Do You Consider CTB Ideation to be Evident of Mental Illness?

[glided~hydrangea]

I feel like with typically ignorant, non-suicidal people, there lies this assumption that people who ctb, attempted to, seriously considered it, etc., are mentally ill or not of FULLY sound-mind, or are heavily clouded with strong emotions. But I, and probably most others on this site would think otherwise. Sometimes it just happens, yk? What are your thoughts?

 

[UtopianSoliloquies]

Wanting to CTB is just a thought, and I don't personally believe that a single thought can really constitute a mental illness, though obviously a lot of mental illnesses cause suicidal ideation. Most definitions of illness, mental or physical, require a sort of internal condition on the part of the patient that causes them to suffer. That combination of internal cause and suffering is really what makes something like cancer a disease--not necessarily just that you have a tumor, but that the tumor causes you pain and can kill you, and is within your body. It also makes something like being hit by lightning not a disease, since the cause is external. I think it's extremely debatable how much of mental illnesses throughout a lot of the difficult times in history can be described as an internally caused phenomenon. On the one hand, we might argue that all emotional suffering is internally caused since it is perceived by us. Yet, I doubt somebody who takes that position would then consider someone mentally ill for mourning a loved one's death temporarily, because we accept that there are bounds on the extent of emotional pain we can experience from a specific event that are "normal", and an extent of suffering beyond those bounds that constitutes an illness. I would imagine that someone who considers suicidality to be a mental illness in and of itself assumes implicitly then that never can the bounds of "normal" suffering for any reasonable event be considered to be so high as to include preferring to die, and I just don't think that's true. Our trajectory as a species towards climate crisis, combined with the ever increasing wealth inequality that leaves the majority of our generation less well off than our parents, not to mention the unbearable physical pain of those who are chronically ill, tend to make people more depressed and suicidal the more that they think about it, and insofar as that is the common response, I think it presents an obvious example where being suicidal does not necessarily indicate a mental illness.

 

[unkown00]

I think there was an article I read that mentioned brain MRI changes in those who completed CTB vs some kind of controls. I'd assume there is ideation before completion. Some kind of changes are occurring unfortunately. CTB ideation is part of the criteria for depression and not really any other mental illness (if i recall correctly) so the brain changes that are part of that might cause some negative effects and I guess you could call that an illness.

Where it gets interesting is situations like chronic illness, or situations with extreme emotion (sudden CTB). There the picture may be a little bit different and it looks like its done more due to circumstances. Also its understandable that some CTBs can be due to a combination of these effects, depression/mood disorder and circumstances, and maybe other factors.

 

[dust-in-the-wind]

In a nutshell...
The main driver of suicide is a feeling of 'hopelessness'. This can be caused by mental illness, it could be situational or both.

 

[passthisnote]

i think it's situational like if someone wants to ctb because they have voices in their head or something like that then yeah but if they're completely rational about it and just don't want to deal with bs anymore then no

 

[bellaisdonewithlife]

Absolutely not. That's bullshit. People love to throw blanket statements on things. All it takes is some terrible life circumstances, and everyone has different limits as to what they can endure.

 

[FuneralCry]

No, the ill ones are those who do all they can to force others to suffer in this torturous existence, for me ceasing to exist is the positive solution, for me ceasing to exist solves everything in this existence so cruel and terrible that is just waiting to die with no limit as to how much one can be tortured.

It's just so horrible to me how a human can suffer for so long just to face the terrible extreme agony of old age, existence is the problem that should never be imposed, I don't see what could ever be ill about wanting true permanent peace from all futile, dreadful suffering in this existence that was a mistake in the first place, non-existence truly is all that's desirable, I'll always see it as an abomination to exist, it's just so terrible how this existence was even imposed at all.

 

[-Link-]

You'd want to set parameters around "ideation" as this would occur on a wide spectrum.

Studies of completed suicides have shaken out numbers along these lines: ~50% had a diagnosed mental illness, ~35% thought to have had an undiagnosed mental illness, ~15% thought to have had no mental illness at all.

Ideation (looking only at people who are still alive) looks to be in the 70% to 90% range.

The term "mental illness" tends to bring its own connotations and reactions from people; I've read some pretty angry reactions from members here at the very idea they could be diagnosed with something. But really, all a mental illness means is that somebody meets a set of defined criteria at the particular point in time they're being assessed. Something like major depressive disorder can ebb and flow over time, so you could meet the criteria in one psychiatric assessment but not the next, whereas something like a personality disorder would lean more long-term, and something like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia would be permanent.

All a diagnosis is, is a cluster of symptoms. Whatever other meanings are attached to it, I think, would stem from stigma.

To answer the topic question... Personally, let's say for purposes of the average member on this forum, I'd look at it as moderate-to-strong circumstantial evidence of a diagnosable mental illness. But only ever circumstantial, unless they mention one specifically.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I suppose the argument is- we are naturally programmed to want to survive. So, thoughts contrary to that show there must be something wrong with our thinking. I think it's more complicated than that though.

Why would someone in an objectively bad situation, with next to no hope of improving their circumstances- want to live? Wouldn't it in fact be more delusional/ crazy to be aware of living through tremendous hardship and still desire to live? Is masochism or utterly false hope- delusion healthy?

After all, our brains don't just work according to instinct. We are capable of intense analysing, reasoning and prediction.

That said- sure- we could be suffering with a mental illness that skews our perspective of life and diminishes our energy levels and ability to cope.

That said- if whatever we have is treatment resistant- where does that leave us? Some people here who would freely admit to having a mental illness, have tried just about every treatment there is for years on end! Maybe even decades on end for some people.

Even if their experience of life is negatively skewed- if it can't be altered- how does that make it something doctors or whoever should dismiss? Even if someone isn't thinking rationally or experiencing life 'appropriately'- if they can't be helped- they'll be having a miserable time of it. Why should that be expected of them?

To answer the question though- I don't think ideation is an automatic indicator of mental illness. Physically chronically ill people can have ideation because they are in unbearable pain. But- they will also sometimes say- they wouldn't want their lives to end if they had their good health back. So- that isn't mental. That's surely a (reasonable) response to being in physical pain they can't escape from. That said- I think it's reasonable- encountering someone with ideation to try to figure out if they are also suffering with things like depression etc.

 

[SoLowHollow48]

I feel like with typically ignorant, non-suicidal people, there lies this assumption that people who ctb, attempted to, seriously considered it, etc., are mentally ill or not of FULLY sound-mind, or are heavily clouded with strong emotions. But I, and probably most others on this site would think otherwise. Sometimes it just happens, yk? What are your thoughts?

How serious are we talking? Isn't there a sort of scale that measures how suicidal you are?

I think people are passively suicidal all the time. They'd need a trigger for it to become active. Someone said that it can just be something situational that makes a person feel hopeless and I agree. It doesn't necessarily have to stem from a pre-existing mental illness.

Suicidality being circumstantial is sort of why I HATE people who hate me for preventing others from killing themselves here considering that situations change. You're not going to be there forever so, maybe if you can just listen to them, support them, they don't have to end up six feet underground with some of yo ass defending their clearly irreversible decision.

EDIT: Ofc FuneralCry is here.

 

[UserFromNowhere]

Studies of completed suicides have shaken out numbers along these lines: ~50% had a diagnosed mental illness, ~35% thought to have had an undiagnosed mental illness, ~15% thought to have had no mental illness at all.

I feel it's important to note that there are major variances between diagnoses depending on if the psychologist knew the individual completed suicide or not. Over all the books I've read on this topic, a pretty prevalent sticking point is that when a psychologist had a psychological autopsy but didn't know that the person had taken their life, they tended to report lower rates of mental illness; by contrast, when a psychologist has both the autopsy and the knowledge that the person took their life, the rates of mental illness diagnoses go up substantially.

 

[Le temps perdu]

I think the progression from suicidal thoughts to acting on them is shaped by a complex set of factors. From the moment passive suicidal ideation first emerges, a person may already begin silently evaluating their circumstances, although that process can take a long time. since people cannot fully understand another person's internal experience, so I don't think suicidal ideation by itself is necessarily evidence of mental illness.

 

[Canto XIII]

First you should define what a mental illness exactly is. It's my impression that definitions of such things tend to be arbitrary and more concerned with practical issues than with theoretical inquiry.

My opinion is that suicide ideation implies there is something wrong with your mind, even just temporarily, because the will to live is the basic condition to have a healthy life (there can't be health without life itself). But are we sure being mentally healthy is the best thing? Sound-minded people live their life diligently by ignoring, purposefully or not, the tragedy of human existence. To accomplish this they shield their vision with what Leopardi called illusioni. But if illusions are based in a skewed perception of a painful reality, aren't they bound to ultimately bring pain to the people employing them? On the other hand, unhealthy people, who have got nothing to lose, are dysfunctional but have got at times something which functional people lack, that is lucidity, as lucidity is only possible if we renounce the prejudices which are needed to live like society requires. The trope of the madman who's the only sane person in a world of madmen exists for a reason (figures like Diogenes of Sinope, or the Fool in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Lear come to mind), and even my psychologist once told me that "il sano non esiste". When thinking about this stuff, I'm often remembered in particular of the last pages of Zeno's Conscience, a great psychological modernist novel by Italian writer Italo Svevo, where the main character eventually concludes he's more healthy than other people because he at least recognises his illness.

Just to be clear, I don't mean by this that suicide is necessarily the most rational choice. And in fact, Svevo's book end with a paradoxical affirmation of life.