by margaret hillcroft

Created on: September 04, 2008

Not so many years ago it was a crime to commit suicide. Those grieving and attempting to come to terms with the tragic end of a life had to deal with this unjust judgment as well as their own feelings of guilt, rage, rejection, shame and sadness.

Today, suicide is no longer a crime. It is nevertheless still a tragedy especially as suicides tend to be
of a younger age than those who die a "natural death" through disease. It is tragic that those who take their own lives in such a blatantly self destructive way have come to feel so overwhelmed by adversity and

the problems of 21century living that they can see no way forward. Do they have the right to take their own lives? Do they even know what they are doing?

Each suicide case is of course, unique. Each has its own sad and desperate story behind it. In the case of a teenager it is particularly sad because a sixteen year old has time on their side, time to rebuild a life and heal the wounds. Even in the case of an adult it is the worst kind of death because one cannot help but wonder how self responsible was that person at the time of their death. Were they driven by some strange overwhelming force to jump from the bridge, were they "guided" by internal voices or did they simply lose the will to face another day, another bill, another load of the same.

For some people suicide is a calculated, planned and measured choice, for others a spontaneous urge and for others an accident, a cry for help no-one answered. Whichever, there is no way a person in such a frame of mind needs to be judged a criminal. They have committed no crime and it was nobody's life but their own. For some people it may indeed be the most self responsible thing they have ever done, when "no hope was left in sight,on that starry, starry night" [Don Mclean]

A self responsible adult person is the only person who determines their own existence, the way they live and the way they die. There is no escaping death and some people choose to embrace it on their own terms rather than wait for ill health and old age to destroy their quality of living. If this is their choice then it is to be respected if not welcomed.
If a person expresses suicidal intent, however, it must surely also be the responsibility of fiends and relatives to determine if indeed it is a choice. It is ironic that in the days when suicide was illegal
there was very little therapeutic assistance available and the asylum beckoned. Today, it is no longer illegal to commit suicide and there

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