Comment by haswell

> Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly.

No one is an island. We’re all deeply intertwined/interconnected. We’re the sum total of our lived experiences and without a doubt some have lived far more challenging lives than others and are influenced by factors that would lead just about anyone down a dark path.

The grief felt by those left behind is the result of that aforementioned interconnectedness.

Getting back to the quoted bit, isn’t this a bit like saying “attributing grief to anyone other than the person experiencing it is oxymoronic”?

My point is not to diminish the impact on those left behind in any way. Clearly this is a traumatic event that causes excruciating grief.

But I think we also need to be honest about the environmental factors that lead to suicide. Hopelessness is one of the large causes. If there are systemic reasons causing people to feel hopeless, and if those systemic problems could theoretically be changed/improved, and such improvement lowered the suicide rate, there’s a strong case to be made that the systemic factors share the responsibility.

> Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens.

I don’t think it’s a given. Clearly some lives are far more complicated than others. There exists a subset of people for whom that complication will become an insurmountable problem. Often those people have been traumatized, or have never learned the tools necessary to work through their feelings.

Some people are bullied into killing themselves. Should that be attributed wholly to the person who was bullied?