We hear so much about the taboo of suicide. There are hotlines and laws and religious inducements to not commit the act. One assumes that this is all motivated by caring and concern for person's life.
Now, let's put ourselves in somebody else's shoes. Well, take a 55-year-old male. He has no family members left. He is divorced and only has a couple of close friends who are not doing well financially at all. He owns a small home. He loses his job and has no found another one after an extended period of searching.
His house is foreclosed on and he is now broke, in debt, and facing eviction. He finds out that there are no other options. He broke down and applied for food stamps, but that won't solve the rest of his problems.
While things were getting more critical for him and as he was reaching the edge, he started to worry constantly about survival issues. He notice the homeless people on the streets and, when he had access to the Net, he read enough about it to get an idea of the vulnerability and total loss of status, power and familiarity that he may have had. He found out that he would potentially be abused, treated like a criminal and end-up scrounging everyday exposed to the elements on the street.
Would thoughts of suicide really be only a form of mental illness in this case? Once our example case had a clear idea of what life is like without a job, place to live, or any support or safety-net it is not hard to make a comparison between death on the streets, (you are much more likely to die early being homeless) or a quick, self-inflicted ticket out.
I am not advocating it, but the richest country in the world is not doing much, if anything to address this growing problem, so people may take care of it themselves as if the underlying implications are that these people really don't matter and we will just look the other way, or try to rationalize it or call it irrational or mental illness.
= new reply since forum marked as read