The question that ought to be asked is whether there are sufficient resources to alleviate suffering people's pain so much that THEY, (not those of us judging from the outside), would want to continue living. There's a deeper question of self ownership, but the immediately salient question is whether we realistically have the resources to take others' pain away reliably and sufficiently. If we don't... then we have no business preventing others from doing what they feel they must to end their suffering.

It's stunning that so many in the lay and professionals assume that the medical, public health, and community (not to mention the financial) resources as they exist are enough to address suffering globally that we, arrogantly, can dismiss others' evaluation of their own moment-by-moment existence. Suicide hotlines, are very often overstaffed by volunteers. They're overworked and uncompensated (financially), and as a result they often can't or are disinclined to help. Nor is it any guarantee that mere words or concepts can cure what ails someone suffering.

There are associations among biological and social variables in depression, but no precise cause-effect relationship. Depression may even be a natural response to certain experiences one cannot control, and genetics reveals there's a mood "set-point" that may predispose some to becoming depressed. Predilection to certain moods may be a matter of variation. Consequently, the therapies — drug, CBT, DBT — may work well enough for some, but can't guarantee relief for sufferers in general. Worse, it's anathema just to admit this in professional circles that have reputations and financial investments to protect, creating a significant intellectual and social bias on a subject we all should own and share in talking about.

And just to mention one more area in which assumed resources may be sorely lacking, community members — family, coworkers, employers, acquaintances — are under no obligation to be understanding or supportive. Many deeply depressed human beings are abandoned for being "burdens" to others — the same others who, ironically, then refuse to allow these burdensome individuals the dignity of choosing a way out of life and suffering. Add to this the financial pressures inherent in surviving in a capitalist culture that asserts no one has a "right" to a job or general entitlement to money, which is a prerequisite of modern survival; and the additional challenges *different* people may face — minorities, those judged aesthetically unappealing, older citizens, etc — and the mere practicalities of surviving become more and more challenging even without factoring in the emotional elements of surviving. That the rest of us "do it" shouldn't be a mandate for every other human.... If we cannot take others' pain away, then it is cruel and presumptuous of us to demand they stay alive.

I am confident that, if humanity survives long enough, psychology and psychiatry will cease to be valid disciplines or will be wholly subsumed into cognitive neuroscience. Without physical biological causation, these so-called disciplines have no credible justification for claims of "illness." Besides, that globally the per capita suicide rates continue rising is incompatible with the position that these fields are a net help to society. More research articles by true scientists over the past five years have called the body of "psychological research" into serious question, with random samples of published studies in psychology proving not to be reproducible, to suffer from a poverty of statistical rigor, to be confounded by imprecise, poorly defined verbiage, and to suffer from what members of the international scientific community increasingly find to be the lethal confounding of cultural, professional, and even individual biases that distort so-called research in psychology and psychiatry from the design of studies to the interpretation of data.

Depression is still an enigma to the scientific world -- from why it affects some people and not others, why it is resistant to treatment in some people and not others, and what initiates it in some people and not others. For those who reach the point where it negatively impacts every moment of their lives, and removes all hope, joy, and peace -- why are they not "allowed" to end their pain and suffering when, how, and where they choose? An intelligent and civilized society would embrace suicide as a personal choice and civil right. People would not expect a loved one to live in mental anguish just to please them. Intentions would be announced and accepted. Goodbyes’ would happen in a loving and intelligent manner. The act would be peaceful and completed with dignity.

Unfortunately, our fear of death and our intrinsic selfishness precludes the vast majority of us loving anyone enough to put their needs first when it comes to letting go.

I often wish people viewed life the way they do a movie; if somebody wants to get up and leave, that’s ok because everyone has different opinions about what they want to watch. You may want them to stay because you are enjoying the movie and want the other person to as well, or maybe you just want to spend time with him or her, but you wouldn’t stand up in the theater and shout at them if they tried to leave. You can be extremely sad for a while, but then you have to go back to watching the movie.

After all, it’s a long movie, and you shouldn’t try to force people to sit through the whole thing if they don’t want to.