You would have to define the average person (are we defining people by their inherent brain function or their circumstances that led to mental distress?), but I have been in contact with people before with only one of my various problems who were suicidal or ended their lives over it, even if they led otherwise average or even successful lives before hand.
At the point I am at, with so much compounded, I think yes, a good majority of people would ctb in my place and at the very least, would be bent out of shape over it. They might say they wouldn't be, so long as they're outside of my shoes, but once they shoved their feet in, they would be desperate for any escape available to them.
I think they would. To name a few:
- I have a chronic illness (MECFS) that makes basic survival a full-time job, and there's no known cure for it yet. There's still a huge stigma attached to it and most people don't understand it. My husband is likewise severely chronically ill with the same thing.
- My childhood was messed right up and full of every kind of abuse and violation you could imagine. I genuinely wish that I was exaggerating.
- I have a permanent spinal injury (see: messed up childhood) that leaves me in constant pain.
- As far as mental illness goes, I've been diagnosed with PTSD, BPD, bipolar 2, GAD and MDD. I've destroyed a lot of interpersonal relationships throughout the years as a consequence of my actions stemming from these illnesses.
- I have so many passions and things that I want to do, but until there's a cure for this hell of a chronic illness, all I can really do is stay in bed and watch the world move on without me. Just a tiny bit of overexertion (especially from going out into the world, where everything is loud and bright) can leave me completely bedridden.
- The only person in my life who can help both my husband and me with practical stuff (like grocery shopping, etc) has narcissistic tendencies which makes lots of things more difficult than they need to be. The rest of my family lives on the other side of the world.
This isn't to say that I don't also currently have good things in my life, by any means. I have a pretty small inner circle, but I know that I'm loved dearly by everyone who is in it. My husband is an absolute gift – I love him so much that my heart feels like it's going to burst, and I've never felt so unconditionally loved in return, and this love only continues to grow. My parents would do anything for me. I'm so proud of the young adults my siblings are becoming. I'm not ugly, I'd say I'm pretty likeable and I get along with just about everyone I meet. I'm still somewhat able to express my passions from bed... definitely not to the extent that I want to, but it's still doable to a certain point.
But the good obviously doesn't take away the bad, and the bad can get really, REALLY bad – unbearably bad – and it makes me wonder if the good is actually worth it, when I suffer massively just as a baseline, and when it's been that way for most of my life. I don't even necessarily want to die, but if this is how it's going to be for the rest of my life, with no sign of improvements, then I really just want nothing to do with it. I guess time will tell, but I'm also not gonna wait "forever".
Long answer, but yeah... I think the "average" person would have had enough a LONG time ago.
If I had those good things you speak of (minus the husband, because I'm not interested in a relationship), I would be much more tempted to stick around, ecstatic even, but I have no such balancing act, there is nothing but torture from every angle-except for maybe my cats, and passive distractions.
That's why I think there may be no "average" person, it really only matters if it's killing us specifically, maybe someone else would be glad to trade places, maybe another person would kill themselves on the spot with our problems, who can know, if a person was truly in our position to the point they lived our lives entirely, then they would probably be no different than us, and thus they would still be on this site contemplating suicide.
I think it's also a matter of familiarity, we grow with our issues, they slowly pile on top of eachother, familiarizing ourselves with increasing amounts of pain, conditioning us to know how to hurt- so if all that was suddenly dropped like a sack of potatoes onto another unsuspecting individual, they would have no idea how to handle it, it would be completely foreign and overwhelming, and they very well may be in shock to the point they jump off the nearest building.
But it takes us so god damn long to get this over with, partially because we are so used to it!
We know what to expect, there is a certain monotony to it, and that can unfortunately contribute to a person dragging out their own suffering, as the next day is not much different from the last, and a strange autopilot ensues.
