nonfatal attempts. Whites have higher rates than blacks. Older have higher rates than younger; but every country’s demographics need to be addressed individually”.
Although there can be no single cause for suicide, Dr Berman named a few prevalent factors that raise suicide risk more than others. “Substance use disorders and acute alcohol problems are major risk factors; as is body dysmorphic disorder which has a significant risk factor”.
He has also identified self-loathing, the extreme dislike or hatred of one’s self due to perceived faults, as another high-risk factor.
Suicide ideation is a dangerous symptom that is often a precursor to suicide. The individual fantasises about dying, displays an intent to commit suicide, and meticulously plans how they would like this to happen. Dr. Berman advises that: “Individuals with suicide ideation need professional help to understand what gives rise to the ideation, to reduce the risk of suicidal behaviour, to treat that which causes the ideation, to better accomplish the driving force to the ideation without requiring self-harm behaviour to satisfy those unmet needs.”
The National Institute of Mental Health says that 90% of all suicide ‘completers’ display some form of diagnosable mental disorder. However, if so, why have advances in the treatment of mental illness had seemingly so little effect? Since 1965 there has been a 60% increase in worldwide suicide rates despite rafts of new generations of anti-depressant drugs that have been developed and comprehensive work being done by groups such as The Samaritans.
With figures, such as this, it is little wonder that some view suicide with an inevitable resignation, even cynically viewing it as a particularly brutal form of social Darwinism. This is in the sense that perhaps through luck, medication, or family intervention some suicidal individuals can be identified and saved, but in the larger scheme of things, there will always be those that have it engrained in them to take their own lives.
Dr Berman disagrees with this theory and clarifies The National Institute of Mental Health’s figure. He explained: “Mental disorders and substance use disorders comprise that 90% figure and, accordingly, significantly increase the risk for suicide. But they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for suicide. Suicidal behaviour requires a whole bunch of things to go wrong at the same time and is not caused by a single risk factor”.
Dr Berman is also an advocate for psychological autopsies. The concept was developed in 1968 by AAS’s founding president, Dr Edwin Shneidman, and refined over the years since. Dr. Berman reasons that this concept should be utilised “because this is the most thorough post-mortem investigative tool we have to better understand the trajectory toward suicide, the chronic and acute risk factors for suicide, and the reason why the suicide occurred when and how it did.”
Dr Berman cares passionately about his work, leading two international suicide prevention organizations. He elaborated on the work and current research being completed by AAS and IASP.
“We train clinical mental health professionals and primary care physicians to better assess and treat those at risk for suicide. We accredit crisis centres to maximal service those in crisis. We have several ongoing prevention and/or research projects at any one time. At present we are presenting a research-prevention program for attorneys working with high-risk clients, we have just completed a major causal analysis study of suicides on railroad rights-of-way, and we have done two studies of suicide clusters among youth.”
Philosophy of suicide
From a philosophical aspect, suicide has been a contentious issue for centuries. They range from Immanuel Kant’s view that suicide is fundamentally wrong and immoral, and that problems such as depression and emotional pain can be treated and alleviated through therapy or changes to lifestyle. A clichéd quote by people who support this view is that “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” It is a flawed adage however as emotional pain affects everyone differently, depending on the severity of it.
Another view is that of David Hume’s liberalism, that a person’s life belongs only to them, and no other person has the right to force their ideals as to how that life must be lived. Rather, only the individual involved can make such a decision, and whatever decision they make should be respected.
Professor Dan Robinson is a faculty fellow at the University of Oxford, specialising in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology. He contends that for a person’s behaviour to be defined as suicidal “there must be the intention to end one’s life. There are psychoanalytic accounts per which any number of self-destructive acts (alcoholism, drug addiction, recklessness) is suicidal, but the unequivocal criterion is that the course of action expresses a conscious and deliberate decision to end one’s life.”
He continues to describe the morality and rationality of suicide. Regarding the question is suicide morally permissible, or even morally required in some extraordinary circumstances he said: “Hume says yes and Kant says no. I would be inclined to say that if there are instances in which the loss of one’s life is “morally required”, the action is not “suicidal”. It might be heroic.
Kant could only think of one instance in which suicide passes the stern tests of morality and rationality: Cato’s decision to set a good example by refusing to live under tyranny. Recall John Locke’s statement that ‘Madmen reason rightly from wrong premises’. One might be able to follow the rationale of the suicide victim and agree that there were, indeed, reasons that seemed to compel the act of self-destruction. But not every ‘reason’ is a good reason.”
Professor Robinson does not hold a libertarian view regarding whether people should prevent others from suicide. He explained; “Yes, people should prevent others from committing suicide. It was not until 1961 that suicide attempts were decriminalised in the UK. There are, to be sure, strong libertarian arguments to the contrary.”
The act of suicide is most often rash, impulsive, and poorly thought out, reflecting the intense mental and emotional vulnerability of suicidal persons and their inclination toward volatility and agitation.
It is difficult to argue against taking a libertarian stance on suicide in circumstances such as euthanasia, where a person of sound mind has taken the reasoned decision to end their life, often while afflicted with terminal pain or disease. However, as argued by the professors above, suicide should be actively prevented.
This is because the majority of suicides are committed while suffering from some form of mental disorder, which adversely colours and distorts their attitude toward life situations. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond consolation. Decision-making such as ending one’s life cannot be rationally taken in this state.
