Someone in my training class called him selfish for (potentially) comitting suicide and said he should have just "cheered up." I took it more personally than I should have, but I've lived with manic-depressive bi-polar disorder from a young age and have attempted to take my life more than once.
Robin Williams was one of my all time favorite comedians and public persons. Should it be true that his death had been a suicide it will hit really close to home for me. He will be missed.
This is going to sound dumb, but I think my most favorite video of him is actually a commercial. The Nintendo commercial where him and his daughter Zelda explained how she got her name.
I was never really a huge fan of Robin Williams, so I'm not really impacted much by this. The only thing he did that I can remember watching was Jumanji... and I loved that movie.
Although a lot of my friends on Facebook have been shaken by it. It's definitely a sad thing.
I think a lot of the problems with depression, or really any mental illness is that the people who don't suffer from it have literally no idea what it's like. To tell someone else to "suck up" their depression is a pretty awful thing to say.
I agree with the comic only in the sense that you're stuck in the realization that things will never get better... which they can but reality may not let that happen.
RIP Robin Williams. May we forever wonder why you (potentially) did it.
I really don't see where selfishness or personal freedom or choice enters into it. Real medical depression, as in the diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder, is a chemical imbalance. You don't tell a swine flu patient to "suck it up"; but you don't let them rot either. You help them, even if it means dragging them kicking and screaming to that source of help.
I'm utterly dumbfounded as to how you can disagree as I think that strip is pretty dead on for both sides of the argument.
Strip wrote:
Off panel person: It's selfish. If you kill yourself, you're not thinking of the incredible sorrow and grief you will cause everyone. Just yourself.
And thinking of your own needs above the suffering of others is just plain selfish.
This is a rather common attitude when someone has committed suicide due to depression. I don't know if anyone in my family has (mainly because I have distanced myself from all of them), but my wife had a cousin a few years back walk out into the woods and commit suicide. After the funeral several members of her family had that stance. He was selfish for doing it and wasn't thinking of his son or family when he did it.
Strip wrote:
Depressed person: So I have to live in a continual state of intense mental pain so you won't get sad.
<sarcasm>...Thank you for teaching me about selfishness. I'd gladly trade my hell for your sadness.</sarcasm>
Basically commenting on how expecting them to be in that "state of intense mental pain" so the family and friends won't have to go through the sadness of losing them is selfish because it is the equivalent of saying "Suck it up so I won't have to deal with burying you or going on knowing you are no longer here."
Sure they can go into programs to "help" with it, but that usually results in a pharmaceutical way of saying "suck it up". Until depression is fully understood, there are only temporary fixes (equivalents to "suck it up") and not all the 'fixes' work for everyone (as evident with Robin Williams as he had been doing rehab for his depression and still took his life).
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that matter. He has five movies coming out (four this year and one next year) that will at least give me something to look for in the months to come.
I feel if you've never been there, you probably wouldn't and would evidently be one of those people saying exactly what is in the comic.
Knew someone that went through a lot of shit, seen a lot of shit, was generally treated like shit. Sad that he chose to do it only after he retired, guess he had too much time to think.
Basically commenting on how expecting them to be in that "state of intense mental pain" so the family and friends won't have to go through the sadness of losing them is selfish because it is the equivalent of saying "Suck it up so I won't have to deal with burying you or going on knowing you are no longer here."
So, by your logic, if I was infected with SARS and was capable of curing myself by transferring each of the n viruses in my body to n other people, it would be selfish for one of those people to tell me that this would be a selfish thing to do. Never mind that I might pull through while some of those people might not, that person would be selfish.
Sure they can go into programs to "help" with it, but that usually results in a pharmaceutical way of saying "suck it up".
I don't understand. Depression is a pattern of neuronal firings in the brain. How is stopping those patterns the same as saying "suck it up"? Would any potential chemically-based cure be subject to the same description?
@helios
Guessing you have never had depression problems because that example isn't remotely close to any logic anyone had on here, let alone mine. If you were depressed and told me you were going to kill yourself because of the pain you were always in, it would be selfish of me to tell you to suck it up and stay alive fighting that pain just so I won't be sad after you were gone.
As for your hypothetical example, you don't have to worry about selfishness with that one because in the US (don't know if other countries have anything) if you knowingly infect n people with a deadly virus where you live and some die then you had better plan on getting a lawyer. Anyone remember the legal case during the late 80s/early 90s of the woman that had got AIDS from a guy and started purposely infecting other men out of anger? Think she got life for it, but can't remember if it was prison or a high security medical ward.
helios wrote:
I don't understand. Depression is a pattern of neuronal firings in the brain. How is stopping those patterns the same as saying "suck it up"?
Meds for depression don't stop the patterns, they are designed to relieve the symptoms, but depending on the person most don't work and those that do may have side effects that make the person stop taking them.
Robin Williams was worried any meds would interfere with his comedic creativity so he refused to take anything, but was going through a rehab program for his depression.
Guessing you have never had depression problems because that example isn't remotely close to any logic anyone had on here, let alone mine. If you were depressed and told me you were going to kill yourself because of the pain you were always in, it would be selfish of me to tell you to suck it up and stay alive fighting that pain just so I won't be sad after you were gone.
In other words, you completely missed the point of the analogy, which was "it's not one person's depression vs. one other person's grief". Putting your own interests before those of the group is selfish by definition.
As for your hypothetical example, you don't have to worry about selfishness with that one because [...]
What are you on about? Do you know of a way to pluck a single virus from someone's bloodstream and deposit it in someone else's? Are you vaguely familiar with the concept of "allegory"?
I think a lot of people who attempt suicide actually have different (if mental illness induced) reasoning. Many of them probably think rather that they wouldn't be missed, that people won't really be affected, or that their communities/families/friends/lovers would be better off without them. I think the comic sort of implied that the suicidal person had that reasoning.
helios, what is exactly was the point of your analogy? Looking back at the comic, at my explanation, and at your analogy; they all are saying the same thing. I was trying to explain to Disch what the comic was saying, put simply, the comic is showing the duality of selfishness around depression based suicide.
The point is that, by definition, if you're about to commit suicide and the group of people who may experience grief over it is larger than one, it is -- again, by definition -- not selfish to explain to the potential suicide that it would be a selfish thing to do. It's especially and more obviously not selfish if the person who explains this is not part of the aforementioned group.