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.