Suicide is the most drastic and personal decision one can make.

"To be or not to be, that is the question".

I don't think there can ever be a true rationalization of suicide, empirical or ethical.

.."Life and death, despite all of our culture's knowledge and technology, remain profound mysteries."

Thanks for this post. What you say here, is so true. Life, sometimes, just does not make sense.
I am deeply saddened to read that Delp killed himself. I find it just a confusing as to why an apparent successful person, does this.

The article said "he was tired."

This is what the last words in a conversation I had with my best friend of 43 years said to me. She said, "Steph, I'm so tired." and then went on to tell me to "follow my heart/dreams". What if I missed a clue, a word, that I could have helped her stay here? I had no idea that would be our last conversation. She was only 49 years old. She also died, by suicide. A mix of pills, and somehow, a tiredness so deep in her spirit, that she gave up.

I too, have a hard time understanding when some of us somehow make it through the darkness, yet others do not.

Surviving, in a way is a learned behavior. I know I've learned to hang in there regarding life and death, and yet still some days wonder how I've made it this far.

It's all just very sad. I wish Brad Delp could know how much joy his music gave me during some really crappy times in my life. I wish I could call my friend to talk to her about it.

Except that I have been at the same kind of brink several times in my life--long ago, thankfully--and I always found a way to keep on pushing. Sometimes, I think I know how I did it. Other times, I haven't a clue.

But, right now, my own experience matters not.

I'm glad that you found a way to keep on pushing. The same applies for me, but I can see very clearly how that could have stopped and I'd be a statistic. Applying our own experience to those who have killed themselves does them a great disservice. The way it comes across is: I was tough/smart/whatever enough to make it through, why couldn't that person? There's already plenty of negative judgment for those who commit suicide. I don't want to add to it.

.." I'd be a statistic."

When I was a 16 yr.old teenager, and in a near-fatal car accident; someone told me this: " you could have ended up being another statistic in the newspaper."

Those words stuck with me my entire life,(I'm 47) and often wonder if not wanting to be a statistic in the back pages of a newspaper keeps me here.

suicidal and parasuicidal behavior can't always be rationalized nor can it easily be tied to the degree of depressive symptomatology. sometimes it just represents a breakdown in problem solving ability.

That Huffington Post article was inane. I'm not surprised either. They printed a book review I did on "The Female Brain" and I was taken to task for not being a proper feminist. Pssht. As I explained in the write-up, I've suffered from chemical and hormonal imbalances since puberty. It was nice to get an idea of why. Instead of saying, "Hooray! How wonderful for you!" people swooped down like vultures and picked at whatever presumptuous argument they could. Blech. I haven't been back to read them till I saw your link. I think some people aren't happy no matter what.
*washes hands of it*

Speaking of being unhappy, I suspect suicidal tendencies pivot on a few key psychological issues: self esteem, self worth, and sometimes sheer stoicism. There's been a lot of days where I just don't want to wake up, at all, but I know how important I am to my son, my husband, my friends. This sense of self worth keeps me going. And when it doesn't, it boils down to me being too damn stubborn to lay down and die. I refuse.

I tried to kill myself when I was fourteen. Couldn't do it. My dad tried to kill himself when I was five. He didn't succeed. He tried again, still couldn't do it. 25 years later he's still walking the earth. Why? Honestly, I think he's just too damn stubborn, too. He's a miserable man. With total clarity of what I am implying, I will say this: I don't think he's better off for having survived. He just gets up every day and hopes he dies that day. That's no way to live a life.

Any of those Huffington Post commentors that had shit to say about medication and it's benefits should go live with my father. I think they would whistle a different tune.

I did. I turned to a professional psychiatrist. I do not regret it.

To be honest I get tired of people trying to make suicide into a decision or a matter of free choice. I have no doubt that in some cases it is, but, all too often, in these "medicated" suicides that's not what's going on at all. Rather it's some chemical imperative that inspires a command hallucination or an incredibly dissociative state in which one is completely unaware that killing oneself is an irrevocable act. I deduce this from the narratives of people who survive their attempts and describe their ideation. We really need to get out of the frame of mind that there was some rational thinking (even if it was distorted) behind the act. And there's a very fine line between the people who survive and the people who don't. Frankly I think it's largely a matter of luck, like what your dose was, how you metabolize, where you were when you took it, what the weather was, what you had to eat in the hours beforehand etc. etc. You can't believe how little there is that separates life from death in these circumstances.

Here's an example of one of those moment's when feminist media critics embarrass themselves.

Yeah, pretty stupid.

But it cuts both ways of course. What about all of those mens movement wankers 'me tooing' prostate cancer in response to the attention breast cancer was getting a few years back. Never mind that, unlike prostate cancer, breast cancer interventions are more likely to help than harm.

But we can't declare doctors' waiting rooms truce areas in the battle of the sexes can we?
Gotta hold that high ground on pain and suffering.

Recently, and maybe as a result of the magazine coverage(?)--I have encountered more men in my psychiatrist's waiting room than ever. Seriously.Usually the place is filled with soccer Mom's and their kids.

The thing with suicide is, if one has any concept of himself as a spiritual being then they must be aware that there is only suicide of the body. You cannot kill an immortal being. And there you are (if you consider it) stuck in limbo without a body, having to do the whole damn thing over again (if you believe you come back).

No one can speak for this man. We can only speak for our own personal experiences. We cannot judge but we can say that he must have been in terrible pain to make such a decision. It is unfortunate that no one around him could help him. The mental health system sucks and is an expensive and addictive (meds) way to go. There are alternatives, there are ways. Why wasn't someone there for him?

L Jones said: "No one can speak for this man..."
"..We cannot judge but we can say that he must have been in terrible pain to make such a decision."

Respectfully speaking here; you just gave yourself a self-comforting reason as to why he killed himself...assuming he was "in terrible pain".

Then you go onto (in my opinion,) "judge" the people in his life; his family, friends and fiancee, by saying "Why wasn't someone there for him?"

He's dead, leave the family and friends alone to suffer his loss; he wrote in his own suicide note he left behind re: his fiancee;
"Unfortunately she is totally unaware of what I have done."