“I’m walking to the bridge,” begins a Golden Gate Bridge suicide note […] “If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.”

Suicide is fascinating to me. On the one hand, I feel like we should respect somebody’s decision or assumption that, overall, they won’t come out of their life “ahead”. A line from an Editors song comes to mind:

In the end all you can hope for // Is the love you felt to equal the pain you’ve gone through

I mean, who are you to tell somebody “No, no. You have to suffer at least 30 more years before I allow you to die”?

On the other hand, it’s not as simple as that. Suicide can’t really be looked at isolated from depression or mental illness in general. I also ask myself if – aside from people who are terminally ill and don’t want to suffer anymore – every person commiting suicide is by defintion mentally ill.

Anyway, this piece on the dramatic surge of suicides is well worth a read:

Around the world, in 2010 self-harm took more lives than war, murder, and natural disasters combined, stealing more than 36 million years of healthy life across all ages. In more advanced countries, only three diseases on the planet do more harm.