your first comments while funny are ill advised. Unless of course Greg is fine with some of the seedier parts of web coming to his blog on mistaken assumptions. Or trying to use it as a “see a scientist agrees with me” link.

Because, let me tell you, there are artists making money catering to just those fantasies. *

Now as to out of work teachers: Oh, we have plenty.
See every few years the states (We’re a republic too) remember that they had a budget and thus hiring freeze in the education department. Much political hay is made and paper is wasted by papers decrying this situation.
So every imbecilic moron who has a teachers license and still around gets hired and some are poached too.

And several thousand more morons than usual decide that they gonna be a teacher that year.

Two years later ? Surprise. Hiring freeze. Again. The good ones (And they are so rare there should forced breeding programs for them, if they were a species even the bush administration would have acklowledged them as “very endangered” to make an comparision you can grog.) will of course still get hired. The bad ones ? Get depressed and jump into a bear den or are hired when the “Oh shit we have no teachers think of the children”-cycle hits.

*An imageboard without registration is great. Most of time. Those other times your therapist earns his second house.

In fact, putting others first does several things; It moves the focus from you to something outside yourself which helps reduce the depression, it may convince you to not take the simple way out and to get help, and it can convince you to put off the act, which in itself can help because depression has its ups and downs and even a short delay can see you in a better mood.

I have no idea what’s going on in your life, but perhaps you should take your own advice.

anyone in your family commit or attempt suicide?
anyone in your family struggle with serious mental health issues, bipolar, schizophrenia, severe depression?

I don’t think you have enough brain cells, even if you have more than two and think you can spare a few. I think you need to activate a few. You are clearly a dick.

I won’t say how, but I know Lorax personally, and I assure you he has more than two brain cells. In fact, around these parts, he’s one of those people we rely on to have extra brain cells to spare!

I think there is some confusion here in this discussion. I the act of suicide is like blogging. People often say “bloggers should/should not do this, bloggers should/should not do that” as though blogging was a thing, when it is actually a medium, and different bloggers happen to be using this medium. Suicide is self-caused death that happens to not be an accident, but how it comes about is as diverse as human behavior. And like any complex act, it should not be stigmatized, but rather, understood. (Though it is often stigmatized but always to bad effect.) People who drink themselves to death and people who jump off of a building to death are sometimes doing the same thing, sometimes doing different things. And the person who ran into the wood chipper and later did not recall doing it or at least did not recall a reason for doing it was not doing the same thing as the person who obtains a firearm and shooting themselves in the head. In the woods. Or whatever.

Suicide by cop or polar bear is a very violent and aggressive act, by the way. A person who does that may be just a little self-absorbed. Or has a specific beef with the cops or the polar bears.

Yes, much better for everyone to live in doubt, with questions that can’t even be asked, much less answered. Much better for Uncle Todd, who knew you were depressed, to have to keep secrets from Grandma on top of his own grief. Much better for others not to know that major depression runs in the family, so they assume they’re alone and uniquely defective when they have to deal with it. Much better to think about everyone else than to get selfish and get yourself some help.

Bullshit.

Gary, I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that crap, but it’s clouding your thinking. Please go find someone who can help you gain some perspective.

And yes, today is absolutely the wrong day for anyone to be pontificating about suicide in my presence.

And yes, I am intimately familiar with clinical depression and thoughts of suicide.